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Tim Cook confirms one line of Macs will be exclusively US-manufactured in 2013
- sephlietz 14y agoDifferent article, same topic, over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881567
- sami36 14y agoThe biggest hope for US manufacturing repatriation is robotics. Unfortunately, it's not going to help with our unemployment issues. Even Foxconn made some noise recently about replacing their employees with robots, & if the math works for them over there, you can easily see why it would be a no-brainer over here. I'd be curious to hear how many units those lines will produce & how many employees will be needed to man them.
- MrDrone 14y agoThere was an article posted here yesterday about General Electric moving home many manufacturing positions. Their plants which at their peak employed 20k people had dwindled to just 1,300 or so. In the process of moving the jobs back they've swelled up to 3k. While moving these jobs home will never make the US a manufacturing giant again due to advances in productivity, robotics and other areas it certainly will create valuable jobs at home. Though, that article argues that the real value of the move home is in the ability to get manufacturers, designers and others as close as possible.
- glhaynes 14y agoWhile moving these jobs home will never make the US a manufacturing giant again due to advances in productivity, … Not to pick on you, but this kind of statement is made so often that it's become received wisdom that "nothing's made in America anymore." But the US remains the largest manufacturer in the world. And while I don't have the numbers on manufacturing employment by country (anybody know where to look?), I'm sure the US is by any measure—including employment—a "manufacturing giant", even if it is more heavily roboticized and thus needs less labor for equivalent productivity.
- nicholassmith 14y agoI'm not sure on the accuracy levels as it doesn't mention sources but I found this: http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-top-manufacturing-countries.htm http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-top-manufacturing-count...
- MrDrone 14y agoYou're right. I guess what I meant to say is that we won't see the same kind of manufacturing we did in the past. As in we won't return to the "glory days" of manufacturing as a primary employment sector.
- bunderbunder 14y agoTechnically, China nosed ahead of the USA as the world's biggest exporter of manufactured goods a year or two ago. Which means we're not on the top anymore, but also goes way against the popular misconception that the US has had a weak manufacturing sector for decades. Not that Americans should see China exporting more goods as a sign that the US economy has fallen apart. China has over four times the population, meaning it's exporting less than a quarter as much stuff per capita. China could grow to export four times as much stuff and that still wouldn't be a sign that the US's manufacturing sector is declining, only that it's holding its position. And realistically, the US's manufacturing sector is incredibly strong - not just compared to other countries in the present, but also in comparison to itself in the past. I've got no idea why Americans get so worried that the country can manufacture so much stuff so profitably and with so little labor input that most their citizens get to work in the booming service and leisure economy made possible by that unprecedented level of efficiency, and feast on the luxury it produces, instead of grinding away on assembly lines. It seems nobody's quite capable of seeing the forest for this one particular infuriatingly backward-looking tree.
- shimon_e 14y agoThe US doesn't need to export as much as it actually consumes unlike the Chinese.
- ahi 14y agoAmerican manufacturing is large and sclerotic. The US numbers are reliant on large capital goods: aircraft, weapons, industrial equipment, etc. These industries are heavily subsidized and uncompetitive. Compared to Germany's network of small manufacturing firms, manufacturing in the US is structurally weak.
- Spooky23 14y agoThe US is and will remain a manufacturing giant. What you're seeing here is a weakening dollar and need for faster iteration.
- bryans 14y agoRobotic manufacturing doesn't mean zero labor. There are still many jobs involved that can't be automated. Ford, for example, uses a significant amount of robotic assembly, but still employs over 150,000 people. So yes, it replaces some jobs. But if we brought all manufacturing of domestic products back to the US, even if they were 100% produced with robotic manufacturing, there wouldn't even be enough workers to fill the necessary non-automated jobs.
- tharris0101 14y agoNot to turn political (And I'm independent) but Obama said something during the debates that rang really true to me. He said that the low level jobs in this country are going away for good and we need to focus on creating mid-level jobs. It makes sense that as society and technology evolve, the low skill jobs will be replaced by automation. I think this is a good thing. In the long term, we shouldn't shun technology just because it keeps a real human from doing a mundane task 40 hours a week.
- thornofmight 14y agoThis is why you don't see any janitors on the Enterprise.
- hkmurakami 14y agoI think an increase in robotic automated manufacturing is a definite positive (than the alternative -- outsourced assembly), since it incentivizes companies that make the robots for those lines, and companies that make the robots that make the robots for those lines, etc. Many of the industrial assembly robots are made by Asian and European firms, but there are definite advantages to being local to your customers -- a significant increase in robotic manufacturing in the US could fuel a surge in robotics companies here as a result, which is an exciting possibility in my book.
- magoon 14y agoRobots don't replace people -- they empower them.
- jlgreco 14y agoThat's a good attitude, and I think we should decide our public policy with that assumption, but I have a hard time believing it is actually true. Just as an example, a lights out factory is still going to need some people for maintenance but there is hardly any sort of "law of robotics" that suggests every manufacturing job lost is a maintenance job gained. Automation does replace people, in an ideal world the economy is strengthened by that automation and those people can therefore easily find new better jobs, but is there any evidence that is actually the case? I think the Rust Belt is evidence that it is not.
- rjzzleep 14y agothat's going to be the extra extra premium pricing line?
- gordeh 14y agoI suspect this will be the mac pro line. This is probably the reason for the 2013 mac pro quote from Tim Cook.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- quarterto 14y agoMac Pro. Not MacBook Pro. You know, the >$4000 workstations.
- joezydeco 14y agoI have to wonder if Foxconn or whomever was making these in Asia decided that the volumes were getting too low to make these at the prices Apple was used to.
- jfb 14y agoThere was very little engineering in the Mac Pro that hadn't already been fully amortized. They're not like the rest of the product line, where there continues to be serious money and effort spent to refine manufacturing processes.
- jonknee 14y agoIt's not enough money to worry about. Foxconn would assemble them for free if that meant keeping the iPhone/iPad business. The Mac Pro is very easy to assemble, but is large and heavy to ship from China to the US. It would make sense to assemble closer to the target market.
- wonderzombie 14y agoHey, c'mon, I only paid like ~$2500 for mine. ;)
- numbsafari 14y agoYou gotta start with something in order to build up a manufacturing base. Also, given that Apple is building huge datacenters of its own, it's likely they could be looking to in-source their own servers going forward as well.
- api 14y agoThe global wage arbitrage bubble depends on huge spreads between "first world" and "third world" wages. That's because there are all kinds of hidden costs to outsourcing: the difficulty of communication and coordination, travel, long-distance shipping, longer lag-times, political instability risk, etc. Even a seemingly small close in this wage spread could crash the outsourcing bubble when these hidden costs are considered.
- hkmurakami 14y ago>long-distance shipping, longer lag-times I was told that according to a supply chain exec at a major US retailer, saving 1 day in supply chain lag time would save said company $100MM per year.
- grecy 14y agoI believe it. A friend was a process engineer at a Ford plant. Every time the line stopped moving (even if for only a few seconds), they calculated it cost a minimum of $10mil.
- 27182818284 14y agoWasn't that turned upside down by the Toyota way of doing it? I remember hearing an episode of This American Life about it. The difference being that it saves more money to fix the problem right the first time then continue the line rather than continuing the line at all cost and fixing later. I believe it was http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/n... where they interviewed people involved with it.
- grecy 14y agoThis particular ford plant gets engines Just In Time from the foundry ~100km away, using a highway that has frequent traffic jams. It was found that when a truck load of engines was late, the most cost effective thing to do was to crush the brand new engine-less cars, and crush the engines when they arrived rather than either stop the line, or try to shuffle the cars & engines in at a later time. It was mind-boggling, but the numbers were run many times in many different ways and it was true.
- Irishsteve 14y agoCould it be the new imac?
- brudgers 14y agoReporters are sometimes lazy, those in the techpress perhaps more so than others. If there's an Apple manufacturing in the US, that's a feel good story. Easier to write than a muckraker about rural Chinese who stepped off a turnip truck and into dormitories, long days, and low wages. Cheaper to cover, too - like that won't speak to editors. It's a sausage factory for Disney's main street. And good PR.
- daniel-cussen 14y agoYou know, those Chinese guys have gotten 30% raises every year for a decade. And they were higher than the countryside even then.
- cavilling_elite 14y agoSp what was the huge tax break Obama offered Jobs, and Cook acted on it?
- Dirlewanger 14y agoYou think Apple prices are high now? Oh man, just wait and then the world will see just how absolutely spoiled we are by the dearth of humane labor laws in Asian countries.
- hkmurakami 14y ago> In a TV interview with Brian Williams, Apple CEO Tim Cook has said "we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States," vaguely confirming that production of either iMacs, Mac Minis or Mac Laptops will make a wholesale move to the US in 2013. Doesn't the Mac Pro line make the most sense considering their low volumes and (I imagine) relatively high margins?
- SkyMarshal 14y agoHope so. Moving the Mac Pro assembly line might also imply they're finally getting a substantial redesign/update.
- biscarch 14y agoThis is also what I'm hoping for. I think Apple said the Mac Pro is getting an upgrade in 2013, so it seems likely.
- carterschonwald 14y agoI really hope so too. At some point in the near future I need to get a beefy desktop with current generation / upgradeable hardware, and i'd really enjoy it being a Mac. (caveat: its not for gaming or vm instances, it'd be my frontline local machine for benchmarking hpc codes, 'cause a mb air doesn't cut it for that :) )
- gesman 14y agoOne of the reasons I bought Sony Z-class laptop is because it is custom manufactured in Japan (not plastic-stamped in China or alike places like other laptops, including Macs). With USA-built Macs - i'll be happy to get one too.