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The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

fortune.com

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Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#161

Post by CydeWeys »

blakeyrat wrote: post #106
scottm84 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle is this way. Washington state has an airplane factory in the woods and a car fiber (BMW) plant out in the desert. In the city you can find businesses to build anything.

The big question is what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s. That said, Boeing's defense contracts might keep is secure regardless of what happens in civil aviation. United Airlines might buy a plane from China (in a decade), but the US Navy certainly wouldn't.

They haven't even cracked the automobile market yet. No one in the west will buy a Chinese car, let alone a Chinese plane.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#162

Post by scottm84 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #161
blakeyrat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big question is what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s. That said, Boeing's defense contracts might keep is secure regardless of what happens in civil aviation. United Airlines might buy a plane from China (in a decade), but the US Navy certainly wouldn't.

They haven't even cracked the automobile market yet. No one in the west will buy a Chinese car, let alone a Chinese plane.

Subaru is a Chinese version of yakuza. They have cracked the market for sure.

Also, mitsubishi can build rockets similar to anything spacex can put up.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#163

Post by DrScump »

empath75 wrote: post #82
throwaway2016a wrote: post #7

I haven't been myself but my wife is a process engineer and had to go to China to install and train people on a new machine so this is only second hand... But one of the reasons China is so good at manufacturing is because everything is in one place (or at least clusters)... need 10,000 of an Integrated Circuit? The company that makes it is literally down the street. Need some raw materials? That's down the other str…

Silicon Valley is called that because that's how it used to be. They actually made the chips there, and if you grew up there, you could get computer parts cheaply and easily. Jobs and Wozniak could build the Apple I in a garage only because of where they were.

Plus, many of the major electronics distributors were either based here or had presence here (Hamilton/Avnet, Wyle, and Marshall at least were within a couple-mile radius of each other). Fry's also started here, with its first electronics store in a former Fry's Market building on Oakmead in Sunnyvale.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#164

Post by blhack »

Animats wrote: post #149
empath75 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley is called that because that's how it used to be. They actually made the chips there, and if you grew up there, you could get computer parts cheaply and easily. Jobs and Wozniak could build the Apple I in a garage only because of where they were.

For off-the-shelf electronic parts in small quantities, everybody orders from Digi-Key, or maybe Mouser. Order by 8 PM Central time, delivery by 10:30 AM the next morning if you pay for FedEx. That's what wiped out local parts stores. You never knew what they had in stock, and the markups were huge. Also, Digi-Key doesn't have a counterfeit parts problem. Digi-Key deals directly with manufacturers. The supply chain i…

The problem with digikey (in my mind, as a hobbyist) is that you don't actually know the total until after the order has shipped.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#165

Post by DrScump »

afarrell wrote: post #114
mc32 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. North San Jose (the 237 triangle) used to have PCB, chip, chassis, component, etc., manufacturers in proximity to each other. Consider: Sun used to make and assemble their "workstations" over in the East Bay not far from the 237 triangle. As the late '90s approached much of that local manufacturing was off-shored to the Foxconns and Flextronics, etc. as well as overseas foundries.

As a consequence of all of that concentrated manufacturing, Silicon Valley is now a cluster of EPA superfund sites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...

Lorentz Barrel and Drum was particularly reckless. That lot is across the street from the Solar For America Ice complex (formerly Sharks Ice) on 10th.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#166

Post by gnopgnip »

blhack wrote: post #164
Animats wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For off-the-shelf electronic parts in small quantities, everybody orders from Digi-Key, or maybe Mouser. Order by 8 PM Central time, delivery by 10:30 AM the next morning if you pay for FedEx. That's what wiped out local parts stores. You never knew what they had in stock, and the markups were huge. Also, Digi-Key doesn't have a counterfeit parts problem. Digi-Key deals directly with manufacturers. The supply chain i…

The problem with digikey (in my mind, as a hobbyist) is that you don't actually know the total until after the order has shipped.

This is a problem with shipping with Fedex too. There are a bunch of variable charges that aren't finalized until after the shipment has been delivered. In practice it is rarely and issue and using post paid labels instead of prepaid shipping labels is a better system for most businesses anyways.

Is the order cost variable with digikey because the shipping weight is not known or is there another reason?

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#167

Post by rahimnathwani »

memracom wrote: post #127
Chathamization wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of things, I'm not sure it saves people enough money to notice. Production isn't the entire price of a product - you also have things like transportation, retail markup, R&D, advertising, etc. Let's say that there's a $3.50 product that costs $1.50 to produce, and a company can save 10% of production costs by producing it in China (even with lower wages you don't tend to have huge savings when things like t…

A notable example of electronics that is not made in China is the Raspberry PI which is made in the UK, in Pencoed, Wales, formerly the heart of the coal mining industry. http://www.sonypencoed.co.uk/news/2016/03/01/latest-raspberr... They haven't always been able to make it in the UK, but as the computer became more popular, the economics have worked out. But the driver for this has been the fact that the organizati…

Most/all of the components are manufactured in China, so I'd guess that much less than half of the total retail price represents value added at the assembly stage in the UK.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#168

Post by stcredzero »

mc32 wrote: post #138
fennecfoxen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a place that produces no food and has to import 100% of what is needed to survive like, say, New York City? Sure! No, the rooftop garden on the Park Slope Whole Foods does not count.

NYC is part of a larger constituent unit. Japan, for example not being part of a larger state, goes to great pains to subsidize its inefficient agriculture in order that they not rely entirely on trade for their foodstuffs. It's not that they think being dependent _right now_ is an issue. The issue is what state would they be putting themselves in were large producers to put an embargo on them (or there be plagues el…

Such dependencies were the British Empire's key vulnerability during WWI and WWII. They are a part of the reason why the British had to mortgage their empire to the US to pay for those wars.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#169

Post by am183 »

scottm84 wrote: post #162
CydeWeys wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven't even cracked the automobile market yet. No one in the west will buy a Chinese car, let alone a Chinese plane.

Subaru is a Chinese version of yakuza. They have cracked the market for sure. Also, mitsubishi can build rockets similar to anything spacex can put up.

Except both are Japanese companies?

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#170

Post by byuu »

Animats wrote: post #149
empath75 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley is called that because that's how it used to be. They actually made the chips there, and if you grew up there, you could get computer parts cheaply and easily. Jobs and Wozniak could build the Apple I in a garage only because of where they were.

For off-the-shelf electronic parts in small quantities, everybody orders from Digi-Key, or maybe Mouser. Order by 8 PM Central time, delivery by 10:30 AM the next morning if you pay for FedEx. That's what wiped out local parts stores. You never knew what they had in stock, and the markups were huge. Also, Digi-Key doesn't have a counterfeit parts problem. Digi-Key deals directly with manufacturers. The supply chain i…

Yeah, I understand a DB9 solder cup is a niche product for a local Radio Shack and they have to pay for store space and employees, but there was just no way I was going to pay $6 per connector when I could order them for $0.30 each from Digikey and have it in two days. It wasn't just that part. Every part was like that. $2 for a single capacitor. $15 for a pack of 100 resistors. Etc. And good luck finding the exact one you wanted. Those parts shelves were only stocked every 5+ years ... I could easily see four generations of packaging for the same part in those things.

It's really a shame because it was great to have that "I can get this part in ten minutes" feeling when I was in the middle of a project and I ran out of something I needed, or realized I was missing a part.

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