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America’s largest tool company couldn’t make a wrench in America

198 points by ortusdux 3y ago

EdwardDiego 3y ago
I feel like title is better phrased as "Shareholder value driven governance meant America’s largest tool company divested itself of the manufacturing competence to make wrenches in America".
fomine3 3y ago
My question from Asia: why not Mexico?
Opened-Eyes2 3y ago
[flagged]
ortusdux 3y ago
https://archive.is/RQev4 https://archive.is/RQev4
richardjam73 3y ago
The real issue is they don't want to pay their workers a proper wage. This is why they offshore or overly rely on automation.
- gnat 3y ago
  As the article says, premium wrenches are already made in America. Consumers pay for comparatively-expensive American labour in comparatively-expensive premium products. The article is about an attempt to onshore the wrenches for a low-price tools brand. Those wrenches are currently made in a labour-intensive process by low-cost Chinese labour. If they use USA labour they'll have to charge premium tool prices and consumers won't go for it. So they tried to automate. Yes, reducing the need for American labour, but not because they wanted to charge premium prices for the result. Interestingly, even the machines required to bring manufacturing back to America aren't made in America.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    The automation heavy factory that they couldn’t get to work is an old story.
  - stefan_ 3y ago
    That's not interesting, it is the utterly predictable result of not making anything. Of course the only ones getting better at it and making machines for it are those doing the manufacturing.
    - dilyevsky 3y ago
      That’s not true in chip making for example
      - rasz 3y ago
        True in chip _making_, not yet true in chip design.
        dilyevsky 3y ago
        Although not american, ASML is not chinese / taiwanese either where most of chips are made.
        rasz 3y ago
        ASML doesnt make chips.
        dilyevsky 3y ago
        I’m aware. I think you should reread original comment I was replying to
  - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
    > by low-cost Chinese labour. Why are Chinese willing to do labor for low-cost while Americans are "unwilling/uninterested" in such labor?
- renewiltord 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Wow and I thought calling someone an NPC was an insult!
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      The nth time someone's like "corporations dude", "capitalism dude", "they just want to see butts in seats dude". Christ, it's like some kind of pothead lamentation circle.
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  That's because businesses compete with each other. So if Corporation A suddenly decides to pay workers a "proper wage", and raises the product prices accordingly, Corporation B will just take their share. That's where the regulators are supposed to step in by setting the rules that both Corporation A and Corporation B are forced to follow, if they want to access the market. Except, they won't because the elites are perfectly fine with the status quo, and the regular people seem to care more about pronouns and plastic straws, than being able to afford a decent lifestyle.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    I have no problem with and want regulators to regulate on worker safety, plant emissions, and truth/fairness in advertising. I don’t want regulators to force rules on lifetime warranty, sales methods, tolerances and material specifications and the like. The latter is where the tool truck brands are often winning for demanding users of tools.
    - matrix_overload 3y ago
      Sure, but it needs to be enforced for imports as well. Currently we have draconian emissions rules domestically, and a complete blind eye when it comes to any offshore production.
- quietthrow 3y ago
  That’s not the real issue. You are confusing a side effect with a root cause. The root is capitalism. Btw ,for the record, I am not against capitalism. I am very much for it. It’s just that this is the side effect of capitalism. A capitalistic environment begets competition. Competition begets survival. Survival begets perpetual need to contain costs. People for most business are a big part of its cost structure. Unless you are a monopoly (think google etc) there is little incentive to give your employees a fair wage. Labor market supply and demand play a part in this too but all things equal to survive in competition keeping cost as low as possible goes a very very long way. I think just like everything evolves capitalism needs to evolve too. “We need capitalism 2.0”Profit cannot be the sole focus. We need to shift to capitalism with a heavy bent on sustainability. Sustainable profits, sustainable for the community it serves in etc. we live in an evolved society where we curb our raw instincts for the general good. There used to be a time when all humans simply acted on their r as emotion and instincts and from that we evolved on. Same need to happen with how we organize and structure our economies and businesses.
  - richardjam73 3y ago
    I don't think the actual cause is capitalism. I think that there is a business culture that seeks maximum profit at any cost. Seeking maximum profit is not actually required to run a business, you can do so with a lower profit and not go broke.
- seabird 3y ago
  You're going to be hard-pressed to convince somebody that they should go with Snap-on, Matco, Mac, Stahlwille, Hazet, KTC, Ko-ken, or any other company that is making superior tools by paying their workers better wages when doing so means they'll be paying multiple tens of thousands by the time it's all said and done. The easy (and wrong) answer to why this is happening is that capitalism ruins everything. The actual answer is that most people don't need or want tools and will not pay the premium for good new tools.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    You sell the high end brands by selling "this tool will not fail you" - and you prove that by manufacturing it in a high-cost area (as we're seeing, you can't make low-cost tools in high-cost areas) among other things. China can make exceptionally high-quality tools, you just have to design it well and pay for it.
    - yibg 3y ago
      Thing is I don’t need a tool that won’t fail me. I need a wrench once every couple of years and not for anything difficult. I got a cheap set from Amazon. I know it’s low quality and not the most durable, but it’s sufficient for my use case. Even if I were to replace the set twice it’s still cheaper.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
  You need to figure why you support onshoring. The elites support it because they can see the writing on the wall for what might happen in a future conflict, not out of the goodness of their hearts or for some fantasy about labor economics. The "made in America" nonsense is bullshit sold to unions and rural areas decimated by outsourcing for the sake of votes. The consent is manufactured by dangling a carrot that will never materialize. The jobs are going to Mexico, they are not coming back. The feds want corporations to onshore for purely strategic reasons, and all the subsidies are to make automation possible to bring the costs down. The workers were never the priority.
  - spiralx 3y ago
    Brutal but true. Mexico will replace China as a manufacturing hub at some point in the next decade.
- matchbok 3y ago
  Simply incorrect. The market doesn't want that, you don't want. You, and most others, want a $99 drill. A $99 drill doesn't support your fantasy wages.
  - silisili 3y ago
    You can get a Ryobi HP+ Brushless drill for $50. It's a fantastic unit for all but the heaviest users. You can't tell me those couldn't be made in the USA at a premium of $49 per unit. You could literally pay $50/hr, produce only one unit per hour, and still come out even. The outsourcing arguments are lazy and outdated. Companies screwed up outsourcing it all, and the US is unable to regain its foothold. Labor costs are negligible here, even if US were twice the price.
h2odragon 3y ago
Nice plug in the article, too. kinda "the few 'Made in USA' Craftsman(TM) socket sets on store shelves now are sure to be collector's items, go snap one up before the sell out! We did!"
medion 3y ago
It’s a long article lamenting that onshore manufacturing doesn’t work. But, maybe it’s just they weren’t good at it? Maybe their leadership was poor? Perhaps their technical automation solutions were poor? I refuse to believe that the only way to make things is on effectively slave labour.
- DieBruderBauer 3y ago
  The response is always: "Oh, well, we're not making enough profit to justify staying open." Are you serious? It's greed manifest at sociopathic levels.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    When employees quit to take a higher paying job elsewhere, do you feel the same way? They weren’t making enough to “justify staying open” at their old job, so they changed and we celebrate them for their action (as we should, IMO). When we use a coupon or shop on Black Friday, we’re being smart, frugal purchasers. When companies do the equivalent, what are they doing?
    - eschneider 3y ago
      Most companies frown on employees working multiple full time jobs, so yeah, gotta quit the existing job to take a new one. Companies can operate multiple lines of business.
      - teeray 3y ago
        Unless they’re hourly. Then sure, go work another shift elsewhere as long as you can keep your eyes open here. Wooooah, FTE and want to tend bar on the weekend? Forget it.
    - genocidicbunny 3y ago
      We don't have to have the same rules for people as for companies. There's absolutely nothing preventing us from saying "If person does X, it's fine. If company does X, it's bad."
xiaodai 3y ago
Cos China?
bombcar 3y ago
And now Stanley Blackend ... Decker can explain why they can't do what Milwaukee can. https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-hand-tools-2023-update/ https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-hand-tools-2023-upda... https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-pliers-screwdrivers-pricing-preorders-2023/ https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-pliers-screwdrivers-... (prices) I think this says more about how badly Craftsman has shat the bed and less about manufacturing in America.
- api 3y ago
  They may have outsourced even the business and management talent for manufacturing and become a mere brand that resells stuff built to spec by others. Shareholder value is maximized until everything is hollow and then it goes to zero.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    This I feel is closer to the reality - craftsman has "sold the brand" so hard that they can't charge anything like a premium, and their quality is now south of Harbor Freight.
    - vl 3y ago
      In fact Harbor Freight has 4 levels for hand tools. Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pro Quinn Icon Icon is great, but also is very expensive.
      - dieselgate 3y ago
        It’s easy to shit on HF but some of their products are basically industry standard - like winches and floor jacks. It’s really odd to be honest because people will frequently mention buying something cheap off “Amazon or Ali express” and then scoff at HF. I’ve seen some HF products out perform SnapOn tools in YouTube reviews. Not everything is “good” but it’ll get the job done.
        3y ago
shuntress 3y ago
This is what happens when you optimize the wrong metric.
scop 3y ago
One of the things I appreciated about this article was the subcurrent of lack-of-knowledge. Ok, there was the pandemic, manufacturing problems, supply chain issues, etc. However it sounds like there was a chronic lack of people who had done this before. When you move manufacturing overseas, you’re not just eliminating jobs: you are eliminating knowledge.
- tom_ 3y ago
  If the foreigners can manage it, clearly there must be other ways of doing it, and they could be copied. The knowledge that has been permanently destroyed was not obviously vital.
  - alphabettsy 3y ago
    We’ve been offshoring manufacturing for decades now. That’s decades of experience to be found.
    - tom_ 3y ago
      Wait, I thought the knowledge had been permanently destroyed? Forever lost, with no hope of ever figuring out whatever it was? Simply rediscovering what was previously known seems reasonably achievable!
      - pessimizer 3y ago
        You can't teach 20 years of experience in a year. The people we once had with 20 years of experience found other work.
        breezeTrowel 3y ago
        Why not?
        steve1977 3y ago
exabrial 3y ago
What’s amazing is the breaking strength and precision of old Made in America Craftsman wrenches versus the new overseas ones. Plenty of test videos on YouTube. I’m not giving up my mia set anytime soon.
- enraged_camel 3y ago
  Interesting! Can you link a few?
- pmorici 3y ago
  Check out Wright Tool, still made in the USA at a not totally outrageous price relative to other Made in USA brands.
jeffbee 3y ago
As the article eventually points out, you can already buy made-in-America tools from this same company, under their "Proto" brand.
ftyers 3y ago
I'm curious about how well the stuff they bought works in Belarus. I remember reading a story a while ago how manufacturing was surprisingly high tech therebut can't find it now.
- cpursley 3y ago
  An interesting thing about Belarus is they largely kept a command and control style economy (while Russia and Ukraine were hollowed out by vultures and lost a good bit of industrial knowledge and capability, in comparison). I’m not supporting their system by any means, but Belarus is known for producing high quality products (tractors, food, etc).
insaneirish 3y ago
There's some parallel between steel tools and bike frames with regards to things moving to Taiwan. Both things like wrenches/ratchets/sockets and steel bike frames moved largely to Taiwan 20+ years ago. Guess what? Taiwan got really good at making both. So in the tool community, you have lots of comparisons drawn between the US and Taiwan and China, with the narrative that as far as Asian manufactured tools, the "good stuff" comes out of Taiwan, and the not-usually-as-good out of China. There's a similar narrative on bike frames. The interesting thing is that Taiwan didn't just get good at steel bike frames, but on the aluminum and carbon fiber successors as well. I would frankly rather Craftsman be a sustainable brand manufactured out of Taiwan with a warranty and continuity of product to back it, but unfortunately the collapse of Sears and the subsequent trading of the Craftsman label has made it more of a liability.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  This started in the 60s, when manufacturing started moving to Japan. "Made in Japan" was the mark of garbage (I inherited some of those old Japanese-made tools from my Dad. I only keep them for nostalgia reasons.) Then in the 80s Japan got very good at manufacturing. And they got expensive as a result. So cheap manufacturing moved to Taiwan, and "Made in Taiwan" became the mark of garbage. Now Taiwan has become a very good manufacturer, but it's expensive, so cheap manufacturing moved to China. And now high-end Japanese brands outsource their manufacturing to...China.
  - robk 3y ago
    It was largely accelerated by the admission of China to the WTO under Clinton.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    In the 1870s, Britain found cheap, low-quality German imports were being mislabelled as British. "Made in Germany" also started as a mark of low quality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany
  - cpursley 3y ago
shthed 3y ago
Is that "$90 million factory" number correct? Seems rather low, I'd guess that just the robots alone to run an automated factory of any real scale would cost an order of magnitude more than that.
thrwddd 3y ago
The main thing is if you don't move your production to China, you won't get access to the Chinese market. It's as unfair as big American internet companies having access to other countries. This destroyed local businesses
DaveExeter 3y ago
This just shows how much China is saving American consumers! Back when we were forced to buy Made in America tools, manufactures were able to get away with charging us as much as they wanted, and they were very greedy! Thanks to China, inflation adjusted tool prices have dropped by at least 75%. And Chinese quality is good enough for the Snap-On name! https://tiremeetsroad.com/2019/09/15/harbor-freight-daytona-dj3000-the-floor-jack-snap-on-absolutely-hates-for-this-reason/ https://tiremeetsroad.com/2019/09/15/harbor-freight-daytona-...
jaarse 3y ago
Having worked in the custom manufacturing machinery business a long time I would guess that they ironically cheaped out but purchasing all their equipment overseas. There are extremely knowledgeable machine builders in the USA and Canada (think rust belt) that have been building equipment like this since the 1950s (think automotive sway bars, coil springs, etc), but over the last decade you see a lot companies trying to purchase their equipment from former eastern block countries or China to save money. Nothing against Belarus, but I guarantee there are USA machine builders that could have got this up and running (for more money of course).
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "Nothing against Belarus" Except that it is now a satellite country of Russia and the relations of the West with Russia are at the worst point in 40 years or so. Trying to detach from China in order to create a new failure point in Belarus does not seem very wise.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Animats 3y ago
Here's a video from Beta, a wrench manufacturer in Italy.[1] Think about what it would take to build a plant like that from a cold start. What you'd need to know. All the ways you could screw up. How much it would cost to recover from a bad decision. Notice what they automated, and what they didn't. Who wants to be a millwright? Or a production engineer? To build a factory, you need both. Once you've built the factory, you don't need most of them them any more. It's a job with high layoff potential. Top pay is maybe $125K. You need people who've built your kind of factory before. Here, they need people who've built mechanized hot forging shops. Since few of those are built in the US each year, there's no pool of such people. Stanley, the company, had forgotten how to build a plant like that. They relied on the equipment manufacturer, and perhaps some consultants. That didn't work out. It takes a long time to get a good factory going from a cold start. It took Airbus 21 years before they made a good airplane. It took Tesla 15 years from start to significant production volume. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDUFQ-e0EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDUFQ-e0EM
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  15 years to build a very competitive car and 21 year to build a plane like airbus sounds pretty good actually. It’s actually not that long for a country. It does require a consistent policy encouraging domestic production, some level of protectionism.
- CobaltFire 3y ago
  I keep getting offered production engineer jobs and the pay does NOT scale with the job requirements. $125k in San Jose for semi manufacturing is the top of that job that I’ve seen, and those jobs aren’t getting filled.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    The irony is if they hired you they'd save tens of millions if they have any scale...
- VectorLock 3y ago
  >Here's a video from Beta, a wrench manufacturer in Italy. >It took Airbus 21 years before they made a good airplane. It took Tesla 15 years from start to significant production volume. Extrapolating from complexity it would only take a few months at worse to make a factory producting drop forged box end wrenches.
jakey_bakey 3y ago
This company needs a factory factory factory
- playingalong 3y ago
  ...Impl
anovikov 3y ago
Someone buying machine tools from Belarus and hoping it will work is just lol. Belarusians themselves are buying second- and third-hand German or Austrian equipment to make their stuff.
- cpursley 3y ago
  > The main branches of industry produce tractors and trucks, earth movers for use in construction and mining, [metal-cutting machine tools], agricultural equipment, motorcycles, chemicals, fertilizer, textiles, and consumer goods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Belarus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Belarus
nologic01 3y ago
Globalization as we have experienced it in the recent decades is a giant, short-termist arbitrage of labor and environmental conditions across different countries. It benefited colluding elites that struck the political agreements to make it happen. It also helped expand a more consumerist society by making a wider range of products accessible to the masses. But it was never a blueprint for sustainable, long term, globalization (which is in principle a good thing). The colluding elites turned on each other and became geopolitical adversaries (It turns out its not such a great idea to outsource both brain and muscle function to the tiger chasing you) The financially overextended consumers realized that ever increasing consumption is neither economically viable nor does it ensure a balanced and fulfilled life. And underneath it all a struggling biosphere is sending the increasingly not-so-subtle message that we are nearing a precipice. Its not clear what will be the successor "scheme". Malgovernance is the norm. Ideally you'd want to take the lessons of this failed large scale social engineering experiment on board. Ensure that economies are built stably, from the bottom up, with "middle class" being the bulk of the wealth distribution, a full range of capacities, adapted to the local environment etc. Its not clear though that there is anybody that feels the need to learn.
- golergka 3y ago
  The people it helped the most are not elites, but workers from third world countries.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    The economic benefit was given to them in an opportunistic and exploitative way: for as long as they are cheap and not too demanding, happy to live and work in degraded conditions etc. Probably less bad than being condemned in medieval living conditions but not an excuse for not thinking about genuinely better ways. The shape of humam economy (eg whether unequal, stratified, slave labor based or more or less egalitarian) is an entirely cultural choice.
    - golergka 3y ago
      Copenhagen theory of moral entanglement strikes again. A company that never gives workers from third world any jobs will never be blamed for their conditions, but another company that offers them salaries twice as high as they had before will be crucified for not offering the same rates as in the first world. Honestly, your stance is not only irrational, but even immoral.
bmitc 3y ago
It is surprising that there are those that feel manufacturing is just a factory which is just a building, when it is obviously so much more: knowledge, experience, know-how, talent, equipment, tooling, processes, etc. Manufacturing is a lost art and many other such areas are quickly becoming lost art as the people who know how to do things get older and retire. I find not many young people, and I'm not even that old, want to actually learn from older workers and would rather try and re-invent the wheel every time.
hasbot 3y ago
As an investor in robotics, I found this interesting: > Nick Pinchuk, CEO of Snap-on, another premium brand, said that in 2010 the company’s U.S. factories had a roughly 100-to-1 ratio of workers to robots. Today it’s 8 to 1, but the gradual transition helped the company identify the optimal roles for humans and machines, he said.
up2isomorphism 3y ago
Fire 99% of MBAs and this problem will be solved
jedharris 3y ago
The reasons in the story are mostly symptoms of financialization -- the people making the major decisions were only looking at financial metrics, not operational metrics. The operational failures were driven by financial constraints. In turn the financial metrics weren't driven by actual constraints (capital available) but by gameable financial goals like ROI. If the business had goals of being sustainable and reasonably profitable, and was run with strong operational guidance, it could have been successful.

198 points by ortusdux 3y ago

I feel like title is better phrased as "Shareholder value driven governance meant America’s largest tool company divested itself of the manufacturing competence to make wrenches in America".

fomine3 3y ago

My question from Asia: why not Mexico?

Opened-Eyes2 3y ago

[flagged]

ortusdux 3y ago

https://archive.is/RQev4 https://archive.is/RQev4

richardjam73 3y ago

The real issue is they don't want to pay their workers a proper wage. This is why they offshore or overly rely on automation.

gnat 3y ago
As the article says, premium wrenches are already made in America. Consumers pay for comparatively-expensive American labour in comparatively-expensive premium products. The article is about an attempt to onshore the wrenches for a low-price tools brand. Those wrenches are currently made in a labour-intensive process by low-cost Chinese labour. If they use USA labour they'll have to charge premium tool prices and consumers won't go for it. So they tried to automate. Yes, reducing the need for American labour, but not because they wanted to charge premium prices for the result. Interestingly, even the machines required to bring manufacturing back to America aren't made in America.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  The automation heavy factory that they couldn’t get to work is an old story.
- stefan_ 3y ago
  That's not interesting, it is the utterly predictable result of not making anything. Of course the only ones getting better at it and making machines for it are those doing the manufacturing.
  - dilyevsky 3y ago
    That’s not true in chip making for example
    - rasz 3y ago
      True in chip _making_, not yet true in chip design.
      - dilyevsky 3y ago
        Although not american, ASML is not chinese / taiwanese either where most of chips are made.
        rasz 3y ago
        ASML doesnt make chips.
        dilyevsky 3y ago
        I’m aware. I think you should reread original comment I was replying to
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  > by low-cost Chinese labour. Why are Chinese willing to do labor for low-cost while Americans are "unwilling/uninterested" in such labor?
renewiltord 3y ago
[flagged]
- morkalork 3y ago
  Wow and I thought calling someone an NPC was an insult!
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    The nth time someone's like "corporations dude", "capitalism dude", "they just want to see butts in seats dude". Christ, it's like some kind of pothead lamentation circle.
matrix_overload 3y ago
That's because businesses compete with each other. So if Corporation A suddenly decides to pay workers a "proper wage", and raises the product prices accordingly, Corporation B will just take their share. That's where the regulators are supposed to step in by setting the rules that both Corporation A and Corporation B are forced to follow, if they want to access the market. Except, they won't because the elites are perfectly fine with the status quo, and the regular people seem to care more about pronouns and plastic straws, than being able to afford a decent lifestyle.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I have no problem with and want regulators to regulate on worker safety, plant emissions, and truth/fairness in advertising. I don’t want regulators to force rules on lifetime warranty, sales methods, tolerances and material specifications and the like. The latter is where the tool truck brands are often winning for demanding users of tools.
  - matrix_overload 3y ago
    Sure, but it needs to be enforced for imports as well. Currently we have draconian emissions rules domestically, and a complete blind eye when it comes to any offshore production.
quietthrow 3y ago
That’s not the real issue. You are confusing a side effect with a root cause. The root is capitalism. Btw ,for the record, I am not against capitalism. I am very much for it. It’s just that this is the side effect of capitalism. A capitalistic environment begets competition. Competition begets survival. Survival begets perpetual need to contain costs. People for most business are a big part of its cost structure. Unless you are a monopoly (think google etc) there is little incentive to give your employees a fair wage. Labor market supply and demand play a part in this too but all things equal to survive in competition keeping cost as low as possible goes a very very long way. I think just like everything evolves capitalism needs to evolve too. “We need capitalism 2.0”Profit cannot be the sole focus. We need to shift to capitalism with a heavy bent on sustainability. Sustainable profits, sustainable for the community it serves in etc. we live in an evolved society where we curb our raw instincts for the general good. There used to be a time when all humans simply acted on their r as emotion and instincts and from that we evolved on. Same need to happen with how we organize and structure our economies and businesses.
- richardjam73 3y ago
  I don't think the actual cause is capitalism. I think that there is a business culture that seeks maximum profit at any cost. Seeking maximum profit is not actually required to run a business, you can do so with a lower profit and not go broke.
seabird 3y ago
You're going to be hard-pressed to convince somebody that they should go with Snap-on, Matco, Mac, Stahlwille, Hazet, KTC, Ko-ken, or any other company that is making superior tools by paying their workers better wages when doing so means they'll be paying multiple tens of thousands by the time it's all said and done. The easy (and wrong) answer to why this is happening is that capitalism ruins everything. The actual answer is that most people don't need or want tools and will not pay the premium for good new tools.
- bombcar 3y ago
  You sell the high end brands by selling "this tool will not fail you" - and you prove that by manufacturing it in a high-cost area (as we're seeing, you can't make low-cost tools in high-cost areas) among other things. China can make exceptionally high-quality tools, you just have to design it well and pay for it.
  - yibg 3y ago
    Thing is I don’t need a tool that won’t fail me. I need a wrench once every couple of years and not for anything difficult. I got a cheap set from Amazon. I know it’s low quality and not the most durable, but it’s sufficient for my use case. Even if I were to replace the set twice it’s still cheaper.
KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
You need to figure why you support onshoring. The elites support it because they can see the writing on the wall for what might happen in a future conflict, not out of the goodness of their hearts or for some fantasy about labor economics. The "made in America" nonsense is bullshit sold to unions and rural areas decimated by outsourcing for the sake of votes. The consent is manufactured by dangling a carrot that will never materialize. The jobs are going to Mexico, they are not coming back. The feds want corporations to onshore for purely strategic reasons, and all the subsidies are to make automation possible to bring the costs down. The workers were never the priority.
- spiralx 3y ago
  Brutal but true. Mexico will replace China as a manufacturing hub at some point in the next decade.
matchbok 3y ago
Simply incorrect. The market doesn't want that, you don't want. You, and most others, want a $99 drill. A $99 drill doesn't support your fantasy wages.
- silisili 3y ago
  You can get a Ryobi HP+ Brushless drill for $50. It's a fantastic unit for all but the heaviest users. You can't tell me those couldn't be made in the USA at a premium of $49 per unit. You could literally pay $50/hr, produce only one unit per hour, and still come out even. The outsourcing arguments are lazy and outdated. Companies screwed up outsourcing it all, and the US is unable to regain its foothold. Labor costs are negligible here, even if US were twice the price.

h2odragon 3y ago

Nice plug in the article, too. kinda "the few 'Made in USA' Craftsman(TM) socket sets on store shelves now are sure to be collector's items, go snap one up before the sell out! We did!"

medion 3y ago

It’s a long article lamenting that onshore manufacturing doesn’t work. But, maybe it’s just they weren’t good at it? Maybe their leadership was poor? Perhaps their technical automation solutions were poor? I refuse to believe that the only way to make things is on effectively slave labour.

DieBruderBauer 3y ago
The response is always: "Oh, well, we're not making enough profit to justify staying open." Are you serious? It's greed manifest at sociopathic levels.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  When employees quit to take a higher paying job elsewhere, do you feel the same way? They weren’t making enough to “justify staying open” at their old job, so they changed and we celebrate them for their action (as we should, IMO). When we use a coupon or shop on Black Friday, we’re being smart, frugal purchasers. When companies do the equivalent, what are they doing?
  - eschneider 3y ago
    Most companies frown on employees working multiple full time jobs, so yeah, gotta quit the existing job to take a new one. Companies can operate multiple lines of business.
    - teeray 3y ago
      Unless they’re hourly. Then sure, go work another shift elsewhere as long as you can keep your eyes open here. Wooooah, FTE and want to tend bar on the weekend? Forget it.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    We don't have to have the same rules for people as for companies. There's absolutely nothing preventing us from saying "If person does X, it's fine. If company does X, it's bad."

xiaodai 3y ago

Cos China?

bombcar 3y ago

And now Stanley Blackend ... Decker can explain why they can't do what Milwaukee can. https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-hand-tools-2023-update/ https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-hand-tools-2023-upda... https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-pliers-screwdrivers-pricing-preorders-2023/ https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-usa-made-pliers-screwdrivers-... (prices) I think this says more about how badly Craftsman has shat the bed and less about manufacturing in America.

api 3y ago
They may have outsourced even the business and management talent for manufacturing and become a mere brand that resells stuff built to spec by others. Shareholder value is maximized until everything is hollow and then it goes to zero.
- bombcar 3y ago
  This I feel is closer to the reality - craftsman has "sold the brand" so hard that they can't charge anything like a premium, and their quality is now south of Harbor Freight.
  - vl 3y ago
    In fact Harbor Freight has 4 levels for hand tools. Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pro Quinn Icon Icon is great, but also is very expensive.
    - dieselgate 3y ago
      It’s easy to shit on HF but some of their products are basically industry standard - like winches and floor jacks. It’s really odd to be honest because people will frequently mention buying something cheap off “Amazon or Ali express” and then scoff at HF. I’ve seen some HF products out perform SnapOn tools in YouTube reviews. Not everything is “good” but it’ll get the job done.
      - 3y ago

shuntress 3y ago

This is what happens when you optimize the wrong metric.

scop 3y ago

One of the things I appreciated about this article was the subcurrent of lack-of-knowledge. Ok, there was the pandemic, manufacturing problems, supply chain issues, etc. However it sounds like there was a chronic lack of people who had done this before. When you move manufacturing overseas, you’re not just eliminating jobs: you are eliminating knowledge.

tom_ 3y ago
If the foreigners can manage it, clearly there must be other ways of doing it, and they could be copied. The knowledge that has been permanently destroyed was not obviously vital.
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  We’ve been offshoring manufacturing for decades now. That’s decades of experience to be found.
  - tom_ 3y ago
    Wait, I thought the knowledge had been permanently destroyed? Forever lost, with no hope of ever figuring out whatever it was? Simply rediscovering what was previously known seems reasonably achievable!
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      You can't teach 20 years of experience in a year. The people we once had with 20 years of experience found other work.
      - breezeTrowel 3y ago
        Why not?
        steve1977 3y ago

exabrial 3y ago

What’s amazing is the breaking strength and precision of old Made in America Craftsman wrenches versus the new overseas ones. Plenty of test videos on YouTube. I’m not giving up my mia set anytime soon.

enraged_camel 3y ago
Interesting! Can you link a few?
pmorici 3y ago
Check out Wright Tool, still made in the USA at a not totally outrageous price relative to other Made in USA brands.

jeffbee 3y ago

As the article eventually points out, you can already buy made-in-America tools from this same company, under their "Proto" brand.

ftyers 3y ago

I'm curious about how well the stuff they bought works in Belarus. I remember reading a story a while ago how manufacturing was surprisingly high tech therebut can't find it now.

cpursley 3y ago
An interesting thing about Belarus is they largely kept a command and control style economy (while Russia and Ukraine were hollowed out by vultures and lost a good bit of industrial knowledge and capability, in comparison). I’m not supporting their system by any means, but Belarus is known for producing high quality products (tractors, food, etc).

insaneirish 3y ago

There's some parallel between steel tools and bike frames with regards to things moving to Taiwan. Both things like wrenches/ratchets/sockets and steel bike frames moved largely to Taiwan 20+ years ago. Guess what? Taiwan got really good at making both. So in the tool community, you have lots of comparisons drawn between the US and Taiwan and China, with the narrative that as far as Asian manufactured tools, the "good stuff" comes out of Taiwan, and the not-usually-as-good out of China. There's a similar narrative on bike frames. The interesting thing is that Taiwan didn't just get good at steel bike frames, but on the aluminum and carbon fiber successors as well. I would frankly rather Craftsman be a sustainable brand manufactured out of Taiwan with a warranty and continuity of product to back it, but unfortunately the collapse of Sears and the subsequent trading of the Craftsman label has made it more of a liability.

dreamcompiler 3y ago
This started in the 60s, when manufacturing started moving to Japan. "Made in Japan" was the mark of garbage (I inherited some of those old Japanese-made tools from my Dad. I only keep them for nostalgia reasons.) Then in the 80s Japan got very good at manufacturing. And they got expensive as a result. So cheap manufacturing moved to Taiwan, and "Made in Taiwan" became the mark of garbage. Now Taiwan has become a very good manufacturer, but it's expensive, so cheap manufacturing moved to China. And now high-end Japanese brands outsource their manufacturing to...China.
- robk 3y ago
  It was largely accelerated by the admission of China to the WTO under Clinton.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  In the 1870s, Britain found cheap, low-quality German imports were being mislabelled as British. "Made in Germany" also started as a mark of low quality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany
- cpursley 3y ago

shthed 3y ago

Is that "$90 million factory" number correct? Seems rather low, I'd guess that just the robots alone to run an automated factory of any real scale would cost an order of magnitude more than that.

thrwddd 3y ago

The main thing is if you don't move your production to China, you won't get access to the Chinese market. It's as unfair as big American internet companies having access to other countries. This destroyed local businesses

DaveExeter 3y ago

This just shows how much China is saving American consumers! Back when we were forced to buy Made in America tools, manufactures were able to get away with charging us as much as they wanted, and they were very greedy! Thanks to China, inflation adjusted tool prices have dropped by at least 75%. And Chinese quality is good enough for the Snap-On name! https://tiremeetsroad.com/2019/09/15/harbor-freight-daytona-dj3000-the-floor-jack-snap-on-absolutely-hates-for-this-reason/ https://tiremeetsroad.com/2019/09/15/harbor-freight-daytona-...

jaarse 3y ago

Having worked in the custom manufacturing machinery business a long time I would guess that they ironically cheaped out but purchasing all their equipment overseas. There are extremely knowledgeable machine builders in the USA and Canada (think rust belt) that have been building equipment like this since the 1950s (think automotive sway bars, coil springs, etc), but over the last decade you see a lot companies trying to purchase their equipment from former eastern block countries or China to save money. Nothing against Belarus, but I guarantee there are USA machine builders that could have got this up and running (for more money of course).

inglor_cz 3y ago
"Nothing against Belarus" Except that it is now a satellite country of Russia and the relations of the West with Russia are at the worst point in 40 years or so. Trying to detach from China in order to create a new failure point in Belarus does not seem very wise.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Animats 3y ago

Here's a video from Beta, a wrench manufacturer in Italy.[1] Think about what it would take to build a plant like that from a cold start. What you'd need to know. All the ways you could screw up. How much it would cost to recover from a bad decision. Notice what they automated, and what they didn't. Who wants to be a millwright? Or a production engineer? To build a factory, you need both. Once you've built the factory, you don't need most of them them any more. It's a job with high layoff potential. Top pay is maybe $125K. You need people who've built your kind of factory before. Here, they need people who've built mechanized hot forging shops. Since few of those are built in the US each year, there's no pool of such people. Stanley, the company, had forgotten how to build a plant like that. They relied on the equipment manufacturer, and perhaps some consultants. That didn't work out. It takes a long time to get a good factory going from a cold start. It took Airbus 21 years before they made a good airplane. It took Tesla 15 years from start to significant production volume. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDUFQ-e0EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDUFQ-e0EM

YeBanKo 3y ago
15 years to build a very competitive car and 21 year to build a plane like airbus sounds pretty good actually. It’s actually not that long for a country. It does require a consistent policy encouraging domestic production, some level of protectionism.
CobaltFire 3y ago
I keep getting offered production engineer jobs and the pay does NOT scale with the job requirements. $125k in San Jose for semi manufacturing is the top of that job that I’ve seen, and those jobs aren’t getting filled.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  The irony is if they hired you they'd save tens of millions if they have any scale...
VectorLock 3y ago
>Here's a video from Beta, a wrench manufacturer in Italy. >It took Airbus 21 years before they made a good airplane. It took Tesla 15 years from start to significant production volume. Extrapolating from complexity it would only take a few months at worse to make a factory producting drop forged box end wrenches.

jakey_bakey 3y ago

This company needs a factory factory factory

playingalong 3y ago
...Impl

anovikov 3y ago

Someone buying machine tools from Belarus and hoping it will work is just lol. Belarusians themselves are buying second- and third-hand German or Austrian equipment to make their stuff.

cpursley 3y ago
> The main branches of industry produce tractors and trucks, earth movers for use in construction and mining, [metal-cutting machine tools], agricultural equipment, motorcycles, chemicals, fertilizer, textiles, and consumer goods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Belarus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Belarus

nologic01 3y ago

Globalization as we have experienced it in the recent decades is a giant, short-termist arbitrage of labor and environmental conditions across different countries. It benefited colluding elites that struck the political agreements to make it happen. It also helped expand a more consumerist society by making a wider range of products accessible to the masses. But it was never a blueprint for sustainable, long term, globalization (which is in principle a good thing). The colluding elites turned on each other and became geopolitical adversaries (It turns out its not such a great idea to outsource both brain and muscle function to the tiger chasing you) The financially overextended consumers realized that ever increasing consumption is neither economically viable nor does it ensure a balanced and fulfilled life. And underneath it all a struggling biosphere is sending the increasingly not-so-subtle message that we are nearing a precipice. Its not clear what will be the successor "scheme". Malgovernance is the norm. Ideally you'd want to take the lessons of this failed large scale social engineering experiment on board. Ensure that economies are built stably, from the bottom up, with "middle class" being the bulk of the wealth distribution, a full range of capacities, adapted to the local environment etc. Its not clear though that there is anybody that feels the need to learn.

golergka 3y ago
The people it helped the most are not elites, but workers from third world countries.
- nologic01 3y ago
  The economic benefit was given to them in an opportunistic and exploitative way: for as long as they are cheap and not too demanding, happy to live and work in degraded conditions etc. Probably less bad than being condemned in medieval living conditions but not an excuse for not thinking about genuinely better ways. The shape of humam economy (eg whether unequal, stratified, slave labor based or more or less egalitarian) is an entirely cultural choice.
  - golergka 3y ago
    Copenhagen theory of moral entanglement strikes again. A company that never gives workers from third world any jobs will never be blamed for their conditions, but another company that offers them salaries twice as high as they had before will be crucified for not offering the same rates as in the first world. Honestly, your stance is not only irrational, but even immoral.

bmitc 3y ago

It is surprising that there are those that feel manufacturing is just a factory which is just a building, when it is obviously so much more: knowledge, experience, know-how, talent, equipment, tooling, processes, etc. Manufacturing is a lost art and many other such areas are quickly becoming lost art as the people who know how to do things get older and retire. I find not many young people, and I'm not even that old, want to actually learn from older workers and would rather try and re-invent the wheel every time.

hasbot 3y ago

As an investor in robotics, I found this interesting: > Nick Pinchuk, CEO of Snap-on, another premium brand, said that in 2010 the company’s U.S. factories had a roughly 100-to-1 ratio of workers to robots. Today it’s 8 to 1, but the gradual transition helped the company identify the optimal roles for humans and machines, he said.

up2isomorphism 3y ago

Fire 99% of MBAs and this problem will be solved

jedharris 3y ago

The reasons in the story are mostly symptoms of financialization -- the people making the major decisions were only looking at financial metrics, not operational metrics. The operational failures were driven by financial constraints. In turn the financial metrics weren't driven by actual constraints (capital available) but by gameable financial goals like ROI. If the business had goals of being sustainable and reasonably profitable, and was run with strong operational guidance, it could have been successful.