8 ms·

Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

202 points by iamdann 14y ago

agumonkey 14y ago
So happy they finally found a local factory, and one of great technical and "entrepreneurial" quality
freehunter 14y ago
Hopefully this brings more control over the production by the RPi team. If something is going wrong, it's a lot easier to take a trip down the M4 (or the train) than it is to fly to China and sort things out.
- robotmay 14y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure of that with the currently absurd amount of roadworks on the M4 ;)
  - kokey 14y ago
    That's not a problem, if you drive on it at 2am.
    - robotmay 14y ago
      It was last week; I had to go 20 minutes through Bristol to go from the M5 to the M4 as they had closed the entire junction :(
      - freehunter 14y ago
        Despite my previous attempts to moonlight as a Brit, I'm an American. As such, I find the stereotypical British aversion to driving long distances amusing. I know I would be upset at driving 20 minutes out of the way if my journey was shorter than an hour, but I (and many other Americans) frequently drive hundreds of miles in one journey every week/month/multiple times per year. I moderated a subreddit once upon a time with two Brits who lived about an hour apart. I mentioned to them that I had just attended a meeting with a company that was directly in between their towns, and said "I was just in your neighborhood". They vehemently denied that their neighborhood stretched for a half-hour journey. Meanwhile in America, our stomping grounds can sometimes cover a hundred miles in each direction. Sorry for going off-topic >_> As an American I don't get a chance to talk to foreigners often.
        opminion 14y ago
        More fun than representative or informative: max mobility demand for unemployment-related benefits in various countries (UK, US, Germany: 1.5-2h, Spain: 30Km, Turkey:...). http://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/facts/DICE/Labour-Market-and-Migration/Labour-Market/Unemployment-Benefit-Schemes/ECUB-dem-geo-mob/fileBinary/ECUB-dem-geo-mob.pdf http://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/facts/DICE/Labour-Market-...
        JonnieCache 14y ago
        I have always enjoyed the following phrase: To an american, a hundred years is a long time. To a brit, a hundred miles is a long way. It's definitely true, like you say, and also its faux-profundity makes me laugh.
        robotmay 14y ago
        I usually try to justify our whining about driving comparatively short distances by pointing out that our roads are rarely straight and normally badly maintained :D And you're right about the neighborhood; I'd probably not consider mine to stretch for more than 5 miles from where I live. It's on topic enough for me!
        kokey 14y ago
        I'm originally from South Africa, and I share your amusement with the British fear of driving long distances. That said, the drive I'm doing tonight, is only 73 miles and without traffic will take close to two hours. The roads and the trains here are simply not designed to travel a decent distance in a short period of time. That said, people still don't even do the two hour drive to the next town to go visit places on the weekend, but part of that is because one accident on the road can turn the trip into a 3-4 hour trip easily on a Saturday. Oh, and the fuel price also has to be considered.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Being infatuated with Top Gear, I have to imagine your name means you are an AI that James May built to do the boring things humans do like spend time online while he's away in the garage or doing another special on planes. Therefore, with you being an extension of Mr May, I have to say I agree with your proposal to charge councils by the minute for not having roadworks done properly. Imagine how well funded the Raspberry Pi Foundation would be with just one trip from Cambridgeshire to Wales! http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-pricing-2007-04-01 http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-pricing-2...
    - robotmay 14y ago
      Haha, I do share the same surname & hair style so you're not too far off!
simonbarker87 14y ago
This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great. We priced our product for uk and china and china was infact more expensive because of the way they price plastics. Sometimes UK is best
- lgeek 14y ago
  I think at some point they've said that there are some import taxes for components but none for assembled devices.
- oliwarner 14y ago
  I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often more money than it would be to have them fab the whole thing in the first place. I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world keeps paying China to make everything they will end up owning us all. On paper they probably already do.
  - simonbarker87 14y ago
    It's very true that if the components are made in china then it is easier to keep your supply chain reliable if you assemble next door and that's a risk of bring assembly back to uk but some other risks (which can be of greater concern) are reduced by shipping components to the uk and then assembling. It all depends what your product uses, there's no longer a one size fits all solution that there seemed to be 10 years ago of "just make it there and ship it back"
  - andrewcooke 14y ago
    "bleem"?
rwmj 14y ago
Does anyone know where BBC Micros were manufactured? Sinclair's ZX machines (and C5s) were made in Dundee.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  In the UK initially but they had to scale out to Hong Kong for the international market (via Wong Electronics) as they were a little bit more successful than they expected. Nice to see it happening the other way round.
- mappingbabel0 14y ago
  Eben told me BBC Micros were manufactured in Wales a lot at first.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  I tracked down this snippet which says who built it: "A feature it shares with the BBC is that it is an all-British product; designed by Acorn, it is being built by ICL and Cleartone with custom-built chips by Ferranti." From this article: http://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/cr-BBCMicro-CToday.html http://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/cr-BBCMicro-CToday.ht... This from The Reg has detail on production and the race to win the place as BBC computer partner - http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th_anniversary/page3.html http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th.... This guy, who appears to be an authority, mentions the above and AB Electronics, see http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCMicros.html http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCMicros.html. He details info on the companies in the Acorn ecosystem, http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Companies.html http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Companies.html, but appears to miss out the suppliers ... http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_IndiaTakesOnBeebAssembly.pdf http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_IndiaTakes... gives detail of the Indian manufacture by Semiconductor Complex Ltd [under license from the American Rockwell Corp] and Mexican production by Harry Mazal (a company). It notes that the ULA will continue to be made by Acorn themselves (presumably in the UK). >In both China and India, the consumer markets are comparatively small, but, as the Indian deal shows, the educational and industrial sectors are massive. And both countries are crying out for western technology // Talk about turn-around. -- Edit: http://yourcomputeronline.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bbcs-proton-project-and-the-nuclear-family/ http://yourcomputeronline.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bbcs-prot... mentions: >Acorn will probably subcontract assembly to Cleartone in Abercarn; the Department of Industry’s £60,000 contribution meant that assembly would have to be in Britain. It will be marketed under licence from a box number, by mail-order. // Looking back http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCAI2.html http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCAI2.html shows an Abercarn manufactured issue 2.
mappingbabel0 14y ago
I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be competitive." ( http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-manufacturing-comes-home-as-production-shifts-to-uk-7000003839/ http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-manufacturing-comes-home-a... ) Are there similar moves underway in the US?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  Yes, it's actually a White House talking point this week: "Since February 2010, the U.S. manufacturing sector has added roughly 500,000 jobs, the fastest pace of job growth in the sector since 1995".
  - kokey 14y ago
    I think there has been a general recognition that rebuilding local supply chain in manufacturing is essential. Especially in the industries where this is still possible. Cheap labour only helps if two years of labour is cheaper than a machine that can do the work. The machines get cheaper and labour gets more expensive. It obviously doesn't mean a lot of the low skilled jobs are ever going to return to the countries they have left, but at least it creates opportunity for an ecosystem of local suppliers and innovation.
  - adestefan 14y ago
    There's a difference in measuring manufacturing by the number of jobs, the number of widgets created, or the value of the widgets created. The value of the widgets created is at the highest point it's ever been in the US.
- joshuahedlund 14y ago
  Yes, Google "reshoring" for a number of news articles and opinion pieces about how it's happening to some degree and how big of a deal it may or may not be.
AUmrysh 14y ago
Hopefully this will facilitate better placement and attachment of the c6 capacitor.
bane 14y ago
With all of the manufacturing issues the RPi team has had, I can't help but think what a tremendous PIA building something reasonably sophisticated is. Kudos to the team for taking on such a difficult and worthwhile project and putting up with all of the issues. Even if the RPi in and of itself isn't successful, it's definitely brought these kinds of small, cheap simply computers to the forefront of many minds and that's a good thing.
mmahemoff 14y ago
With robotics and 3D printing, we'll probably see a lot more on-shoring of manufacturing soon.
Zenst 14y ago
Fantastic news and glad they have been on the case about this since day one. Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are: 1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made more aware of this local resource. 2) TAX on a made product compared to the bits to assemble said product. From the current standing it is more cost effective to make products outside the UK as apposed to buying in those parts seperately and in bulk and making the product localy TAX wise, this is again another area the UK goverment has to address. But the reality of bring some types of manufacturing back localy, even if driven by some of the lesser reasons makes sence. This all said I would love for a Pi with more ram and also love a couple of network ports, make a lovely firewall unit then without messing with USB network adaptors. I'd also like USB3. So with that in mind maybe there is scope for a model C and D, idealy a model you can upgrade a little bit more in those respective area's. But if I had to pick anything overall it would be a little bit more ram. But there is nothing stopping me making my own board and modifications (skills pending), like most out there probably thinking about. Open Hardware schematics on github and group effort - anybody aware of any plans or projects along those lines?
- option_greek 14y ago
  2) - Would not be such a good idea. Remember that a good chunk of these get exported to outside. Raising a protectionist barrier will just encourage other countries to do the same.
  - michaelt 14y ago
    The current situation, according to [1], is that there is a higher import tax on components than on assembled boards. This is, as I understand it, because there's no import duty on components that are part of information technology products such as computers[2] - but components which are not yet part of such a product are subject to import duty. To fix this we don't need to raise a protectionist import duty for IT products - we can just drop the import duty on electronic components. [1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509 [2] http://www.charleswalker.org/import-duties http://www.charleswalker.org/import-duties
toyg 14y ago
> we had been unable to find a British manufacturer [...] who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us. I think that sums up current European attitudes to manufacturing and capitalism all too well, sadly. Note how they eventually ended up with a Welsh factory... owned and run by Sony. And what does a supposedly business-friendly government do? Worry about building houses. Sigh.
- simonbarker87 14y ago
  Well, our ageing housing stock, escalating house prices and lack of urban social mobility does warrant focus on housing, the knock on effects for the construction industry also show this as being a sensible economic policy as well as solving an increasing socioeconomic problem. I'm not sure how using a Welsh factory shows how this government is anti capitalist or anti manufacturing - given that Wales is in the UK and it is the UK government I don't think it matters where it is in the country. The factory is probably based there as a result of the government incentives about a decade to fifteen years ago which were introduced to get large corporations to base operations in areas of Wales who had been relient on the mines and who, at that time, had spiralling unemployment. Alos, The EU isn't anti manufacturing. Everyone is looking to the German model (high value manufacturing) as they are the only one bucking the downward trend and actually growing. The UK itself still has a very healthy manufacturing sector - I forget the exact figure but it makes up a double digit percentage of our GDP so it is not insignificant at all. I agree more could be done to improve the position of manufacturing but to look at the Chinese model and say "hey, we should have all the back here" is not the answer. Electronics, chemicals and high end goods we should have but let china make the Barbie Dolls and cheap tat, that's not what we should be aspiring to.
  - toyg 14y ago
    My point was that it's not a British factory: it's a Sony-owned plant that happens to be in the UK at this point in time. Sony is a Japanese-American corporation; all this chest-beating is quite unwarranted. The point about capitalism is that "Euro" capitalists don't want to face any risk, as this story proves: British money didn't want to back the Pi when it was unproven, and even now they could only find Japanese-American money. I live in the North-West of England. I'm surrounded by modern (and mostly empty) high-rise developments built in the last 15 years, alternating with cheap new low-rise which have been rebuilt from scratch on the ashes of failed towns, and they're slowly decaying again, because the problem is that you can't maintain a nice house without a nice job, and construction jobs are not even for local people these days. the sort of jobs that provide social mobility are in services (as we all know on HN), in high-quality manufacturing, and in the public sector; and it's clear this government has no idea how to help those sectors.
drone 14y ago
I don't understand this statement at all: "Last year, when nobody had heard of the Raspberry Pi, we had been unable to find a British manufacturer whose prices per unit (especially at a point where we were thinking of sales in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands you’re seeing now) would work for us, and who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us." Who wouldn't take one project because they were afraid you wouldn't come back for more? Is business so hopping over there that people scoff at a $1M deal because you may not come back later for a $5M deal? Or, were you actually asking them to reserve production, but that you might cancel before it started?
- jcollins1991 14y ago
  The key point I think is line space. Getting set up for production is quite a bit of work, and given that their new contract is for 30,000/month, the manufacturers clearly didn't want to set up an entire production line if they may only get a couple of months of usage out of it (since the original order would've been only in the tens of thousands).
  - drone 14y ago
    That is the key thing I question and makes me wonder about EMS in the UK. There are literally dozens of vendors who would kill for that job here in the States - even without any guarantee of repeat order. There just must not be very many there in the UK. (I do understand some of what it takes to setup and run a manufacturing line, I work with several EMSes both in the US and China and run a [smaller scale] electronics manufacturer.) Edit: Before my comment is taken the wrong way, what I am wondering is if the UK has much capacity for mid-scale EMS/CEM, or if the industry there has been largely tailored towards the very big players. But, I'm pretty sure I misread the statement, namely that they meant that the only places willing to take the jobs were charging too much, rather than that no one wanted the job because it was too small.
    - ippisl 14y ago
      drone, does 30 workers needed for 30,000 units a month for this makes sense ? it seems pretty high for an automated process.
bitwize 14y ago
Now I'm imagining Maurice Moss examining his frotzed Raspberry Pi board, finding the "Made in Great Britain" badge, and shaking his head in resignation.
- krzyk 14y ago
  Same for Dr Von Braun :)
jilt 14y ago
Great news! However, it would be even better if everything were made in the UK. Would be nice if the US could follow suit. Unfortunately it usually isn't good for business. But I don't believe that the government should interfere with free trade to promote such things.
nicholassmith 14y ago
The biggest thing to take away from this isn't just they get to say made in Britain but that they've created an additional 30 jobs. Not only are they making a difference in encouraging people to learn from the hardware but they're also now creating another positive effect on society through job creation. Not bad for a small, charitable business.
koushikn 14y ago
Since the dawn of globalization and the post-Cold war era, a number of countries are getting slot marked into particular sectors like: China for manufacturing, US for design, software, German auto mobile, India for outsourced services etc. But to have a thriving and healthy society in a country, the variety is important so that people can pursue different interests and are not forced to migrate because there is no high-quality work in that area in that country. Only way to do this is to protect the domestic market from foreign investment and give some time for high quality local players to grow. Then open for competition. But if a second world government does it, it is blamed for not allowing reforms and accused of denying progress to its citizens So now another way is opening up. So it is good for China too if such things happen. If a bunch of high quality companies open up in stuff that UK is traditionally known for (financial services?) then the balance will be stuck. I hope financial institutions like IMF, World Bank take such things into count and come up with measures to increase variety in every country. It will make life a lot better for a lot of people.

202 points by iamdann 14y ago

So happy they finally found a local factory, and one of great technical and "entrepreneurial" quality

Hopefully this brings more control over the production by the RPi team. If something is going wrong, it's a lot easier to take a trip down the M4 (or the train) than it is to fly to China and sort things out.

robotmay 14y ago
I wouldn't be so sure of that with the currently absurd amount of roadworks on the M4 ;)
- kokey 14y ago
  That's not a problem, if you drive on it at 2am.
  - robotmay 14y ago
    It was last week; I had to go 20 minutes through Bristol to go from the M5 to the M4 as they had closed the entire junction :(
    - freehunter 14y ago
      Despite my previous attempts to moonlight as a Brit, I'm an American. As such, I find the stereotypical British aversion to driving long distances amusing. I know I would be upset at driving 20 minutes out of the way if my journey was shorter than an hour, but I (and many other Americans) frequently drive hundreds of miles in one journey every week/month/multiple times per year. I moderated a subreddit once upon a time with two Brits who lived about an hour apart. I mentioned to them that I had just attended a meeting with a company that was directly in between their towns, and said "I was just in your neighborhood". They vehemently denied that their neighborhood stretched for a half-hour journey. Meanwhile in America, our stomping grounds can sometimes cover a hundred miles in each direction. Sorry for going off-topic >_> As an American I don't get a chance to talk to foreigners often.
      - opminion 14y ago
        More fun than representative or informative: max mobility demand for unemployment-related benefits in various countries (UK, US, Germany: 1.5-2h, Spain: 30Km, Turkey:...). http://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/facts/DICE/Labour-Market-and-Migration/Labour-Market/Unemployment-Benefit-Schemes/ECUB-dem-geo-mob/fileBinary/ECUB-dem-geo-mob.pdf http://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/facts/DICE/Labour-Market-...
      - JonnieCache 14y ago
        I have always enjoyed the following phrase: To an american, a hundred years is a long time. To a brit, a hundred miles is a long way. It's definitely true, like you say, and also its faux-profundity makes me laugh.
      - robotmay 14y ago
        I usually try to justify our whining about driving comparatively short distances by pointing out that our roads are rarely straight and normally badly maintained :D And you're right about the neighborhood; I'd probably not consider mine to stretch for more than 5 miles from where I live. It's on topic enough for me!
      - kokey 14y ago
        I'm originally from South Africa, and I share your amusement with the British fear of driving long distances. That said, the drive I'm doing tonight, is only 73 miles and without traffic will take close to two hours. The roads and the trains here are simply not designed to travel a decent distance in a short period of time. That said, people still don't even do the two hour drive to the next town to go visit places on the weekend, but part of that is because one accident on the road can turn the trip into a 3-4 hour trip easily on a Saturday. Oh, and the fuel price also has to be considered.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Being infatuated with Top Gear, I have to imagine your name means you are an AI that James May built to do the boring things humans do like spend time online while he's away in the garage or doing another special on planes. Therefore, with you being an extension of Mr May, I have to say I agree with your proposal to charge councils by the minute for not having roadworks done properly. Imagine how well funded the Raspberry Pi Foundation would be with just one trip from Cambridgeshire to Wales! http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-pricing-2007-04-01 http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-pricing-2...
  - robotmay 14y ago
    Haha, I do share the same surname & hair style so you're not too far off!

simonbarker87 14y ago

This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great. We priced our product for uk and china and china was infact more expensive because of the way they price plastics. Sometimes UK is best

lgeek 14y ago
I think at some point they've said that there are some import taxes for components but none for assembled devices.
oliwarner 14y ago
I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often more money than it would be to have them fab the whole thing in the first place. I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world keeps paying China to make everything they will end up owning us all. On paper they probably already do.
- simonbarker87 14y ago
  It's very true that if the components are made in china then it is easier to keep your supply chain reliable if you assemble next door and that's a risk of bring assembly back to uk but some other risks (which can be of greater concern) are reduced by shipping components to the uk and then assembling. It all depends what your product uses, there's no longer a one size fits all solution that there seemed to be 10 years ago of "just make it there and ship it back"
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  "bleem"?

rwmj 14y ago

Does anyone know where BBC Micros were manufactured? Sinclair's ZX machines (and C5s) were made in Dundee.

eckyptang 14y ago
In the UK initially but they had to scale out to Hong Kong for the international market (via Wong Electronics) as they were a little bit more successful than they expected. Nice to see it happening the other way round.
mappingbabel0 14y ago
Eben told me BBC Micros were manufactured in Wales a lot at first.
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
I tracked down this snippet which says who built it: "A feature it shares with the BBC is that it is an all-British product; designed by Acorn, it is being built by ICL and Cleartone with custom-built chips by Ferranti." From this article: http://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/cr-BBCMicro-CToday.html http://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/cr-BBCMicro-CToday.ht... This from The Reg has detail on production and the race to win the place as BBC computer partner - http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th_anniversary/page3.html http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th.... This guy, who appears to be an authority, mentions the above and AB Electronics, see http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCMicros.html http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCMicros.html. He details info on the companies in the Acorn ecosystem, http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Companies.html http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Companies.html, but appears to miss out the suppliers ... http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_IndiaTakesOnBeebAssembly.pdf http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_IndiaTakes... gives detail of the Indian manufacture by Semiconductor Complex Ltd [under license from the American Rockwell Corp] and Mexican production by Harry Mazal (a company). It notes that the ULA will continue to be made by Acorn themselves (presumably in the UK). >In both China and India, the consumer markets are comparatively small, but, as the Indian deal shows, the educational and industrial sectors are massive. And both countries are crying out for western technology // Talk about turn-around. -- Edit: http://yourcomputeronline.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bbcs-proton-project-and-the-nuclear-family/ http://yourcomputeronline.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bbcs-prot... mentions: >Acorn will probably subcontract assembly to Cleartone in Abercarn; the Department of Industry’s £60,000 contribution meant that assembly would have to be in Britain. It will be marketed under licence from a box number, by mail-order. // Looking back http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCAI2.html http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCAI2.html shows an Abercarn manufactured issue 2.

mappingbabel0 14y ago

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be competitive." ( http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-manufacturing-comes-home-as-production-shifts-to-uk-7000003839/ http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-manufacturing-comes-home-a... ) Are there similar moves underway in the US?

dangrossman 14y ago
Yes, it's actually a White House talking point this week: "Since February 2010, the U.S. manufacturing sector has added roughly 500,000 jobs, the fastest pace of job growth in the sector since 1995".
- kokey 14y ago
  I think there has been a general recognition that rebuilding local supply chain in manufacturing is essential. Especially in the industries where this is still possible. Cheap labour only helps if two years of labour is cheaper than a machine that can do the work. The machines get cheaper and labour gets more expensive. It obviously doesn't mean a lot of the low skilled jobs are ever going to return to the countries they have left, but at least it creates opportunity for an ecosystem of local suppliers and innovation.
- adestefan 14y ago
  There's a difference in measuring manufacturing by the number of jobs, the number of widgets created, or the value of the widgets created. The value of the widgets created is at the highest point it's ever been in the US.
joshuahedlund 14y ago
Yes, Google "reshoring" for a number of news articles and opinion pieces about how it's happening to some degree and how big of a deal it may or may not be.

AUmrysh 14y ago

Hopefully this will facilitate better placement and attachment of the c6 capacitor.

bane 14y ago

With all of the manufacturing issues the RPi team has had, I can't help but think what a tremendous PIA building something reasonably sophisticated is. Kudos to the team for taking on such a difficult and worthwhile project and putting up with all of the issues. Even if the RPi in and of itself isn't successful, it's definitely brought these kinds of small, cheap simply computers to the forefront of many minds and that's a good thing.

mmahemoff 14y ago

With robotics and 3D printing, we'll probably see a lot more on-shoring of manufacturing soon.

Zenst 14y ago

Fantastic news and glad they have been on the case about this since day one. Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are: 1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made more aware of this local resource. 2) TAX on a made product compared to the bits to assemble said product. From the current standing it is more cost effective to make products outside the UK as apposed to buying in those parts seperately and in bulk and making the product localy TAX wise, this is again another area the UK goverment has to address. But the reality of bring some types of manufacturing back localy, even if driven by some of the lesser reasons makes sence. This all said I would love for a Pi with more ram and also love a couple of network ports, make a lovely firewall unit then without messing with USB network adaptors. I'd also like USB3. So with that in mind maybe there is scope for a model C and D, idealy a model you can upgrade a little bit more in those respective area's. But if I had to pick anything overall it would be a little bit more ram. But there is nothing stopping me making my own board and modifications (skills pending), like most out there probably thinking about. Open Hardware schematics on github and group effort - anybody aware of any plans or projects along those lines?

option_greek 14y ago
2) - Would not be such a good idea. Remember that a good chunk of these get exported to outside. Raising a protectionist barrier will just encourage other countries to do the same.
- michaelt 14y ago
  The current situation, according to [1], is that there is a higher import tax on components than on assembled boards. This is, as I understand it, because there's no import duty on components that are part of information technology products such as computers[2] - but components which are not yet part of such a product are subject to import duty. To fix this we don't need to raise a protectionist import duty for IT products - we can just drop the import duty on electronic components. [1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509 [2] http://www.charleswalker.org/import-duties http://www.charleswalker.org/import-duties

toyg 14y ago

> we had been unable to find a British manufacturer [...] who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us. I think that sums up current European attitudes to manufacturing and capitalism all too well, sadly. Note how they eventually ended up with a Welsh factory... owned and run by Sony. And what does a supposedly business-friendly government do? Worry about building houses. Sigh.

simonbarker87 14y ago
Well, our ageing housing stock, escalating house prices and lack of urban social mobility does warrant focus on housing, the knock on effects for the construction industry also show this as being a sensible economic policy as well as solving an increasing socioeconomic problem. I'm not sure how using a Welsh factory shows how this government is anti capitalist or anti manufacturing - given that Wales is in the UK and it is the UK government I don't think it matters where it is in the country. The factory is probably based there as a result of the government incentives about a decade to fifteen years ago which were introduced to get large corporations to base operations in areas of Wales who had been relient on the mines and who, at that time, had spiralling unemployment. Alos, The EU isn't anti manufacturing. Everyone is looking to the German model (high value manufacturing) as they are the only one bucking the downward trend and actually growing. The UK itself still has a very healthy manufacturing sector - I forget the exact figure but it makes up a double digit percentage of our GDP so it is not insignificant at all. I agree more could be done to improve the position of manufacturing but to look at the Chinese model and say "hey, we should have all the back here" is not the answer. Electronics, chemicals and high end goods we should have but let china make the Barbie Dolls and cheap tat, that's not what we should be aspiring to.
- toyg 14y ago
  My point was that it's not a British factory: it's a Sony-owned plant that happens to be in the UK at this point in time. Sony is a Japanese-American corporation; all this chest-beating is quite unwarranted. The point about capitalism is that "Euro" capitalists don't want to face any risk, as this story proves: British money didn't want to back the Pi when it was unproven, and even now they could only find Japanese-American money. I live in the North-West of England. I'm surrounded by modern (and mostly empty) high-rise developments built in the last 15 years, alternating with cheap new low-rise which have been rebuilt from scratch on the ashes of failed towns, and they're slowly decaying again, because the problem is that you can't maintain a nice house without a nice job, and construction jobs are not even for local people these days. the sort of jobs that provide social mobility are in services (as we all know on HN), in high-quality manufacturing, and in the public sector; and it's clear this government has no idea how to help those sectors.

drone 14y ago

I don't understand this statement at all: "Last year, when nobody had heard of the Raspberry Pi, we had been unable to find a British manufacturer whose prices per unit (especially at a point where we were thinking of sales in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands you’re seeing now) would work for us, and who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us." Who wouldn't take one project because they were afraid you wouldn't come back for more? Is business so hopping over there that people scoff at a $1M deal because you may not come back later for a $5M deal? Or, were you actually asking them to reserve production, but that you might cancel before it started?

jcollins1991 14y ago
The key point I think is line space. Getting set up for production is quite a bit of work, and given that their new contract is for 30,000/month, the manufacturers clearly didn't want to set up an entire production line if they may only get a couple of months of usage out of it (since the original order would've been only in the tens of thousands).
- drone 14y ago
  That is the key thing I question and makes me wonder about EMS in the UK. There are literally dozens of vendors who would kill for that job here in the States - even without any guarantee of repeat order. There just must not be very many there in the UK. (I do understand some of what it takes to setup and run a manufacturing line, I work with several EMSes both in the US and China and run a [smaller scale] electronics manufacturer.) Edit: Before my comment is taken the wrong way, what I am wondering is if the UK has much capacity for mid-scale EMS/CEM, or if the industry there has been largely tailored towards the very big players. But, I'm pretty sure I misread the statement, namely that they meant that the only places willing to take the jobs were charging too much, rather than that no one wanted the job because it was too small.
  - ippisl 14y ago
    drone, does 30 workers needed for 30,000 units a month for this makes sense ? it seems pretty high for an automated process.

bitwize 14y ago

Now I'm imagining Maurice Moss examining his frotzed Raspberry Pi board, finding the "Made in Great Britain" badge, and shaking his head in resignation.

krzyk 14y ago
Same for Dr Von Braun :)

jilt 14y ago

Great news! However, it would be even better if everything were made in the UK. Would be nice if the US could follow suit. Unfortunately it usually isn't good for business. But I don't believe that the government should interfere with free trade to promote such things.

nicholassmith 14y ago

The biggest thing to take away from this isn't just they get to say made in Britain but that they've created an additional 30 jobs. Not only are they making a difference in encouraging people to learn from the hardware but they're also now creating another positive effect on society through job creation. Not bad for a small, charitable business.

koushikn 14y ago

Since the dawn of globalization and the post-Cold war era, a number of countries are getting slot marked into particular sectors like: China for manufacturing, US for design, software, German auto mobile, India for outsourced services etc. But to have a thriving and healthy society in a country, the variety is important so that people can pursue different interests and are not forced to migrate because there is no high-quality work in that area in that country. Only way to do this is to protect the domestic market from foreign investment and give some time for high quality local players to grow. Then open for competition. But if a second world government does it, it is blamed for not allowing reforms and accused of denying progress to its citizens So now another way is opening up. So it is good for China too if such things happen. If a bunch of high quality companies open up in stuff that UK is traditionally known for (financial services?) then the balance will be stuck. I hope financial institutions like IMF, World Bank take such things into count and come up with measures to increase variety in every country. It will make life a lot better for a lot of people.