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Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

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Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#181
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DeWalt and Milwuakee are owned by the same parent company.

You've got them mixed up. DeWalt is Stanley Black & Decker, which also makes modern, non-Sears Craftsman tools, along with a bunch of others--Bostitch nailers, Irwin, whatever's left of the Porter-Cable line, and upscale stuff like MAC (uses DeWalt batteries, as it happens) or Proto. Milwaukee is TTI, which owns Home Depot's exclusive Ryobi and Ridgid brands, along with Empire (measuring devices), Hart (Ryobi but for…

> Stanley Black & Decker, which also makes modern, non-Sears Craftsman tools

Stanley Black & Decker bought Craftsman several years back. Before the sale, Sears had contracted Stanley Black & Decker to make at least some of their Craftsman tools.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#182
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to choose one. With automation you can have a small, highly paid, highly skilled workforce do the work of a much larger, low skill, low paid workforce and actually produce higher quality products at a lower price.

So you’re picking low prices and an UNpaid workforce - cutting a workforce by 90% but doubling pay for the remaining 10% doesn’t improve a local or domestic economy.

Just a few centuries ago upwards of 90% of the population worked in farming. Since then, multiple revolutions in agricultural yield and automation have reduced this to less than 2%. Yet we do not have 80% unemployment. How is that?

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a great YouTube channel, Project Farm ( https://www.youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm/videos ), that features a single guy testing, grading, and comparing all kinds of things you might find in your garage. He's not sponsored and tries to be objective throughout the process. It isn't perfect but he puts a ton of effort in and for backyard science it's pretty good. Anyway, he mentions country of origin for a lot of too…

China has a “caveat emptor” culture that I suspect plays a role in this. In most western countries and other countries, like Japan, selling counterfeit or barely functional products is seen as somewhat shameful. But in China it’s often seen as being clever or cunning. Chinese consumers are used to this and are very cautious about what they buy and from whom, and of course negotiating a reasonable cost for the goods b…

This discrepancy is not necessarily a bad thing. It's basically how western companies why manufacture in China can add value, by doing that kind of quality control and building a reputation.

(Of course, Chinese companies can do the same when they sell to foreigners.)

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus selling barely functional products under a DONGJOY etc brand isn’t fraud, only trying to sell a counterfeit Prada bag under the Prada brand is (and only in Western countries at that)

No matter what it says on the tag , if it looks like Prada but it isn't from Prada, someone is getting frauded

What do you mean?

For example, if I knowingly buy a knock-off, nobody is being defrauded.

(You can claim that Prada as a company gets damaged in the process somehow, that's probably fair. But it's not fraud.)

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#185
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'barely functional' isn't fraud. And in most cases the cheapest made in china product is barely functional. It's only deliberately selling nonfunctional products that would meet the definition of fraud.

There are whole industries where it's unacceptable to ship 'barely functional' products -- aeronautics for instance. We should be striving to expand this to more industries not the other way around.

Different standards for different contexts.

Not everyone shares your preferences.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like the endgame. 1. Western companies moves production of components to China. 2. Chinese companies becomes good enough to produce their own products. 3. Western companies starts rebranding Chinese products. 4. Chinese companies buy western companies. 5. Chinese companies open factories in western countries. Manufacturing isn't industry in itself and the growth of industry is orders of magnitude more in Ch…

> Western countries don't really have the infrastructure, housing or education necessary Why do non-Western elites send their kids to Western countries for university educations? > increasingly not alternative ways of competing either like creativity, influence or equality. Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity?

> Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity?

As I see it, Asian economies like India, China, Japan, South Korea offer a reasonable competition to Western economies today.

1. Samsung is a very viable competitor to Apple in hand held + wearables creative space.

2. Indian fin-tech solutions IMO today are some of the best in the world. All I need is a phone to shop for things (from buying a car to paying for parking) and have not used a credit/debit card for a year now (I live in India). Same in Indian edu-tech space. A lot of kids have quit school and are learning at home. Full time. I have not seen this happen anywhere before.

3. Toyota's are way more reliable than BMW's, Audi's and Ford's.

4. TSMC vs Intel is another good example.

I foresee a lot of innovation happening in Asia right now to go global in this and next decade.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Western countries don't really have the infrastructure, housing or education necessary Why do non-Western elites send their kids to Western countries for university educations? > increasingly not alternative ways of competing either like creativity, influence or equality. Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity?

>Why do non-Western elites send their kids to Western countries for university educations? Elites. We have the best education for elites. Not for everyone, which is a large part of the problem.

Should be very easy for you to rattle off a list of countries doing better then. You may find the below link helpful in your quest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_...

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That manufacturing process is the result of bean counters determining it's a waste to ship boxed products that are 50% air overseas in a container. Ship the broken down components instead with denser packing and have a minimum wage worker bolt it together stateside. It isn't an enlightened return to domestic production.

American manufacturing looks like low-wage workers making $12 an hour (a few years ago) making windshields. A real American manufacturing renaissance would be German, with high skilled trained professionals designing, building, and operating advanced machines to create complex products. Basically what the Chinese are continually getting better at. There is no hope. America can’t even agree on giving community college…

> A real American manufacturing renaissance would be German, with high skilled trained professionals designing, building, and operating advanced machines to create complex products.

You mean like how Standard's US factories makes automotive parts? https://youtu.be/JhqaaYNgCO4

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like perfectly efficient capitalism. Is it really not this way in other countries?

How is fraud capitalism? A effective and working contract law system is one of the corner stones of capitalism.

We have to be careful to distinguish between capitalism as an ideal, and as a description of what happens in the real world. (The same applies to socialism or any other -ism.)

Otherwise we will just engage in 'No True Scotsman' fallacies.

Re: Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do spot incoming QA testing. And if you find any issues, you test the whole shipment. And then you compare the results to the outgoing QA test results. And if any results can't be explained by failures relating to shipping, then you fire your supplier. You let them know ahead of time that this is the procedure you'll apply, and then they'll do proper QA testing.

In these industries it might take 5 years to switch suppliers. There are also specs that can't be tested at the finished good level, even destructively.

Yes, that makes it harder.

You should probably run with multiple suppliers in the first place, so it's easier to switch between them? Of course, that extra overhead probably will eat into your cost savings.

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