3 ms·

Not to be rude, but you don't work much with manufacturing or robots, do you? Even if, and especially if, a mfg process is highly automated, it takes myriad la

by toss1 4y ago

Not to be rude, but you don't work much with manufacturing or robots, do you? Even if, and especially if, a mfg process is highly automated, it takes myriad layers of expertise to get it right. That is the LAST thing you want to ship overseas to your adversaries, which both increases their expertise in the field and your dependence on them. Economically, it is long-term-stupid. Strategically, it is suicide.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
Not rude, but i did work for a while on robot automation using expensive swiss industrial robots for a FAANG, in the US btw, for years. The purpose aligned pretty much with your observations and the utility of this was involved in building a billion+ of devices.
- toss1 4y ago
  Then you, of all people, should understand how massive is the value and expertise chain all the way from the product, to the CNC machine tool, to the CAM programming, to the CAD software, and the other forks up through the materials, the robot assembly. Even if you worked only in robotic final assembly, that is NOT stuff we want to offshore. I did see one case where it sort of made sense to offshore to China, and then only to have production near some other markets. The company literally prepared and shipped only the final secret input chemical and it's curing agent, to be mixed in a certain ratio, poured into a big vat, then cut into slabs. They were still wicked nervous about it, and I don't think the arrangement lasted long. Even if all the components are made here, with all the materials engineering, CNC machining, molding, forming, fabrication, etc. done here, and only final robotic assembly done in China, that is still a non-trivial skill to program and maintain those robots. And at that point, it's only a few experts, so why ship it and not keep it here?
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    China did something prescient roughly a couple decades ago which the US missed the ball on: they set up that entire manufacturing zone, famous for the contract manufacturers used by Dell, Apple, ...., Google etc., such that one critical aspect unrelated to tech savvy was optimized. They made sure that the availability of components for all these global (mostly US it seems) companies wanting to rent time in their factories would face minimal supply chain difficulties, by making the component availabilities a local thing. It's very orthogonal to all you mentioned, which I agree is logical. Also, programming the robots could be done domestically, then binaries of the programs run in the contract manufacturing facilities. Point is, I think what you emphasize actually has long been a priority.

by toss1 4y ago

jjtheblunt 4y ago

Not rude, but i did work for a while on robot automation using expensive swiss industrial robots for a FAANG, in the US btw, for years. The purpose aligned pretty much with your observations and the utility of this was involved in building a billion+ of devices.

toss1 4y ago
Then you, of all people, should understand how massive is the value and expertise chain all the way from the product, to the CNC machine tool, to the CAM programming, to the CAD software, and the other forks up through the materials, the robot assembly. Even if you worked only in robotic final assembly, that is NOT stuff we want to offshore. I did see one case where it sort of made sense to offshore to China, and then only to have production near some other markets. The company literally prepared and shipped only the final secret input chemical and it's curing agent, to be mixed in a certain ratio, poured into a big vat, then cut into slabs. They were still wicked nervous about it, and I don't think the arrangement lasted long. Even if all the components are made here, with all the materials engineering, CNC machining, molding, forming, fabrication, etc. done here, and only final robotic assembly done in China, that is still a non-trivial skill to program and maintain those robots. And at that point, it's only a few experts, so why ship it and not keep it here?
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  China did something prescient roughly a couple decades ago which the US missed the ball on: they set up that entire manufacturing zone, famous for the contract manufacturers used by Dell, Apple, ...., Google etc., such that one critical aspect unrelated to tech savvy was optimized. They made sure that the availability of components for all these global (mostly US it seems) companies wanting to rent time in their factories would face minimal supply chain difficulties, by making the component availabilities a local thing. It's very orthogonal to all you mentioned, which I agree is logical. Also, programming the robots could be done domestically, then binaries of the programs run in the contract manufacturing facilities. Point is, I think what you emphasize actually has long been a priority.