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When US companies offshored, they typically sent teams of subject matter experts to get the offshore operation up and running at something like the spec. These
by K0balt 3y ago
When US companies offshored, they typically sent teams of subject matter experts to get the offshore operation up and running at something like the spec. These were the best and most experienced from the US factory. Those guys retired a while ago now.
So now we build a shiny new factory, but are we getting the best and brightest from our now-competition to help us get it up and running? Of course not.
The expertise of offshoring is often a one way street, and once the people that knew are gone they are gone. It takes a few years to get a factory running well from scratch without the kind of experience and domain knowledge that can’t be obtained from education alone.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thumbuddy 3y agoDing ding ding
- K0balt 3y agoI think that people tend to underestimate the actual complexity of manufacturing. It’s hardly turnkey. Every process has its idiosyncratic interactions with other processes, whether it is variability in feedstocks, interactive variability in various product stages, getting the bugs worked out of a newly installed machine, buggy intersystem comms, structural vibration of the factory structure itself, process timing to deal with those vibration issues, etc etc etc etc. The overall system complexity of even a modest modern factory is orders of magnitude above say, 1940s style manufacturing which is what most people visualise when they think of a factory.