Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?

[coppice]

Im not convinced the USA has loads of engineers in all sectors…when I worked on the electric drives for UKs latest electric military  ships (by Alstom Marine and offshore, called “Converteam” in UK)…..we had a  large ,  dry land test facility set up by the French in Lutterworth , Leicestershire.  It was needed because it was the most high power density electric drive in the world.   I  know that  the Americans came over and exactly duplicated the  whole thing, and built an exact replica in the States…..so it sounds to me like the USA is a bit short of electric drive engineers

If there's a working system, without serious flaws, and the world needs only a handful of them, you copy the working solution. The only sane reasons for not copying are that you are blocked from copying, or you have such a bizarre oversupply of engineers, that you can't lay off, that you might as well put them to use building a solution from scratch.

[ferdieCX]

Also, if you only have the "magic electronics" stuff going on...(hi grade electronics jobs)...then you won't get enough youngsters coming into
study electronics, because they will worry that they wont "cut it" to be a "magic" electronics engineer......so they wont choose electronics.
Thats why you need a big , domestic electronics industry, because then the young will see more simple electronics  jobs that they can go for...and they
will choose  to study electronics.

I teach an introductory electronics course in a technical university. About 80 % of the students say, that they want to became electricians because there are too few jobs in electronics.
Our modest but not bad local electronics industry, was destroyed by the cheap imports from far east.

[tooki]

Missile defense engineering would be a sweet ass job

Spoken by someone who has no idea what that kind of work is like.

Well… in Maryland (the US state I'm from), defense is one of the biggest industries, thanks to the proximity to Washington, DC and the Pentagon. And for what it's worth, those are coveted, cushy jobs. They pay very well and have great benefits and job security. What you trade off is that they're necessarily extremely bureaucratic workplaces, and that you often cannot talk about what you've worked on (since it's often classified), which can make it hard to sell yourself in future job interviews outside of the defense industry.

(I have never been employed by a defense contractor, but when I was working as an IT technician in Maryland, I had a couple of clients in defense, including Northrop-Grumman and the JHU Applied Physics Lab. Of course, I couldn't see the classified stuff, but talked to many of the employees over the years. And I know many people in my personal life who worked in that industry, or had a spouse who did.)

[coppice]

Well… in Maryland (the US state I'm from), defense is one of the biggest industries, thanks to the proximity to Washington, DC and the Pentagon. And for what it's worth, those are coveted, cushy jobs. They pay very well and have great benefits and job security. What you trade off is that they're necessarily extremely bureaucratic workplaces, and that you often cannot talk about what you've worked on (since it's often classified), which can make it hard to sell yourself in future job interviews outside of the defense industry.

There are certainly plenty of cushy jobs in defence. You can talk to many defence engineers on their retirement day, and find they never worked on a product that shipped in their entire working life.

[rstofer]

And of course look at how seemingly every major project the US has attempted in recent times has been a disaster, like the Joint Strike Fighter.

This project was destined to fail.  It was just a rehash of McNamara's F111 project and it too was a failure.

Here's the problem:  Navy planes have to land on carriers and that requires more structural support and a hook.  Navy planes want two seats, Air Force wants just one (usually).  Air Force wants tons of electronics, Navy gets electronic support from the carrier group.  Other than wheels, there is just about nothing in common.  So they build a plane that doesn't work for either group and give it to the Marines!

This project was destined to fail!  There is simply no "Joint" in the military.

As for the issue of skills: I think it's the question of quantity and type. The top-quality skill available in USA is very, very, very high. But the volume of top-quality skill is comparatively small. But more importantly, the volume of top production skill is almost zero. To compare Switzerland once again, one of the things Switzerland has done very well is to not only produce top-quality skill (like the advanced research and engineering that happens here), but also to produce highly skilled tradespeople to actually build things. Switzerland (and also Germany) both have extensive apprenticeship systems, whereby most people do not ever go to college/university, but rather do a combination of trade school and on the job training. (And a culture of not looking down on the trades helps.) As I remind people: People buy cars made in Germany for their engineering and quality. But the German automakers buy their tooling in Switzerland.

I have been told that it is pretty common in Germany to take one of two tracks coming out of high school - off to university or off to trade school where trade school is a formal education in how to make things.

The US doesn't do this very well.  Our community colleges often have shop classes but I don't get the feeling they are the same as the 4 year apprenticeship programs we had years ago in the aerospace industry.  If you were a Tool and Die Maker from aerospace, you were really, really, good.  I worked with these guys, I know how smart they were.  My dad was smart like that.  There wasn't anything he couldn't build, no trade he couldn't do.  But he put his sons through college - something he never had growing up in the Great Depression.  Oh, and he taught us the electrical trade - just in case the college thing didn't work out.

I have been hearing a lot about the US needing a lot more highly-skilled machinists/CNC operators than it has. Journeyman machinists in USA like to gloat that they're making more money than the engineers who designed the work they make!

Probably true in terms of salary.  CAD/CAM/Machining is a fairly complex affair.  It's pretty easy to design things in CAD but it's orders of magnitude more difficult to create the CAM files to build the part on some particular machine.  There's a lot of detail work involved.  It's a highly skilled job and I don't think the community colleges are filling this gap.  Even if they did, CAM is highly machine dependent.  What are the chances that the community college has the same machining center (as CNC machines are likely to be called) that some factory uses.

Now, the parts stuffer out on the factory floor, he's on the low end of skilled.  There will probably be some jig or fixture to hold the part and the operator just clamps the part in place.  Maybe there's a little zeroing off of existing edges but everything else is done by magic.

That's overlooking possible synergy.  Our community college has a program for working on Caterpillar equipment sponsored by, among others, Holt Brothers Caterpillar.  Their shop is a few miles down the road.  Benjamin Holt invented the tread track and founded Caterpillar - way back when.

Union electricians are probably making more than design engineers.  Unless the engineer is a 'partner' in the organization, they are just working for wages.  Unfortunately, a lot of electrical is being done by unskilled labor supervised by a single qualified employee.  The unions are trying to stop that practice but they aren't having much luck.

As to finding qualified engineers:  I'll bet I could put an advertisement in the Mercury News (Silicon Valley) for 200 engineers and have 1000 resumes tomorrow.  Of course I would have to add a little inducement (top wages, stock options, performance bonuses, whatever) but I guarantee I would find the engineers.  Of course the other companies would lose some engineers but that's how it goes.  When somebody says "shortage" what they really mean is they can't get engineers cheap!

We graduated over 100,000 BS level engineers in 2014-2015.  It's odd how many were Mechanical Engineers

https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/15EngineeringbytheNumbersPart1.pdf

[ocset]

https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/15EngineeringbytheNumbersPart1.pdf

..Thats very interesting...wish we had those stats in UK.
In 2014, the USA got 12000 electrical grads.....but also it says on another page that some 9500 "engineering grads" were "non-American/Alien"
So in other words, just maybe the USA only got 2500 USA_Citizen  graduates who were from Electrical Engineering discipline. It'd be interesting if the document would have explained this out.
In UK we get  thousands of electrical grads every year....but only about 100 of these are actual UK_citizens (at least in the field of electric hardware).........our UK government hides this fact from us.

[SiliconWizard]

In UK we get  thousands of electrical grads every year....but only about 100 of these are actual UK_citizens (at least in the field of electric hardware).........our UK government hides this fact from us.

I am not too surprised (although I would still have expected a lot more than 100!)
We have a similar trend in several european countries.

[Andy Watson]

In UK we get  thousands of electrical grads every year....but only about 100 of these are actual UK_citizens (at least in the field of electric hardware).........our UK government hides this fact from us.

Can you cite a source for those figures please.

[coppice]

Here's the problem:  Navy planes have to land on carriers and that requires more structural support and a hook.  Navy planes want two seats, Air Force wants just one (usually).  Air Force wants tons of electronics, Navy gets electronic support from the carrier group.  Other than wheels, there is just about nothing in common.  So they build a plane that doesn't work for either group and give it to the Marines!

The biggest problems come when trying to merge quite separate things like ground attack with air combat. The F35 suffers from this, as did the Tornado and other costly mistakes. There have been planes which did a pretty good job in both carrier and non-carrier form, like the Phantom. However, the F14 and F15 seemed to be good performers specifically because they were built for their specific roles from day one. Perhaps they were too independent. There might have been economies in using a common power plant.

[sokoloff]

Union electricians are probably making more than design engineers.  Unless the engineer is a 'partner' in the organization, they are just working for wages.  Unfortunately, a lot of electrical is being done by unskilled labor supervised by a single qualified employee.  The unions are trying to stop that practice but they aren't having much luck.

Unsurprising, as most viruses do try to replicate as much as possible. More people paying union dues is an overt goal for most unions and if it's not overt, you can bet it's a covert goal.

[doobedoobedo]

In UK we get  thousands of electrical grads every year....but only about 100 of these are actual UK_citizens (at least in the field of electric hardware).........our UK government hides this fact from us.

Can you cite a source for those figures please.

Treez arse.

[cdev]

Maybe they want inefficiency.

Having basically ceded away the consumer electronics industry, the US electronics industry focuses on military and high end instruments and maybe a few other things. Was that wise in retrospect? People still wanted to buy US electronics. Maybe instead of abandoning the consumer lines, they should have at least attempted to automate them more.

Here's the problem:  Navy planes have to land on carriers and that requires more structural support and a hook.  Navy planes want two seats, Air Force wants just one (usually).  Air Force wants tons of electronics, Navy gets electronic support from the carrier group.  Other than wheels, there is just about nothing in common.  So they build a plane that doesn't work for either group and give it to the Marines!

The biggest problems come when trying to merge quite separate things like ground attack with air combat. The F35 suffers from this, as did the Tornado and other costly mistakes. There have been planes which did a pretty good job in both carrier and non-carrier form, like the Phantom. However, the F14 and F15 seemed to be good performers specifically because they were built for their specific roles from day one. Perhaps they were too independent. There might have been economies in using a common power plant.

[coppice]

Having basically ceded away the consumer electronics industry, the US electronics industry focuses on military and high end instruments and maybe a few other things. Was that wise in retrospect? People still wanted to buy US electronics. Maybe instead of abandoning the consumer lines, they should have at least attempted to automate them more.

The US has retreated from most end equipments, but it still very strong in high value components, especially semiconductors. Many countries have abandoned consumer end equipment as something its too hard to make money from. The Japanese are busy doing it right now. Interestingly, they didn't keep their semiconductor industry in good shape, so they won't be getting any revenue from consumer electronics.

[rstofer]

Maybe they want inefficiency.

Having basically ceded away the consumer electronics industry, the US electronics industry focuses on military and high end instruments and maybe a few other things. Was that wise in retrospect? People still wanted to buy US electronics. Maybe instead of abandoning the consumer lines, they should have at least attempted to automate them more.

We got out of the consumer electronics business a very long time ago.  We couldn't compete with the labor prices of Japan.  Today it's China, tomorrow it will be Viet Nam and so it goes.

We can not lower our standard of living to match merging economies.  We can't compete with dollar-a-day labor.

So we have to be smarter.  We need to invent magic!  We don't have to manufacture it but we do need to invent it.  We will wind up with 3 classes of people:  Perpetually unemployed, burger-flippers and engineers.

[cdev]

Machines will flip the burgers and they want to globalize all the professions in order to lower wages way down.

You can bet that economies and really all investments everywhere, will then crash big and then, big surprise, eh,  they also won't make good on implicit promises like Social Security and I am sad to say also stocks, bonds, etc.

After all "nobody expected this" (What a Big Big Lie that would be!)

People have no idea...

If engineers were running the country, things still might not be perfect, but I am sure they would make more sense than they do today.

[vk6zgo]

Im not convinced the USA has loads of engineers in all sectors…when I worked on the electric drives for UKs latest electric military  ships (by Alstom Marine and offshore, called “Converteam” in UK)…..we had a  large ,  dry land test facility set up by the French in Lutterworth , Leicestershire.  It was needed because it was the most high power density electric drive in the world.   I  know that  the Americans came over and exactly duplicated the  whole thing, and built an exact replica in the States…..so it sounds to me like the USA is a bit short of electric drive engineers

If there's a working system, without serious flaws, and the world needs only a handful of them, you copy the working solution. The only sane reasons for not copying are that you are blocked from copying, or you have such a bizarre oversupply of engineers, that you can't lay off, that you might as well put them to use building a solution from scratch.

This is why the British auto industry, & to a large extent, their Electronics industry "went down the gurgler".

For instance, Joseph Lucas ("the Prince of  Darkness") could see that Bosch made better, more reliable auto electrical systems than they did, (or maybe they didn't---the illusion of "British & best" cast a long shadow),  but didn't do the most obvious thing---- get some Bosch bits, tear them down, & find out what they were doing to make them more reliable.

Another case, in the design of TV transmitters, PYE made a very ambitious 25kW UHF transmitter, of which we had two.
These delighted in killing their HT rectifiers.
The rectifiers were  tiny units which must have been adequate "on paper", but in practice, on the other side of the world, they were not.

When we started using up the spares, we frantically ordered more, but PYE were extremely "laid back" in their attitude to delivery times.----- several weeks to a month!
We got out of trouble by borrowing from other stations with the same transmitters.
NEC used massive rectifiers that usually outlasted the transmitters.

Another delight was the antenna changeover switch which enabled one transmitter to maintain the service if the other died ( they normally used both).
We spent an inordinate amount of time repairing these, (& became very familiar with the smell of burnt Teflon).
Ultimately, they were replaced with much superior switches made by Andrews.
Again, a possibly good product ruined by poor design in key points.

I mentioned long delivery times for parts.
Later, when I worked at a Commercial TV Studio, I was the unlucky sod who looked after Picture Monitors, as well as being the Transmitter person
Not the Brits this time, but the same sort of story.

We had some Tektronix 650series monitors, & they were one of that companies' rare failures.
The less said the better.

We also had some oldish Bosch monitors, which were reasonable, but "too smart for their own good",
having hinges to fold out the PCBs for service, which also served as the inter board connections.
A bit prone to failure.

As well, we had Sony monitors---- reliable, easy to work on, full documentation provided, parts available from Sony Aust, usually by next airfreight, or if they didn't have it, the day after from Singapore, who also held a large stock.

Then there were the Barcos !
"So-so" reliability, poor UI, hard to work on, very poor documentation.
If you looked at the PCBs, they were a thing of beauty, everything lined up straight as a die---lovely!
Compared to a Sony, the latter looked like crap- capacitor & resistors leaning at odd angles, ribbon cables higgledy piggledy everywhere.

The thing is, the Sony would still be going 20 years down the track, when the Barco  had succumbed to age & infirmity.
They did what mattered right!

And parts!
If a Barco failed  & you needed non-generic parts, you wouldn't expect to see them for 2 or3 months.
It seems to me that European firms wait until they can fill up a container before shipping it by sea.
(No airfreight for them).

PS:- I'm now expecting hate mail from ex Joseph Lucas, PYE, & Barco employees.

[coppice]

Im not convinced the USA has loads of engineers in all sectors…when I worked on the electric drives for UKs latest electric military  ships (by Alstom Marine and offshore, called “Converteam” in UK)…..we had a  large ,  dry land test facility set up by the French in Lutterworth , Leicestershire.  It was needed because it was the most high power density electric drive in the world.   I  know that  the Americans came over and exactly duplicated the  whole thing, and built an exact replica in the States…..so it sounds to me like the USA is a bit short of electric drive engineers

If there's a working system, without serious flaws, and the world needs only a handful of them, you copy the working solution. The only sane reasons for not copying are that you are blocked from copying, or you have such a bizarre oversupply of engineers, that you can't lay off, that you might as well put them to use building a solution from scratch.

This is why the British auto industry, & to a large extent, their Electronics industry "went down the gurgler".

For instance, Joseph Lucas ("the Prince of  Darkness") could see that Bosch made better, more reliable auto electrical systems than they did, (or maybe they didn't---the illusion of "British & best" cast a long shadow),  but didn't do the most obvious thing---- get some Bosch bits, tear them down, & find out what they were doing to make them more reliable.

Another case, in the design of TV transmitters, PYE made a very ambitious 25kW UHF transmitter, of which we had two.
These delighted in killing their HT rectifiers.
The rectifiers were  tiny units which must have been adequate "on paper", but in practice, on the other side of the world, they were not.

When we started using up the spares, we frantically ordered more, but PYE were extremely "laid back" in their attitude to delivery times.----- several weeks to a month!
We got out of trouble by borrowing from other stations with the same transmitters.
NEC used massive rectifiers that usually outlasted the transmitters.

Another delight was the antenna changeover switch which enabled one transmitter to maintain the service if the other died ( they normally used both).
We spent an inordinate amount of time repairing these, (& became very familiar with the smell of burnt Teflon).
Ultimately, they were replaced with much superior switches made by Andrews.
Again, a possibly good product ruined by poor design in key points.

I mentioned long delivery times for parts.
Later, when I worked at a Commercial TV Studio, I was the unlucky sod who looked after Picture Monitors, as well as being the Transmitter person
Not the Brits this time, but the same sort of story.

We had some Tektronix 650series monitors, & they were one of that companies' rare failures.
The less said the better.

We also had some oldish Bosch monitors, which were reasonable, but "too smart for their own good",
having hinges to fold out the PCBs for service, which also served as the inter board connections.
A bit prone to failure.

As well, we had Sony monitors---- reliable, easy to work on, full documentation provided, parts available from Sony Aust, usually by next airfreight, or if they didn't have it, the day after from Singapore, who also held a large stock.

Then there were the Barcos !
"So-so" reliability, poor UI, hard to work on, very poor documentation.
If you looked at the PCBs, they were a thing of beauty, everything lined up straight as a die---lovely!
Compared to a Sony, the latter looked like crap- capacitor & resistors leaning at odd angles, ribbon cables higgledy piggledy everywhere.

The thing is, the Sony would still be going 20 years down the track, when the Barco  had succumbed to age & infirmity.
They did what mattered right!

And parts!
If a Barco failed  & you needed non-generic parts, you wouldn't expect to see them for 2 or3 months.
It seems to me that European firms wait until they can fill up a container before shipping it by sea.
(No airfreight for them).

PS:- I'm now expecting hate mail from ex Joseph Lucas, PYE, & Barco employees.

Could you point out which part of that was intended as a response to what I wrote? I'm genuinely puzzled.

[tooki]

Could you point out which part of that was intended as a response to what I wrote? I'm genuinely puzzled.

Most of those stories are of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, where companies reinvented the wheel (poorly and unnecessarily), with the implication being that with a glut of engineers, companies gave them unnecessary work instead of having them focus on the core competency of the company.

[cdev]

Something like a power supply design would seem to lend itself to a parametric  design approach.

By parametrically, I mean software could likely generate the plans, kind of like games generate unique looking cities, dungeons, plants, buildings etc., from a sort of loose plan.

Then it could optimize for reliability, cost, available parts and simplicity, and if any of the parts became unavailable it could make the changes, increment the version number and handle the design and parts order changes sent to the parts and manufacturing supply chains by some agreed upon secure network protocol. At each stage it could generate an email and text message requesting that an engineer look at them and approve it, signing it with their cryptographic signature.

Which could be done by somebody with a laptop or smartphone sitting in some cafe somewhere.

I see something like that as where a great many industries are headed. But regardless whether they are in China or UK or the US, or India or wherever, engineers are important in the chain, as a sanity check on the machine generated output.

At that point what they charge for their time doesn't matter practically at all because even if its a lot, so much has been saved elsewhere in the chain, that its a very small percentage of the cost even if they are paid a lot. 

As time goes on the confidence level in these automated processes will likely increase.

The key area where this plan can foul up is if counterfeit / bogus parts are used in the otherwise good design, or worse, essential parts are left out entirely to cut costs, without notifying the "owners" of this process or even stolen. 

Security is likely to become a major problem as opportunities for legitimate employment of all kinds dry up, small companies fail or are acquired and consolidate into huge mega-corporations, and the few jobs that remain become the subject of contentious argument over who gets them, and where they will be done - to comply with various international rules..

Right there that is a good argument for bringing the manufacturing totally in-house and trying to automate it with an eye to perfecting the manufacturing process so the number of defective products approaches zero as much as is possible under a given set of circumstances.

The societal goal by freeing up so many people should not be to throw them under the bus, it should be to allow them to develop their own technical skills with the idea of having the human race move forward as rapidly as possible.

This would require dumping little known agreements that prohibit governments helping people with services that are sold by some corporation.

[Kjelt]

The West has a shortage of engineers.

When have you seen an actual shortage of engineers in a western country? Not an artificially created shortage, caused by advertising for first class people, and offering terrible rewards, but a genuine inability to fill positions with good people when you treat them well?

Today, there is a company in Holland flying in engineers from allover the world to get enough personnell even paying housing for them till they find their own place to live. 300/month are starting, Holland has perhaps 1000 graduates a year max.
But the strange and frustrating part is that the salaris remain the same as in other fields, no way an engineer earns $100k you need to be in sales or management for that 

[Kjelt]

Maybe they want inefficiency.

Having basically ceded away the consumer electronics industry, the US electronics industry focuses on military and high end instruments and maybe a few other things. Was that wise in retrospect? People still wanted to buy US electronics. Maybe instead of abandoning the consumer lines, they should have at least attempted to automate them more.

We got out of the consumer electronics business a very long time ago.  We couldn't compete with the labor prices of Japan.  Today it's China, tomorrow it will be Viet Nam and so it goes.

We can not lower our standard of living to match merging economies.  We can't compete with dollar-a-day labor.

So we have to be smarter.  We need to invent magic!  We don't have to manufacture it but we do need to invent it.  We will wind up with 3 classes of people:  Perpetually unemployed, burger-flippers and engineers.

Well if we did not have to pay 52% income tax, 21% VAT on everything we buy and 60% on anything that has to do with energy like gas, petrol and electricity I would be happy with 30% of my current salary and earn three times less than an engineer in Beying that now costs 90k$ a year.

[coppice]

The West has a shortage of engineers.

When have you seen an actual shortage of engineers in a western country? Not an artificially created shortage, caused by advertising for first class people, and offering terrible rewards, but a genuine inability to fill positions with good people when you treat them well?

Today, there is a company in Holland flying in engineers from allover the world to get enough personnell even paying housing for them till they find their own place to live. 300/month are starting, Holland has perhaps 1000 graduates a year max.
But the strange and frustrating part is that the salaris remain the same as in other fields, no way an engineer earns $100k you need to be in sales or management for that 

So the problem is not a lack of engineers, but a manipulated environment that keeps down engineering salaries. This is one of the commonest excuses for a lack of engineers in many countries.

[Kjelt]

So the problem is not a lack of engineers, but a manipulated environment that keeps down engineering salaries. This is one of the commonest excuses for a lack of engineers in many countries.

Well you can not explain to someone brilliant that has over 200 patents on his name and earned hundreds of millions of income for a company that he earns $125k when the CEO earns a 100 fold.
This is not about me (I am not that brilliant  ) but take as an example this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kees_Schouhamer_Immink
He left Philips end of the 90s having worked there for over 25 years and having soo many patents, he was considered one of the best engineers of the company. He probably had a good income above 100k but that is not in comparison of what he created for the company. So he started his own company and within two years earned more money than he had in the past 25 years.
It really is strange that someone who is in sales can tell his boss how much money he's worth because what he sold/earned for the company, but an engineer who invented the product being sold in the first place is still considered a fixed cost.
And if the company makes a top profit it is ofcourse all the work of that brilliant CEO that just has been hired 
Sorry for the rant but this really stinks.

[ocset]

Quote from: treez on Yesterday at 06:02:49 am

    In UK we get  thousands of electrical grads every year....but only about 100 of these are actual UK_citizens (at least in the field of electronic hardware).........our UK government hides this fact from us.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can you cite a source for those figures please.

https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/skills-for-the-nation-engineering

As the link shows, theres no way to find out how many of the  UK’s grads were UK citizens.
I wrote to the ONS once, and offered to pay for this data, but they just fobbed me off.

I calculated the 100 figure  (ie 100 UK_citizen elec/elec   grads every year who specialized in hardware, ie did a hardware project) by thinking of how many were on my course at Birmingham, then thinking how many colleges there are….you come up with about 100.

[ruffy91]

And someone in another college only has UK citizens as colleagues and using your method comes to the conclusion that 100% of grads are UK citizens...
Maybe you should think about your methodology.
I think third-graders in china can do it better..