Factories are just rooms • Hacker News Board

Re: Factories are just rooms

#91

Post by rauljordan2020 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:40 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually…

This is an incredibly impactful childhood. I'm from Honduras, a developing country where there is practically zero investment in science or the arts, and I was fortunate enough to also have gotten a similar book. One thing that struck me is how not a single person around me ever conceived of the things we use and consume on a daily basis as having been created by someone...another human being with our same physical faculties. I found all kinds of tech fascinating as something one could create, but my culture is too preoccupied with petty gossip of what others think and third world consumerism traps that prevent any kind of development. I felt like a fish out of water telling everyone about water and them not noticing it growing up over there

Re: Factories are just rooms

#92

Post by win311fwg » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #60

I would argue a fast food kitchen (or any kitchen) is a factory. An incredibly efficient one at that. Things are made and assembled to order from intermediate components. We take it for granted the amount of labor that goes into our food. There's no reason we could not make other consumer goods in the US at such scale - we just have weird, self-imposed constructs that say assembly line workers get more prestige and p…

Zoning and related matters is what really holds the US back. You are allowed to open a restaurant nearly anywhere, but good luck renting out a random office space or garage to start any other kind of small factory without a whole lot of pushback, especially if the process is "dirty".

Unsurprisingly, 70% of the manufacturing that does take place in the US is in rural areas. Trouble is that 80% of the population live in urban areas, so when a factory starts to gain some steam it cannot find anyone around to hire, starving any potential growth.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#93

Post by numpad0 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:53 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #17

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…

Very interesting! How are those garages coordinated? Who designs and who commissions?

Probably the first factory you walk into? That one would become the prime contractor that manage suppliers and subcontractors - I think those are the terms they use in multimillion aerospace and defense programs, but I believe the concepts are the same.

For aerospace programs, you sign a contract with e.g. Boeing for a 787 to be delivered 5 years for $500m, to be delivered to your company pilot at the Boeing Everett facility to be signed off and flown to accepting aircraft maintenance facility for your fleet. They then start dispatching fuselages and wings and parts to various aerospace kilo-corporates. They occasionally call you for confirmations and approvals for important items like engines and small overruns.

I guess the same in Shenzhen happens as a mostly-verbal order for a motor against Shenzhen Suchandsuch LLC in 3 days for $15k delivered the back of the factory on a shop table, with their chief machinist there to get you through the artifact and to help you with bubble wraps and duct tapes. But the overall structure is the same.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#94

Post by simonbarker87 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:25 AM UTC

RealityVoid wrote: post #27

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.

We made a relatively simple fan unit to improve airflow for UK central heating radiators, some fans, an electrical harness with a custom designed control PCB and a mix of injection moulded and extruded plastic parts.

Factory was about 2,500 sqft from memory. Ran the business for 8 years, made and sold 75,000 units but ultimately ended the business due to a lack of poor financing and a lack of business resilience to the weather (when it was unseasonably warm in winter our sales would drop)

Re: Factories are just rooms

#95

Post by simonbarker87 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:27 AM UTC

rogerrogerr wrote: post #30

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.

Sadly nothing specific, I founded that company with a friend so I don’t really know if another path in. Automotive production is interesting and there are lots of ways in that don’t require a formal background in the area if you’re willing to start nearer the bottom again, quality engineering is interesting and that brings you near the line without always being on it.

Re: Factories are just rooms

#96

Post by 0wis » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 7:07 AM UTC

I have an industrial engineer education. My master’s degree was specifically a collection of small projects to demystify (and have the keys understand deeply) all kind of manufacturing processes and the designing that goes with it : machining, soldering, smelting, forging, electrical circuitry.

I ended up working in IT for a large company because of opportunity. Both in terms of interesting projects and pay. All my fellow classmates that went into industry seem to be stuck in heavy internal processes, or working like hell to finish projects that barely recoup their costs. Those who went into hardware entrepreneurship struggle to find clients and investors. The only sector that still seems sexy is the very high end for B2B and luxury.

My analysis is that scale cannot be reached by non Chinese companies except for very specific and high end products (that have a smaller scale by design). Therefore it is impossible to compete on the price/quality ratio of large scale products. And I end up thinking that tariffs could be the solution.

I am based in Europe by the way

Re: Factories are just rooms

#97

Post by freeone3000 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 7:12 AM UTC

detourdog wrote: post #47

objclxt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually work I grew up with this book - I have vivid memories still of the pages about a nuclear reactor - and I was pleasantly surprised to visit a bookshop recently and find it still in print, updated with new things like LIDAR, 3D Printers, MoCap, etc.

The author David Macaulay taught illustration at my college. His original series started with buildings like “Castle”. The way things work was a breakout hit.

I was also a childhood lover of Castle and Vikings :)

Re: Factories are just rooms

#98

Post by jimnotgym » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 7:17 AM UTC

rogerrogerr wrote: post #30

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.

I work at a large factory. Most of the senior people started on the shop floor or as engineering interns. It's a long road, but the pattern I see is smart people who are willing to put themselves out, volunteer to run a line, volunteer for continuous improvement projects etc. Most of those positions are advertised internally. In the management team I see many who started in a junior job 20 years ago. There are lots of roles at a large factory, so everything from finance, software development, legal, hr are all ways in. There just aren't as many factories any more

Re: Factories are just rooms

#99

Post by jimnotgym » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 7:28 AM UTC

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…

China scales its approach to demand. It can build mega- factories or it can build small batches. Small batches require the dextrous artisans you mention.

A recent story I heard. A mega factory, highly automated, and making 1000 units an hour offered to make niche products at 1000 units every 3 months. They didn't change their line, they added a new one that was manual. No MOQ, no long term commitment. No long delays. Just got in with it

Re: Factories are just rooms

#100

Post by jimnotgym » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

JacobAsmuth wrote: post #65

First line of the blog the author states they spoke to the "year group" - what is that? I'm not familiar with the term.

The group of children who are the same age. How that is organised into classes depends on how many kids there are. There may be several classes in each year, or like my little rural village school where each class had 2 year groups in it.

In the UK state system you normally enter primary school at year 1, go to secondary school for year 7, leave secondary in year 11 (aged 16, or 15 if your birthday is before the start of the new school year in September). This is when you take your General Certificate of Secondary Education exams. You are then supposed to go to Further Education, academics go to study A levels, either at same school, or in my case a Sixth-form college, which hilariously keeps it's name from when year groups were named from the start of secondary (so modern year 7 is old year 1). You may also go to a vocational college teaching everything from hairdressing to car mechanics or book-keeping. You can also do an apprenticeship with day release to said college.

From A levels (year 12 and 13, or 6 and 7!) you can apply for university. You can also continue vocational studies to the same level. This is known as Higher Education. It used to be that Universities were academic and took A level students, and vocational students would go to a Polytechnic college, but they are all called universities now. The vocational colleges also tend to offer HE courses now.

It is a bit of a mess at HE due to a turn of the century push to get more kids to degree level and it is suffering a reset, too many courses, not enough students. Some cynics feel this was more about managing unemployment numbers down, than producing more talent...

One interesting effect is that professions that were often vocational in their entry (some engineering, the non-audit side of accountancy) switched to being degree first. This lead to frustrations as 20 something year old finance grads entered the workforce to find they were 5 years behind their cohort that did an apprenticeship when they were 16, kept up their studies and were already climbing a ladder they had no foot on!

Bit of a long answer to your question