Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
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Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#2> Microsoft’s decision to shift Surface Hub manufacturing to China highlights the difficulty in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It’s not just a question of opening a factory and hiring employees. There are supply line considerations, source costs, and the simple fact that American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees than they used to require in the 1970s, thanks to automation and improved productivity.
Like with climate change, it's already too late.
Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#3There’s so much political bias in tbe posted news story, it makes it difficult to ascertain which are actual facts.
Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#4There’s so much political bias in tbe posted news story, it makes it difficult to ascertain which are actual facts.
What politically bias? Given that your account is 6 minutes old are you sure you do not have a ulterior motive for your comment?
Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#5> Microsoft’s decision to shift Surface Hub manufacturing to China highlights the difficulty in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It’s not just a question of opening a factory and hiring employees. There are supply line considerations, source costs, and the simple fact that American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees than they used to require in the 1970s, thanks to…
Yep. Also,
> American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees
PSA: You may have heard that American manufacturing is stronger than ever, it has just become automated. This story is largely result of funny accounting.
https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#6This article is dated July 20, 2017
Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#7> Microsoft’s decision to shift Surface Hub manufacturing to China highlights the difficulty in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It’s not just a question of opening a factory and hiring employees. There are supply line considerations, source costs, and the simple fact that American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees than they used to require in the 1970s, thanks to…
Yep. Also, > American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees PSA: You may have heard that American manufacturing is stronger than ever, it has just become automated. This story is largely result of funny accounting. https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
Which is apparent to anyone who doesn't have their heads stuck in some spreadsheets. Huge American manufacturing sectors (textiles, electronics, home appliances, etc) which were made in this country 30-40 years ago are no longer made here, or are made here in significantly reduced capacity.
So, its possible to talk about how efficient American manufacturing has become, but the average consumer doesn't see that as they walk the isles at Walmart. What they see is that its really hard to find anything actually made in the US. Those of us old enough to remember, _CAN_ remember a time when the clothing at the store said "made in America", or shed a little tear as we remove the 25 year old washer that has a made in america sticker and replace it with one that says made in Mexico or similar.
So, we may be making more planes and john deere tractors, but we definitely have had huge swaths of our consumer goods simply wiped out by cheap labor countries where hiring a half dozen people for 10 years to do final inspections on clothing costs less than putting a robot in a factory in the US.
The problem isn't that factory automation has been on a steady trend of reducing labor since Henry Ford. The problem is that now that those factories are located in cheap labor countries, they are still being slowly automated. So eventually when they reach 100% and the labor costs are strictly the cost of people programming and repairing the machines (see semiconductor fabs) they aren't magically going to move back to the US, rather they will stay in whatever part of the world managed to hold onto them during the final phases and still has the critical mass of supply chain.
Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#8This article is dated July 20, 2017
... and the title is wrong, it's about Surface Hub and not Surface (tablets and laptop)
Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#9There’s so much political bias in tbe posted news story, it makes it difficult to ascertain which are actual facts.
What politically bias? Given that your account is 6 minutes old are you sure you do not have a ulterior motive for your comment?
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Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Also, > American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees PSA: You may have heard that American manufacturing is stronger than ever, it has just become automated. This story is largely result of funny accounting. https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
Which is apparent to anyone who doesn't have their heads stuck in some spreadsheets. Huge American manufacturing sectors (textiles, electronics, home appliances, etc) which were made in this country 30-40 years ago are no longer made here, or are made here in significantly reduced capacity. So, its possible to talk about how efficient American manufacturing has become, but the average consumer doesn't see that as the…
Almost all of the high-value parts of an iPhone are made in the US. Yet there is a lot of hand-wringing about the low-value, labor-intensive work done on iPhones in China.