At a certain point it has to be about repeatable quality because the
remaining labor cost is negligible. Certain tasks like welding and painting
have gone mainly to robots for that reason.
Interesting it is being reported that Microsoft's new giant Surface product
is being built in Oregon because it would cost so much to ship, plus they
say a little extra labor costs doesn't matter on a $20K product. Seems the
same case could be made for the shipping cost though. I suspect they don't
want to deal with a couple month feedback loop for any design changes or
manufacturing problems. When I was in the electronics manufacturing
business decades ago, common wisdom was you wanted the feedback loop as
short as possible. Just In Time manufacturing, Kanban supply chains with
suppliers restocking parts bins daily, testing inline with production so
problems can be found before you make more than a handful of units, and
engineers in the same building with production. Even with all these
advantages, Packetflux is dealing with a backwards port numbering issue, can
you imagine if they had a containerload of product "on the boat"? Of course
the other thing that has changed is global markets, few products are
designed and sold anymore for consumption in just one country, so that
marketing/engineering/production can all be sited in that country.
-----Original Message-----
From: Seth Mattinen
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2015 12:25 PM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SAF: Daniel White Resignation Letter
On 6/13/15 10:12, Colin Stanners wrote:
As long as tangible goods and services are still being created/offered,
by humans, in the place they live.
http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/10051/Panasonic-has-a-factory-staffed-with-only-15-people-that-can-make-2-million-plasma-displays-per-month-ab637-1
Some of those people probably only have jobs because there aren't robots
to maintain the robots.
~Seth
