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

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

#211

Post by eitally »

DanBC wrote: post #10
draggnar wrote: post #5

Will 3d printing and manufacturing advances (Foxconn can hire 3,000 employees overnight, but robotics lower labor needs) make the supply chain effect less important, lowering the costs of moving manufacturing back to the US? Will they come back to be closer to retailers?

The robot tech might be developed in the US (or where ever) but is still built in China. That makes sense, because it's used in China. And as expertise in building stuff concentrates in China all they need to do is keep quality high, keep costs low, and maybe keep an eye on human rights, and they'll keep the jobs. The barriers to US companies become higher. You've got to get the machines. You then need people to run…

Just to give you one piece of data, we build the same product on both a fully automated line and a manual line. The manual line requires 22 people to run, the automated line requires 8. It doesn't take much time (12-18mo for the kind of product we're building there) to recoup the cost of the robotics.

However, there are some very good reasons for not automating everything. Manual intervention at the process level is extremely important for the NPI process and any time an ECO is being introduced for mass manufacturing. Generally speaking, too, you don't want to have a bunch of expensive capital equipment sitting idle just to handle occasional overflow, either.

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

#212

Post by eitally »

gogobyte wrote: post #182

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.

This is an idiotic post and you have absolutely no idea what you're saying. If you'd like to discuss the situation, email me and we can talk.

....

Actually, after thinking about it a little more you may be more accurate than I thought, if I read your statement literally. Thankfully, the US manufacturing industry is building good enough automation software.

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

#213

Post by comex »

cubicle67 wrote: post #205
excuse-me wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the examples ( in the original article that this posts copies ) Apple changed the glass on the screen with 6weeks until launch. Corning had opened a factory nearby to make the glass and were able to change the screen shape quickly another nearby company was able to drop everything and make new gaskets. It takes 6weeks to ship product from Corning's US factory to China.

are you referring to this? ‘I Want a Glass Screen’ In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket. Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who a…

From June:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-upgrade...

"Apple also announced that the entire top surface of the iPhone, including the 3.5-inch screen, has been upgraded from plastic to optical-quality glass for better scratch resistance and visual clarity."

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

#214

Post by CamperBob »

travem wrote: post #131
e40 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize I didn't mean we manufacture nothing, but that we manufacture much, much less than we used to, right? If we can't agree that manufacturing started to move out of the US decades ago, was accelerated by NAFTA, and that we are a consumer of goods made elsewhere (more than others are a consumer of goods made here), then this conversation isn't going to go well.

Here's a good article to read on the subject http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-welcome-rise-in-man... In summary US manufacturing output is increasing and US manufacturing output exceeds that of China by about $100B, but only employs about a tenth as many workers as China.

In summary US manufacturing output is increasing and US manufacturing output exceeds that of China by about $100B, but only employs about a tenth as many workers as China.

Didn't read the article, but do they count companies like Apple and Boeing as "US-based manufacturers?" Of course they are, in the sense that they are US-based corporations who manufacture and sell $X worth of goods per year... but crediting the US with their "manufacturing output" would be nothing more than brazen statistical dishonesty.

Also, if "manufacturing" is defined as the "act of final assembly," as it is under certain Commerce Department regulations and those of other government agencies, would Apple be able to meet that criterion by setting up a factory in California that did nothing but bolt together imported PC boards, cases, bezels, and LCD panels?

It is far from clear that the US really manufactures much of anything anymore, the way the term would have been defined in the post-WWII era. I've heard people only half-jokingly refer to McDonalds as a "manufacturer" of burgers.

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

#215

Post by webXL »

smacktoward wrote: post #163
jgervin wrote: post #74

Cost is the main driver here. I am lefty, but I agree the unions are a little out of control. I am sorry, but a guy who stands in a production line building cars should not be making $125k per year (source was a series on TV, think 60 minutes where they talked to some of those workers). I am glad unions are there to help make sure people are not overworked and have benefits, but come on guys. You shot yourself in the…

> I am sorry, but a guy who stands in a production line building cars should not be making $125k per year You should be pleased to learn then that they don't: * http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhar... * http://www.factcheck.org/2008/12/auto-worker-salaries/

Fact-checking FactCheck.org:

Let's assume that a union worker won't get an extra $15 per hour worked that current retirees are receiving. So take $15 off of their labor costs of $70 per hour (complexity through obfuscation). So that's

  $55 = VALUE of actual wages and benefits EARNED by WORKING 1 hour
  hours_worked_per_year = 52*40 = 2080
  earnings_per_year = hours_worked_per_year * $55 = $114,400
So you're correct, according to FactCheck.org, it's not $125k per year. But the point is still valid when you account for benefits. If my employer gives me a new Ferrari each year as a benefit, no one would consider me underpaid if I made $10/hour doing secretarial work.

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

#217

Post by Someone »

acslater00 wrote: post #54
e40 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is the cause and what is the effect? The supply chain latency in the US is so high because over the last 3-4 decades we've moved from a producer to a consumer. It's because we don't manufacture stuff anymore that this latency is an issue.

That's a myth. The US has a huge and growing manufacturing base. We make airplane engines, medical devices, computer chips; all kinds of complex, high-tech manufacturing. We have the highest manufacturing productivity per worker in the world. What we don't make anymore are the kinds of products that require rote assembly tasks, like shoes and clothes and iPads. The upshot is that we have decreasing manufacturing empl…

I can believe a 60% increase since 1985 (which is what this shows; check the Y-axis range), as that is around 2% a year of growth, but the longer I look at that site, the more I wonder whether that is what it shows. Main question is what is on the Y-axis. Relative dollars or relative inflation-corrected dollars? I could not find that at the site.

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

#218

Post by macco »

Supply-Chain is certainly a point, but I doubt it's the only factor - relative labour cost play an important role. Questions to ask:

1. Why did the factories move in the first place.

2. Why can companies like Airbus oder German car manufacturers survive - their supply chain is distributed all over the planet, with the best paid workers in Germany.

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

#219

Post by developer9 »

Great article until "Obama was right in bailing out the auto industry when GM and Chrysler were going bankrupt. Because it wasn’t just GM and Chrysler that were going to fail, it was an entire ripple-effect of suppliers, tool manufacturers, raw material suppliers, trucking companies and dealers that were going to go away."

That's not the full reason that they did it though. It's because they were making vehicles for our military. If our country started relying solely on foreign countries for our military, they could disable our ability to replenish or grow our ground fleets.

But, even that is not far enough down the rabbit hole. There are enough non-government owned vehicles in the U.S. to more than make up for the lack of vehicles they would have lost, even if every other country simultaneously decided that we were the enemy, our military could use the country's existing resources (assuming we were ok with that).

And moreover, we are already reliant on other countries for our military and the running of our country. The only "advantage" of a government that pumps everyone's tax money into a select number of private companies, directly or indirectly, is that "survival of the fittest" is damaged. The "disaster" is delayed- the inevitable damage grows greater. It is the economical equivalent of forestry agencies that protected forests from forest fires, when forests naturally managed themselves via fires started by lightning strikes, such that large fires would inevitably start and be uncontrollable. Large bailouts can cause incredibly bad things to happen.

So, the question is, why did they do it? Band-aids and politics. It was not long-term thinking. And that is the story of our government. For the most part, no one is willing to make the political sacrifice for long-term gain. What we need now is for someone to help make government stable and predictable again, and to reduce the amount of red-tape it takes for U.S.-based businesses to succeed. But, it is going to take a disaster for that to happen- a disaster that will be much worse because of bailouts and other shenanigans. But, as for now, we will live in the growing forests our forest rangers protect for us.

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

#220

Post by Retric »

mbell wrote: post #200
Retric wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's put it this way if your adding 5% to the cost of the product adding a 4 week supply components that you sell at 1/2 price every year. Moving iPhone manufacturing to the US would cost Apple significantly more than that. It's true that one of the major problems with a supply chain for computer components is how rapidly they depreciate, but labor costs are insignificant in large part because they are in China. Hon…

The PCBs in cell phones are almost exclusively done by machines. You can't hand solder a BGA, a machine applies solder paste as the last step in the PCB manufacturing process and then a pick and place (robotic arm pulling parts off reels) sets the chips before sending the PCB through a reflow machine (an oven). Even for small batch runs of boards with QFP chips (which you can hand solder) you would machine all this,…

I agree with what you said.

By putting boards together I meant something much closer to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTQXGLDXQk8 vs. http://www.ethiotube.net/video/18959/Cell-Phone-Assembly-Pla... where you can see several people using a soldering irons about 2 min 10 seconds into the video.

But, it looks like the iPhone uses screws where a lot of companies used blobs of sodder to secure things. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U6HjbGCtqE Which I suspect increases their labor costs to reduce the number of assembly errors and allow them to be repaired. Of course if they did this in the US, the cost benefit equation changes and I suspect they would do more soldering because it's so fast.

PS: The point I was trying to make with Intel is once your 99.9% automated vs say 98% the laber costs stop being the major concern. Which is why Intel still builds chip factory's in the US. It's great to be close to your suppliers, but it's also valuable to be closer to your engineering team.

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