Who knew ballpoint pen tips were so complicated and specialized? Learn something new everyday.
China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
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Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#12Who knew ballpoint pen tips were so complicated and specialized? Learn something new everyday.
They're simple enough.
Churning them out by the millions with sufficiently narrow tolerances to "just work" and doing so at an attractive price point requires a very finely tuned manufacturing operation and that kind of thing doesn't happen overnight.
If some despot had all the ball point pen production people rounded up and shot it would take us while before we figured out how to make ball point pens in the same volume at the same price again because there's a lot of tribal knowledge that goes into this sort of thing. This is basically the position China is in because they want to make ball point pens but they don't have any ball point pen people.
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#13> Support great journalism > > We rely on readers like you to uphold a free press. I think their ad copy is getting needlessly manipulative
With major world leaders regularly decrying the Free press these days it doesn't seem so needless or hyperbolic.
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#14> This cost the industry $17.3 million a year, according to the China National Light Industry Council.
Is this meant to be a lot of money? On the global trade scale? Or on the scale of China?
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#15Decries anti-globalism populism, then pursues nationalist goal of an all-China produced product. Seems like they want to have their cake and eat it too.
It's almost like the political thoughs of a leader of most other countries aside from America, are complex and can't really be effectively summed up in a short article about the manufacturing of a ballpoint pen.
Also, by 'they' do you mean all of China or just Xi?
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#16> Support great journalism > > We rely on readers like you to uphold a free press. I think their ad copy is getting needlessly manipulative
With major world leaders regularly decrying the Free press these days it doesn't seem so needless or hyperbolic.
Even disregarding the Bezos ownership, wp is not a nonprofit. I dont see how they cant uphold free press without subscriptions, nor why they uphold it more than others.
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#17> This cost the industry $17.3 million a year, according to the China National Light Industry Council. Is this meant to be a lot of money? On the global trade scale? Or on the scale of China?
Considering they manufactured "38 billion ballpoint pens a year" that isn't much no. They probably made all of the costs of buying it from suppliers back in sales margins.
This is more symbolic of their manufacturing and design prowess which historically has been limited to: everyone else does the design, we just build it.
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#18After two years and I still can't find a review of this pen? Is it being mass produced?
It's not a specific pen. Any pen made with steel balls made by TISCO would qualify. They don't seem to publish statistics. I found a document purporting to answer questions by investors [1], where their answer to questions like "did the media attention lead to increased order volume?" or "how large are the cost savings?" is basically "thank you for your interest, our proposed standard has already passed national review" without giving specifics. Those investors probably weren't satisfied with the response.
[1] http://tgbx.tisco.com.cn/upload/news/2017031406023863.doc
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#19Reminds me of Zippers. Ubiquitous and seemingly "simple", making one that is reliable for years is extremely complicated and there have been similar issues with Chinese made ones:
https://slate.com/business/2012/04/ykk-zippers-why-so-many-d...
Re: China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017)
#20> This cost the industry $17.3 million a year, according to the China National Light Industry Council. Is this meant to be a lot of money? On the global trade scale? Or on the scale of China?
No. That’s why no-one bothered to do anything about it for so long.