Kudos to you for this terrific commentary. We share the same opinions,
point by point. I voted with my feet at the turn of the century
breaking a 30+ year sojourn in San Diego and moving to Rural Oklahoma.
In my "spare time" I was an adjunct prof teaching S/W Eng and senior
projects in evening classes at the 3rd largest private university in
California. I worked at a large (over 5000 civil servants) Gov lab. The
quality of applicants for scientific and engineering not to mention Comp
Sci was in a death spiral.
Patrick NJ5G
On 7/11/2016 10:06 PM, Grant Saviers wrote:
I would second these views having had plants in the US, Asia, and
Europe. While local politics often "encouraged" local manufacturing,
in the end the most efficient producer environments win. When
countries make it an objective to be competitive on a global scale and
have good leadership they often achieve that goal - witness
Singapore's history.
Engineering as a profession is "too hard" for many US students,
PolySci is easy but then graduates wonder why their jobs are in retail
or food service. A recent major magazine article was about the
"crushing college debt" of many students and their inability to pay.
NOT ONCE did it mention the career choice of the students profiled -
DUH. When I introduced 6-Sigma statistical process control to my
operations and checked on "how is it going?" at a plant, the plant
manager said, "we've hit a snag, we have to teach much of the
workforce how to add and subtract." The failure of US public
education to produce a workforce educated for the jobs of today is
appalling. In Asia, the skills needed were there and the techniques
enthusiastically embraced by the labor force. The "top 5%" are a much
larger population besides.
Consider that the Philippines graduates more engineers (5 year
program, accredited) than the USA. There aren't the MIT, Stanford, or
Berkeley PhD level institutions, yet. The degrees granted focus
heavily towards the semiconductor industry (BS/MS EE & CS). Now they
are rapidly up-skilling into test design, design spins, and then
original designs and that work is being off-shored by US companies.
TSMC (Taiwan) didn't become the largest semiconductor company in the
world by accident.
Cheapest labor is less important as automation has reduced the
handwork. Years ago the garment makers realized that computer driven
sewing machines were changing the game. The latest and most
productive machine tools cost the same everywhere in the world and it
is the innovation in them and the workforce skill to optimize their
performance that makes a difference. That takes a very skilled labor
base. Then there are the regulations and bureaucracy. Many years
ago Andy Grove (SK) promised California he would not build another
Intel plant in CA unless the state fixed its bizarre permitting and
tax/regulatory burdens. I had to LOL when the press and politicians
10 years later bitched that Intel was building all plants elsewhere.
It took me 6 years and many dollars to get a single family home
building permit in Santa Clara County, on a large property with ZERO
issues. Now I don't live in CA. People and companies can vote with
their feet. Especially with the incentives, skilled labor, low taxes,
and streamlined permitting offered by competing political entities.
SiVly is propping up CA finances for now, watch out when startup stock
options aren't "in the money". The rest of CA is in the tank, just
drive through the Central Valley.
I've been buying machine tools and tooling for the last 25 years. The
three most scary words 15 years ago were "Made in India." In the past
year, several items I've purchased had that dreaded marking, but are
first class. Maybe not Hardinge or Starrett level yet, but so close
as to not be important to me. Several of the well known but lesser
brands are now India made.
Grant KZ1W
On 7/10/2016 20:27 PM, Roger (K8RI) on TT wrote:
Overly simplistic with the reasons for ham gear as well as many
products off shore include all the things someone said were
unrelated. Unions, politics, skilled and unskilled labor, work
ethics, unrealistic expectations and attitudes taught all the way
through the school system. Add to that the global market system.
The company I worked for had numerous plants around the US. There are
many states that welcome new industries with minimal regulations and
taxes. Unfortunately the Feds regulations can make starting a new
business anywhere, more than a little difficult.
We had plants on nearly every continent to take advantage of those
"local markets"
"Ham Radio" is no where near a large enough market to support that
kind of business model.
"Off Shore" does not mean junk, but as long as most hams are cheap,
someone, here or there will build and sell "cheap stuff". Let's face
it. If WE didn't purchase enough cheap stuff to support the making of
cheap stuff, then they'd stop making cheap stuff.
You don't need to be very old to remember when Japan was synonymous
with cheap stuff.
Those producing cheap stuff soon learn there is a lot more money in
building "good stuff"
"Cheap labor" has a way of becoming expensive labor.
Japan was replaced by Korea and Mexico. Now why would Japanese
companies start building cars in the US? It doesn't take long for an
open mind to find those answers.
Korean cheap labor is being replaced by Chinese and Indian labor.
A thought:
I read that in another generation or two, India will have more people
with 4 year college degrees than the total US population. Can China
be far behind? They have highly qualified people who WANT to work,
while we have many college grads who want to tell their employers
what they will do. I've seen a drastic change in new hire attitudes
in my 50 plus years in industry
Whoever remarked about the falling # of Hams needs to read
http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-showing-steady-growth-in-the-us
True, fewer build their own HF and VHF rigs, but LF and SHF are now
the domain of the home builders. OTOH many of the new hams with store
bought equipment understand the programming and protocols for some
very sophisticated communications that leave old time CW and SSB hams
scratching their heads?
All of these things/topics affect Ham Radio, one way or another.!
73
Roger (K8RI)
On 7/9/2016 Saturday 3:55 PM, David Gilbert wrote:
That's a bit simplistic. I spent over 30 years working for a huge
North American based semiconductor company, and there were a variety
of reasons we ended up moving most manufacturing elsewhere. Labor
cost was certainly one of them, but rarely the deciding factor.
Others included:
1. Availability of trained engineers. Places like China and India
have a far greater pool of highly skilled and dedicated engineers,
and engineers in the U.S. tended to think of manufacturing as being
"unglamorous."
2. Proximity to local markets. As the world economy became more
global, being able to be closer to your customer had tremendous
advantages in terms of customer relationships and cycle time
reductions, not to mention trade (many countries lower tax rates for
local content) and currency issues.
3. Bureaucracy and overhead issues. At one point we wanted to
significantly expand a wafer fab locally, but were told by the city
that it would take at least 18 months simply to get the approvals
for it ... in spite of the fact that we had already proposed every
safety and environmental upgrade imaginable for it. Markets don't
wait for that kind of crap, and we ended up having to build the fab
offshore where some other entity actually wanted it.
Other industries faced different issues ... tax burdens in the U.S.,
ridiculous union requirements (much less of an issue now, of course,
at least in most places), availability of raw materials, etc. The
problem as many of us recognized even back then was that once such
manufacturing migrations begin they are very difficult to curb. How
many colleges and universities in North America offer engineering
courses specifically geared toward manufacturing? Damn few, if any.
In Asia they are everywhere. Compare tax rates. Compare
transportation costs to major markets (North America is no longer
the only one).
The list of reasons why such "big box" products are built elsewhere
is almost endless, and while it may be convenient to blame the
manufacturers for that it is simply scapegoating. Consumers who tend
to buy the cheapest available product regardless of quality (and
they are still the majority, to which I can attest having worked for
a while at a big box store) share the blame, as do most other
elements of the economic system that ignored cost and efficiency in
favor of other factors. I'd even bet that your own investment
funds lie with companies that make as much profit as possible, as
opposed to some company that tried to fight the system by paying
higher wages, paying higher taxes, training it's own engineers,
paying higher transportation costs ... etc, etc, etc.
Manufacturers mostly follow ... they don't really lead the parade.
I can say with great experience that moving manufacturing offshore
is one of the riskiest, most traumatic actions a manufacturer can
take. It doesn't happen without significant outside pressure from
one place or another.
73,
Dave AB7E
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