The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US • Hacker News Board

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#181

Post by ericd » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:22 PM UTC

showerst wrote: post #139

_delirium wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that these are all jobs that require a few years of training, which the US system isn't very well set up for. Automation is also making the skill/demand curve look more step-like I believe, where your value stays near zero up until you cross the "better than a machine could do" threshold, instead of scaling in some more smooth way. That makes it harder to get training on the job by just taking low-end…

That's an interesting point, and one that further suggests that we're better off shifting to more services and less manufacturing for the low-end stuff. Eventually automation might replace the bottom level of nurses and plumbers, (more so nurses than plumbers), but it will take _much_ longer. I have some family/friends who are in that 'only high school diploma, no credentials/money/drive to go to a non-community coll…

I've long wondered why we're not investing more in skilled labor/vocational training as a country - any idea what the bottleneck is there? A lack of qualified instructors? Specifically, I think it'd be great if the govt. made training a valid alternative to "looking for a job" as a requirement for continued welfare/unemployment (might already be the case, but I've not heard of that being so).

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#182

Post by gogobyte » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:24 PM UTC

Because Apple and the whole USA IT industry can not build good enough software for industrial automation. I mean, today's software building technology is too primitive.

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#183

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:28 PM UTC

excuse-me wrote: post #102

nknight wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Factory work just doesn't seem like a viable long-term career. The US middle class exists (or existed) in no small part precisely because of factory work. Many people have spent their entire lives in factories making a good living, some still do, more would if the jobs were available. Automation is the obvious argument against long-term viability, but most factory jobs have never been automated, and probably won't…

If people that work on an assembly line in a factory in the US are middle class - what's the definition of working class?

[deleted]

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#184

Post by tlrobinson » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 10:59 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #156

scott_s wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other huge issue is that a Chinese worker can produce an iPad for less than a robot while an American worker costs more. Not by as much of a margin as one would think. Listen to part 3 of This American Life's retraction of the Daisey story: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/r... The conclusion is that the difference per iPad or iPhone is a small percentage of the profit. They argue that i…

The estimate was moving manufacturing in the US would cost up to 65$ per iPhone and Apple is selling around 80 million iPhones a year. That approximation 5 billion dollars in lost profit each and every year just to build iPhones in the US. That's simply untenable for a publicly traded company even ignoring the added cost for iPod's and iPad's. Now they could probably give up say 100 million in profit per year and hav…

But is that additional cost purely labor, or does it involve the supply chain costs as well?

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#185

Post by Tichy » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 11:16 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #154

I hear a lot of people saying that America needs more manufacturing jobs, but I can't recall ever hearing anyone say that they want to spend the rest of their life doing repetitive assembly operations on a production line. We use Chinese workers because they're cheaper than robots. These are awful, tedious, soul-destroying jobs, but they're just marginally better than backbreaking agricultural labour. Nobody deserves…

I wonder, would agricultural labour be backbreacking if you only had to meet your own demand (and owned enough fields for the purpose)? Serious question, I don't know.

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#186

Post by anandkulkarni » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 11:19 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #161

tlb wrote: post #17

Having gone through the painful exercise of building robots in the US, I appreciate the problem. Our end-end supply chain latency was 16 weeks, far too long to scale effectively to match demand. Many component changes we wanted to make would have created a 6-week delay, so we had to compromise. A place with a factory across the street that could make screws in 3 hours sounds like heaven.

So I totally resonate with this, but I ask this question: "What would it take to create a factory that could make an arbitrary fastener in 3 hours?" There are things like having material stock, stamps, etc. But if you look at a screw factory one of the things that jumps out at me is that all the machinery is old old old. Which is to say, the typical fastener factory seems to have machines that were originally tooled…

The acquisition cost of a soft tooler is presumably sizably higher than the cost of maintaining antiquated production equipment. It's likely that the per-item throughput cost of a programmable tooler is sizably higher than that for a single-function device.

Before even asking about investment, you should check to see that the math actually makes it profitable to have a soft-configurable factory doing short-production runs. If you do, I think you'll find your answer about why this sort of thing doesn't exist yet (although it does, in China!)

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#187

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 11:28 PM UTC

damoncali wrote: post #27

Or they could just do like Dell does - require suppliers to carry inventory (on the suppliers' books) within minutes of their factories. You can do that in America just as easily as you can in China.

Apple already does this to some extent. But the issue is that they change their products frequently and sometimes abruptly, which can require changes to the components on short notice as well. In such situations, existing part inventories don't help no matter where they are carried. Instead what is needed is the shortest possible time lag between production of the revised component, and its arrival at the factory producing the final product.

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#188

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 11:32 PM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #60

I love the article up until the lame political statement at the end. GM / Chrysler bankruptcy != Business disappears and all suppliers go bankrupt. This is the straw-man argument of the left. The American auto bailout was a purely political play to save the unions who supported the Democrats. With billions in hard assets and a huge intellectual property base, the auto companies would have made great investments to po…

I'm not sure how closely you followed the auto "bailouts", but that is exactly what happened. Chrysler was sold to Fiat, and GM was put through an orderly bankruptcy that cancelled existing contracts and returned them to profitability. Government money was used essentially as bridge loans to maintain operations until these processes were completed.

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#189

Post by philwelch » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 11:43 PM UTC

wtvanhest wrote: post #152

runako wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The basic reason is that there is plenty of manufacturing all over the Midwest that could easily produce the entire Apple supply chain. Citation needed. There's a huge number of companies making memory, displays, batteries, CPUs at scale in the midwest? Who are they currently selling their products to? I admit to being very ignorant of such firms.

I'm sure everyone of those parts is built in the US. I do not know the location of every FAB, nor battery manufacturer, nor display manufacturer, and neither does anyone else. What we do know is that Intel has a fab in Arizona for example and Corning's headquarters (gorilla glass) are in NY etc. I also don't know for sure what is in each city in China. While it is public information (for the most part), finding a sou…

Backing the author's claim is the fact that Apple has done all the legwork on this, and ended up doing all this stuff in China. Unless you have also figured out how to profitably source manufacturing in the US for consumer electronics at the scale of tens of billions of dollars of revenue per year, the burden of proof is firmly on your shoulders.

Re: The Beer Game -or- Why Apple Can’t Build iPads in the US

#190

Post by philwelch » Thu, Apr 05, 2012, 11:51 PM UTC

joejohnson wrote: post #44

wtvanhest wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good question, sorry I wasn't more clear. The basic reason is that there is plenty of manufacturing all over the Midwest that could easily produce the entire Apple supply chain. Shenzhen can also produce that supply chain, but they are no more capable than a lot of American cities. What Shenzhen has that America doesn't are cheap labor, and a devalued currency. Silicon Valley is different primarily because…

>>The basic reason is that there is plenty of manufacturing all over the Midwest that could easily produce the entire Apple supply chain. Do you have a source for that? Foxconn has greater than 1 million employees. I don't think there is any company with a labor force of that scale in the US, or anywhere else in the world. And, per the article at the top of this thread, the bigger issue is the supply chain. If iPhone…

For comparison, the USPS is one of the biggest private employers in the US if not the biggest, and it has just under 600,000 employees. The active US military is around 1,500,000 strong. China's active military is closer to 2,300,000 strong. There are more full-time Foxconn employees than active troops in the militaries of any but about three countries.