Disappointed

[UTRacerX9]

Thanks Jeremy. This stuff comes up once or twice a year, hopefully I'll have better luck next time.

[IPD]

the only true resolution of the matter will come once the world has achieved relative "parity"; and it no longer costs less to buy from overseas as it does domestically. unfortunately, the USA has a long, long way to fall before that day comes.

the key concern i have with overseas manufacturing has to do with national security. we need to have enough raw-materials processing plants; manufacturing plants; and fabrication shops to handle the workload associated with supporting our military in a time of crisis. if every silicone chip we need for defense purposes is sourced from china...and we end up on the other side of a conflict with china....well...it will get ugly fast. this is probably why we'll eventually have to INCREASE defense spending via subsidies for domestic production--just as a safeguard; similar to why we have farm subsidies.

i wish the UN would crack-down on china's artifically devalued currency already.

[AgentOblivious]

Hey UTracerX9, what do you think of this?

BCG - Press Release - Made in the USA, Again: Manufacturing Is Expected to Return to America as China

[UTRacerX9]

That article makes US manufacturing sound a lot more rosy than it is. They even say that wages in China are 30% less (which is what they are now, or more) and after you factor in cost to ship things and such, the difference is negligible.

Well, that simply isn't correct. Putting goods on a container ship for example, is relatively cheap compared to the total number of units you can fit on one. (Average weight of a container is assumed to be 40,000 lbs - that's a lot of product for just about anything.) If a company can spend just one cent less per unit, they typically do it. I'd love to see more jobs and work staying here, but I don't think we're going to see it happen in 2015. Not even close.

[BadHabit]

We have been fending off China for a few years now.I do not know how they do it but they were making some parts for what it cost us in raw material never mind the labor cost.I think they did that just to get in the door.The work we got to keep was only because of our commitment to a quality part and customer service.We had to do a lot of shifting to keep the costs down.Makes you take a good hard look at the way you operate a business and ways to cut down on waste.

[AgentOblivious]

We have been fending off China for a few years now.I do not know how they do it but they were making some parts for what it cost us in raw material never mind the labor cost.I think they did that just to get in the door.The work we got to keep was only because of our commitment to a quality part and customer service.We had to do a lot of shifting to keep the costs down.Makes you take a good hard look at the way you operate a business and ways to cut down on waste.

The problem is a lot of work isn't being streamlined, but rather wages cuts are being used to cover it up. Also, for China, this pretty much explains it:

[marshallh]

I went with a chinese fab a couple months ago for some circuit board.

The one on top of the stack was perfect. Going down the stack I found boards that developed shorts under heat. I ended up having to transplant the entire board components from two of these bad PCBs (166 surface mount parts) onto some other ones. Not my fault, the boards still had shorts after I pulled the parts off. This is with 100% e-testing.


Watch your asses. I will be going with a different fab shop (in china). I have no choice because the assembly costs in America are almost 10 times higher and no shop over here will do low volume runs.