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Factories are just rooms

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Re: Factories are just rooms

#21

Post by dpark »

arjie wrote: post #18
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #14

This is from someone that has observed Shenzen. A location where much is made in garage sized factories (usually literally a garage space at ground level where people will bang out products by hand). You might not expect a bespoke 2 ton electric train engine to be made in a series of garages but it really is. One lot of workers will be experts at winding coils. They'll have a rig that spins and a spool of copper to w…

I admire Chinese industry quite a bit myself, though I haven't yet completed my pilgrimage to Shenzhen. Just a quick clarification about the healthcare plans, though. As a single-person LLC I'm able to get a non-fancy Kaiser Permanente plan here in SF. It's not super cheap or anything but it's there.

I don’t know about health care but a lot of stuff in the US is set up for megacorps and individuals but nothing in between. As an individual you can easily get a self funded 401k plan. As a small business you basically can’t.

Of course the US still biases towards megacorps who get to do things like distribute dividends taxed at capital gains rates instead of ordinary income like sole proprietorships.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#22

Post by simonbarker87 »

I setup and ran a small (10 people) factory many years ago in the UK. Hand assembly and a bit of soldering. It was the most enjoyable work I’ve ever done. I built custom jigs, worked with my team to improve the process, managed inventory, line balancing, work in progress, dispatching, deliveries, built palette racking, learned about kanban and buffers, wrote software to manage it, all working with a team of great people.

If anyone has the opportunity to work in manufacture or adjacent to it I highly recommend.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#23

Post by metalrain »

I think it's appreciation of the world and people to look and think, "some people did that". So many people working together globally to produce anything you see, sometimes over decades and many lives.

There is extraordinary in the ordinary.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#24

Post by thenobsta »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #2

I agree that awe and accessibility are often opposed, and that children are easily inspired by things that feel tractable but not boring I like the idea that we can teach children to feel inspiration instead of intimidation when learning how things work

I loooove the idea of teaching children inspiration instead of intimidation. Everything in the built world was made by a person just like you and me. That person may have had special training or unique experiences, but we too can move towards training and experiences and build/do cool things.

One of the ways I try to do this with my kid, is to try to investigate what's behind what we see and interact with -- with technical stuff it's asking how it works and how things fit together, with social stuff it's asking what's going behind the scenes and getting involved with it. Then reflecting on how cool the technical thing or event/social machinery is and what function it serves. This has been generative of tons of great questions from my kid and great discussion with them.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#25

Post by kjkjadksj »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #14

This is from someone that has observed Shenzen. A location where much is made in garage sized factories (usually literally a garage space at ground level where people will bang out products by hand). You might not expect a bespoke 2 ton electric train engine to be made in a series of garages but it really is. One lot of workers will be experts at winding coils. They'll have a rig that spins and a spool of copper to w…

Certain industries such as film adjacent industries definitely remind me of what you are describing. Small scale, small shop, profound expertise, able to immediately work and iterate. And the way they solve healthcare is simple. They don’t offer health insurance benefits at all. Employees buy it for themselves from Covered California.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#26

Post by Animats »

See "Maker Movement", 2005-1018.

Here's a practice factory that GM operates to train new employees to work on an assembly line.[1] There are plywood mockups of cars rolling on conveyors, and the new employees bolt things on.

A useful lesson for kids to get is how you make a hundred of something. The difference between making one and making many is not something most people get. Make something on a 3D printer. Then, for comparison, make a mold, and resin cast a batch of them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b12sOQ2hOF4

Re: Factories are just rooms

#27

Post by RealityVoid »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #22

I setup and ran a small (10 people) factory many years ago in the UK. Hand assembly and a bit of soldering. It was the most enjoyable work I’ve ever done. I built custom jigs, worked with my team to improve the process, managed inventory, line balancing, work in progress, dispatching, deliveries, built palette racking, learned about kanban and buffers, wrote software to manage it, all working with a team of great peo…

Super cool, what did you make? How large was the factory? How did it work out? One observation from my experience, the closer you are to production, the more stressful things are. But probably scale changes experience. For me, working on stuff that entered automotive production lines, anything that made the line stop or go slow was insanely stresful.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#28

Post by klondike_klive »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #22

I setup and ran a small (10 people) factory many years ago in the UK. Hand assembly and a bit of soldering. It was the most enjoyable work I’ve ever done. I built custom jigs, worked with my team to improve the process, managed inventory, line balancing, work in progress, dispatching, deliveries, built palette racking, learned about kanban and buffers, wrote software to manage it, all working with a team of great peo…

Its still one of the summer jobs I look back on with a wistful what-if. I worked in a small (10ish employees) factory in the 1990s. I selected, bent and inserted resistors into fire alarm PCBs. If I'd been there longer than 6 weeks I think I'd have learned more about it. But I'd already lined up my next job at the pub a few doors down.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#29

Post by jauntywundrkind »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

I don't think awe demoralizes children the same way it does adults. Kids want to be an astronaut, president of the United States, et cetera. They're still dreamers. If done incorrectly, this message could backfire. At that age, the worst label a job can have is "boring". If anybody can do it, it's no longer interesting. Not that the author is doing it incorrectly -- letting kids play with pieces of the factory proces…

I do think though that the astronaut, president, etc roles are imaginable. And that seeing the crazy automated factory with all manners of machines drillings stamping etc, that that is much harder to imagine oneself doing. The making of that factory is not on display, just the output of the human. Trying to emphasize the human, the role itself, is I think what Matt is getting at, and that needs to be imaginable.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#30

Post by rogerrogerr »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #22

I setup and ran a small (10 people) factory many years ago in the UK. Hand assembly and a bit of soldering. It was the most enjoyable work I’ve ever done. I built custom jigs, worked with my team to improve the process, managed inventory, line balancing, work in progress, dispatching, deliveries, built palette racking, learned about kanban and buffers, wrote software to manage it, all working with a team of great peo…

Any pointers how to get into that? I think I’d enjoy it. Was at a company that did manufacturing, and I was supporting it, but factories were in China and I was in the US.
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