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Lenovo Computers, Soon To Be Made In America
- wmf 14y agoBTW, although IBM is based in the US the ThinkPad line was originally designed and manufactured in Japan before the sale to Lenovo.
- jmsduran 14y agoThe original design of the ThinkPad was said to resemble the shape of a Japanese lunchbox.
- agumonkey 14y agoEntirely ? I thought they had one lab there that worked with U.S based ones.
- kamechan 14y agoX1 carbon still designed in Japan, along with a couple of other models. http://blog.lenovo.com/design/developers-on-the-x1-carbon-industrial-design http://blog.lenovo.com/design/developers-on-the-x1-carbon-in...
- whichdan 14y agoI would love to see the resulting shitstorm from that sticker actually being on the laptop.
- sliverstorm 14y agoAre you saying people would have problems with any "Made in USA" sticker, or that one in particular (which is obviously a fanciful clipart made in MS Paint)
- whichdan 14y agoJust that one in particular. I think putting stickers on laptops is an atrocious practice, and one that huge would be hilariously awful.
- Cletus100020 14y agoI hate it when they put stickers on laptops.
- bduerst 14y agoFrom a business standpoint, what is the strategy here? What does North Carolina have over Mexico? How does this cater to the corporate "custom" PC market? I'm curious to see why the company is moving operations there.
- cydonian_monk 14y agoThough not an absolute requirement, the "Buy American Act" [1] gives preference to equipment that is made in this country and intended for government/military use. This could be a legal/marketing maneuver on Lenovo's part to get a larger share of government technology contracts. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_American_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_American_Act
- bduerst 14y agoAh, thank you - that makes perfect sense. I wish they would have covered this in the article. HP has a large portion of the government contracts market for laptops.
- eli 14y agoCurrently, if you want a custom configured Lenovo PC, you have to wait for it to be shipped from China. This increases the average time it takes to get the computer and introduces the risk of a customs problem holding up your shipment indefinitely.
- bduerst 14y agoI didn't think that larger exporting companies had problems with customs in China. Even so, wouldn't it be better to take advantage of your infrastructure and distribution already existing in Mexico?
- eli 14y agoI know nothing about logistics, but I've ordered a fair amount of hardware from Lenovo and one of my biggest complaints is the erratic shipping times.
- Zak 14y agoMore configurability? Great. When can I order one with a screen that isn't some low-res 16:9 TN monstrosity?
- muhfuhkuh 14y agoWhen people stop buying cheap bric-a-brac with just-enough-for-youtube-480p integrated graphics from HP and Dell for 499.
- qdog 14y agoLast time I bought the cheapest dell laptop with a discrete card it was maybe $600, now it appears to be $719. That's only on the 'small business' more brick-like ones, though. The 'consumer' ones don't even offer discrete, but hey you can get Skull Candy[TM] speakers for an up charge! Even the cheapest comes with a dual core processor, though, so you can share your memory among 2 cores and an integrated graphics engine. Progress it ain't.
- dman 14y agoJoe Q Public had been subsidizing performance for quite some time. I think that era is ending because most of Joe's use cases can now be met with a ~1.5 Ghz arm tablet. I think the high end of the market is going to become more expensive unless a use case emerges where everyone wants that performance. Intels been hard at work trying to invent such a use case, but so far theres been little to show for it. Making games more realistic is one reasonable use case but those efforts have recently been stymied by content creation costs.
- gareim 14y agoIf people shopped smarter, they could find laptops with discrete graphics for significantly cheaper. After the deal I found, I'm paying about $420 for a system that comes with an i5 Ivy Bridge, 6gb RAM, NVidia 630M... And it came with a free bookbag to boot.
- streptomycin 14y agoIntegrated graphics aren't bad these days.
- mediaman 14y agoLenovo is probably doing this for a few reasons: * The corporate market often prioritizes speed and ease of doing business over the absolute rock-bottom cost. Local manufacturing offers advantages due to a much shortened supply chain. * The gap between an hourly worker's wages in the US versus China is shrinking, due to Chinese labor inflation and US collar wage stagnation. * The hours of labor per assembled unit is declining due to advances in automation, rendering regional labor variances less important. Labor is becoming less of an issue while local manufacturing continues to have major supply chain cost benefits, so Lenovo considers that the scales have tipped enough to justify a US presence for the market segment that values that responsiveness the most.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoGiven that most components the computer will be made from are going to be made in China, wouldn't the supply chain cost benefits favor final assembly in China?
- bduerst 14y agoI'd be more worried about the "Custom" PC aspect on your supply chain. Because of the variability in demand, you are either going to expend resources on keeping a large inventory, or you are going to be ordering in smaller batches from suppliers who are a week to two weeks away.
- zubiaur 14y agoYes, higher oil prices are starting to affect profit margins, the cost of shipping a 40 foot container has tripled since the 2000s. Shipping finished products is getting more expensive. Lead times are also very important, it takes about a month to get something from china to the US. This means that you need higher inventory levels in order to be able satisfy the demand without considerable shortages. When you take into account the variety of configurations available its very hard not to get low rotation items on your inventory. Specially if you are expected to always have stock and when your inventory levels have to consider that it takes a month to get an item to the US. Shifting assembly to the US reduces the number of SKUs imported and allows an easier control over inventory levels and supply chain costs.
- xcirrian 14y agoI hardly think this is a big deal. The cost for assembly is low anyway. Even though the laptop might be assembled in the US, the major parts of a laptop (chip, case, screen) are still made in Asia.
- pasbesoin 14y agoAssembly for custom orders. Hardly a domestic industry, although I speculate it may also help in some political/contract situations.
- mangler 14y agoIn all fairness, the US corporations probably owe more than a little to Mexico. On purely ethical grounds, I'd rather buy an IBM machine built in Mexico than in the US. It's that little personal satisfaction.... But it DOES make a difference if you're going to use it for the next year or two...
- SkyMarshal 14y agoOnly 8 years after the sale of Thinkpad to Lenovo. Interesting how fast the economic dynamics can change.
- ThomPete 14y agoIt's the jobless recovery
- witoldc 14y agoThis is going to be huge. No more waiting 4 weeks to get a computer/laptop I actually want.
- jarek 14y agoIf you're a big purchaser ordering a thousand of them, anyway...