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Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

manufacturingdive.com

271–280 of 345 posts

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#271

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…

And now they're moving to Boston. CT loses another multinational company, they just can't catch a break. Then again it is entirely the state's own fault for driving businesses away.

But Boston as a choice is equally surprising.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is striking how quickly the US turned into a backwater for all types of labor.

What's striking is that every time I talk about moving to Europe I have to cut my salary expectations in half. Talk about backwater expectations.

You won't be able to afford a dog walker and three F150 pickups, but you won't need to.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#273

I wish Lego would just stick to Lego classic. I don't like having to check all the pieces in a themed set are present when putting them back in the box after my child's finished with it. It's difficult to reuse the pieces for other ideas because I can't just commingle them with other sets because finding the pieces again to build that themed set would be more difficult. Just following instructions has limited value a…

Lego is not the right brick manufacturer for your needs anymore.

Lego occupies the high-end market nowadays, where you pay $1,000-$2,000 for a franchise set (Harry Potter, Star Wars) that you can display in a glass showcase. You'll get robotics and some smart app functionality, along with a devoted following.

If you just want plastic toy bricks to let your kids' imagination run wild, there are alternatives.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

FWIW with some of the bigger sets they seemed to make it needlessly complex and tedious. You have to assemble little pointless pieces together that they could have easily delivered as one piece. If they really do charge per piece then it makes sense to me now.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#275

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…

The factory in Switzerland was closed shortly after that in 2002. Lego really struggled in the late 90s / early 00s.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#277

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.

The same is true of, say, concrete.

Not breaking down in landfill doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't leech pollutants into the water table or somesuch.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Happens all the time. 35k avg according to Glassdoor. But furthermore, even if it were 55-60k, that’s about half of what you could expect in the US.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/london-entry-level-softwa...

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point still stands: By no reasonable definition is Lego the largest manufacturer of tires.

> The point still stands: By no reasonable definition is Lego the largest manufacturer of tires. This is clearly not true. All it takes is to acknowledge that Lego produces tires (which it does), check how many they produce per time period (which they provided) l, and compare with other statistics from other tire producers (which they do). At best, you can claim that your personal definition of what a tire is doesn't…

Mass might matter more than count.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans do generally call them legos. The company hates it.

They are Legos, as in "go clean up your legos"

“After you finish eating your Eggos, don’t forget to clean up your Legos”
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