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Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

manufacturingdive.com

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Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#251

Post by LudwigNagasena »

majormajor wrote: post #171
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve posted before that Lego in the USA in the 1970s consisted of multi-colored bricks of different sizes. That’s it. And usually someone replies “You’re wrong” and points to some Lego mini-figure or elaborate kit that existed in the US in the 70s but in reality, I never ever saw one and neither me nor any of my friends ever had anything besides basic bricks. It’s like there is some alternate 1970s Lego reality that…

The 90s are when fancy sets with specialized pieces REALLY took off. The 90s space stuff compared with the 80s was a big shift. But that's still 30 years ago so Lego has been fancy pieces and custom kits for a couple generations of kids now.

I think in 00s they didn’t abuse special pieces so much as they do now. Their sets looked more like “see what can be done with our pieces” rather than ”you have to buy this exact set because only it contains the pieces you need to build it”.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#252

Post by mlindner »

nonethewiser wrote: post #241
mlindner wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue this is one of the okay uses for petroleum as it's converted directly into a high value product and not emitted as pollution. I assume people don't do a lot of throwing away of Lego bricks. Going into the future I predict petroleum will be used to make material products a lot longer than it's used to make fuel. Even after we stop mining petroleum we'll still be turning farm crops into the same material.

That’s a fair point, but it still requires the production of oil and means the material will practically never break down in a landfill.

You can make the same material by originating it from crops and it still wouldn't break down. Also the historical alternatives for this material in most applications are aluminum and glass which also will not break down in landfills.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#253

Post by rags2riches »

TexanFeller wrote: post #146
obblekk wrote: post #6

Interesting learnings for me from this article: - Lego operates multiple $1B+ factories around the world - they are not just a design and marketing company - 1400 manufacturing jobs in Virginia expected - not just an automated thing. Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Particularly compared to MX - 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No off…

> Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Based on prices I've seen shopping for my nephews they seem to be a luxury brand now that can afford to. Lots of elaborate and expensive sets sold for $50-200. In my day they were closer to plain bricks.

> Notoriously Expensive Lego Prices Scale Linearly, Remain Constant Over Time

> If there’s one big gripe common among brickheads, it’s that the prices of LEGO sets are quite lofty (plus maybe not enough spaceships). But two disparate people interested in the plastique fantastique eschewed conjecture in favor of hard data, and found that LEGO prices scale linearly with piece count, and that on average, prices of sets have actually remained constant over the last couple of decades.

https://nerdist.com/article/notoriously-expensive-lego-price...

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#254

Post by rconti »

TexanFeller wrote: post #146
obblekk wrote: post #6

Interesting learnings for me from this article: - Lego operates multiple $1B+ factories around the world - they are not just a design and marketing company - 1400 manufacturing jobs in Virginia expected - not just an automated thing. Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Particularly compared to MX - 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No off…

> Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Based on prices I've seen shopping for my nephews they seem to be a luxury brand now that can afford to. Lots of elaborate and expensive sets sold for $50-200. In my day they were closer to plain bricks.

"Can afford to" is rarely a reason to do so. There's still more profit in choosing not to. So there must be at least a contributing factor.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#255

Post by devjab »

obblekk wrote: post #6

Interesting learnings for me from this article: - Lego operates multiple $1B+ factories around the world - they are not just a design and marketing company - 1400 manufacturing jobs in Virginia expected - not just an automated thing. Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Particularly compared to MX - 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No off…

> Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny).

I work with solar, not directly but we turn investor money into solar plants, and part of that is getting the most money out of them as possible. The amount of sun obviously matters, but the temperature matters more. The hotter it gets the less efficient the solarpanels become at generating electricty.

The efficiency starts dropping by around 0.5% for every degree celcius above 25 degrees celcius. In hotter climates, you can build solarplants differently, similarly to the one in that james bond movie I believe, not too sure as we don't do that, and I'm obviously not into the engineering part. I mean, I've read the manual of some solarinverters, but that was to get data out of them. Aside from that, solarplanes do actually generate power on cloudy days, not as much, but the only thing that really stop them is snow. The coolest thing about solar, is that it's very predictable. We can basically forecast our budgets for decades to come, because we know exactly how much energy we're going to be producing each month, and with the advances in storage, you'll soon be capable of storing excess power for nights.

Anyway, areas with 10-35 degree celcius are often better suited for solar power than hotter areas with more sun. That's not to say you shouldn't build solar in hot areas, but if you're planning where to put your solar powered factory down, you're likely going to take that into account. Along with a range of other things. I'd wager that logistics and taxes were more important for Lego.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#256

Post by EamonnMR »

tedivm wrote: post #43
skybrian wrote: post #35

It will be the first US Lego factory in a while, but here is some history: > The first LEGO factory in Enfield opens in 1975 – a packing facility for LEGO DUPLO® bricks. The elements to be packed arrive from factories in Billund, Denmark, and Baar, Switzerland – transported to the US in container ships. > The Enfield factory is constructed as a “conversion ready” building with open steel structures which can quickly…

I came here to say this- I toured the Enfield facility, as LEGO sponsored my robotics team. They had a whole manufacturing setup there. Everyone was kind of pissed that they closed it when they did.

Was it FIRST Lego League?

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#257

Post by LudwigNagasena »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #186
foobarian wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mean not particularly sunny? Even Boston is at a similar or lower latitude than Southern Europe, can imagine Virginia being even better for solar.

Have you ever been to Virginia? Have you compared it to the American southwest for sunshine?

If that’s “not particularly sunny” for solar energy, you would be amazed to see how many solar panels there are in Europe north of Mediterranean countries.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#258

Post by pyrale »

osigurdson wrote: post #180
pyrale wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Newton and Einstein hadn't played with legos, we would probably not even be having this discussion! that being said, I did enjoy my legos

Are you seriously implying that I think Lego is universally responsible for all science and technology?

Nah, I'm just implying that you're overreacting, and connecting two unrelated things because of that.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#259

Post by vidarh »

nonethewiser wrote: post #231
hanniabu wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not pretend they care about the reduction in carbon. They'd only care about reduced shipping costs.

Their product is literally made out of oil.

Apparently they've started phasing in pieces made of bio-polyethylene made from sugarcane. But I haven't found anything about what proportion of their bricks that makes up, and presumably they'd be publicising it heavily for PR purposes if it was a large proportion so I'm guessing it's not a very large amount yet.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#260

Post by notTooFarGone »

nonethewiser wrote: post #240
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then perhaps you're being paid too much compared to the other people in society

Or maybe 30k for a new grad software engineer in London is a joke. What is your salary? Salary transparency empowers us all.

yeah that happened. You can get pretty much 55-60k on average.
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