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

[ocset]

We all know manufacturing is cheaper in China than say UK. However, if you get an offline  power supply designed in China, then you have to pay them for the maintenance of it as components go obsolete with time. Also, if your Chinese supplier hikes the price up, then you have to pay…whereas if you hold the design data yourself (eg transformer winding specs, BOM, gerbers, PCB tooling, stencil,   and schematic etc etc), then you are free to take the design elsewhere to be manufactured if  your Chinese supplier  decides  to hike up the price.
So in other words, getting a design done in UK , is cheaper than doing it in China……so why is virtually the whole of the west (especially UK) getting design done in China?

[jpanhalt]

1) Cheaper
2) More reliable and efficient
3) Faster

Pick two.

[tautech]

Buy an extra Asian SMPS.
Reverse engineer it, schematics, xformers, layout, the whole shebang !
Get a quote to have it built locally....................

[mikeselectricstuff]

Local supply chain  - access to ICs that only come with Chinese data, locally made custom magnetics etc.

Paying for occasional redesign for obsolete parts is still going to be cheaper than doing it outside China, assuming quantities are significant.

[dmills]

Also, jellybean power supplies are boring, they are exactly the sort of thing that you sub out because once they are good enough they add nearly no value to your products.

Given the trouble we have hiring competent design folks, I would far rather they be spending their time doing the stuff our customers care about rather then fucking about getting some random flyback thru certification.

Contrary to popular belief the far eastern vendors can design and build a perfectly good power supply (Just don't tell them that you only want to pay $5), and if you get someone like say Meanwell to lightly customise one of their standard parts the quality will be fine and they are quite prepared to play at volumes of only a thousand a year.

[ocset]

Given the trouble we have hiring competent design folks

Thanks, this is  because people are not coming into electronics in the West.
The recommendations of the "Revive (British) Industry campaign" can solve these issues...
https://massey276.wixsite.com/revive

We need to bring back power supply design to the west......because it is good bread and butter work in electronics which enthuses youngsters that theres work there that they can get into when they qualify...therefore , they are more likely to choose to major in electronics in the first place.

As we know, The skill of making lighting ballasts is “power supply design”.
The impetus to instigate the creation of  power supply designers in the west (via  governement run companies because in UK for example, the private sector is simply not producing anywhere near enough power supply designers) is that it is cheaper to design power supplies in the west than in China……if you get your design done in China, then you do not  hold the design documentation (eg the gerbers, BOM, schematic, tooling for PCB, stencil etc etc)…….therefore, if the Chinese supplier decides to up the price  of the power  supply,  then you have to pay, because you cannot take the design elsewhere because the design docs  are  held by your Chinese supplier.
Another point is the cost of  obselecence management…if a component in the power supply goes obsolete, then you have  to pay the Chinese supplier to manage this…full power supply design skills are needed to replace many obsolete components in a power supply. It is cheaper for a western company to do this itself, than pay the Chinese designers to do it.
This is why the west must seek the means to train up more power supply designers…and other electronics  engineers too.
In UK, the private sector is massively failing to train up enough power supply designers for the uk economy…and therefore uk companies are getting ripped off by  paying for power supply design from China.

[AndyC_772]

Local supply chain  - access to ICs that only come with Chinese data, locally made custom magnetics etc.

This ^^^

I do some jobs which involve designing (or re-designing) consumer products which will ultimately be mass produced in China.

I know my BoM cost will be higher than a Chinese-designed version, because I can only design with parts that exist in western markets, and which have data sheets in English. It's frustrating to know that a £0.90 PIC could be replaced by a £0.35 Chinese microcontroller, but the technical data and developer's tools just aren't available to me.

On the plus side, I know my design is one in which both my customer and I can have greater confidence. We know it's done properly, and should be reliable - but for a consumer product in a competitive market, the cost *is* important, and *is* sometimes the difference between a product which can be made and sold profitably, and one which can't.

[dmills]

Treez, your doing it wrong.

If I commission a power supply from a company (anywhere in the world), I pay them to deliver to a spec, and I (mostly) don't care about the details of which magnetics vendor or mosfet they use, component obsolescence is a risk to them not me, so I don't have to deal with it (This is a pretty good reason to do this actually). 

On the pricing thing, at the end of the day it is just a power supply, if company X puts the price up (or reliability goes down) and I don't like it, nothing stops me shopping the job around, and providing I have gone for something standard-ish (2 inch by 4 inch being a very common form factor for example), there are loads of companies that want by business. 

The only place there is value in power supplies is the high end stuff, and I am not a PSU specialist so will always buy that in, even there the margins are not big enough to make learning to do it myself worth the pain.   

[TimNJ]

I work for a company who designs power supplies in the US and manufacturers in China. I don't know if that's what you mean, but..

1.) Electronics companies, even big ones, don't want to design a custom power supply if they don't have to. They'd rather spend their time and money developing the actual product, and not worrying about safety approvals, electromagnetic emissions, etc. These are tricky things to get right (without a lot of previous experience) and expensive if you don't.

2.) For medium/high volume runs, you can't beat Chinese component pricing. On average, parts of similar quality come out about 4x cheaper than the Western counterpart (at my company).

3.) If your Chinese supplier hikes up the price, change to another Chinese supplier with an equivalent product?

[ocset]

3.) If your Chinese supplier hikes up the price, change to another Chinese supplier with an equivalent product?

Thanks, but if you change supplier, then you have to go through the whole shebang of getting them checked out etc etc......then, 12 months down the line, they too, may  just up the price.

2.) For medium/high volume runs, you can't beat Chinese component pricing. On average, parts of similar quality come out about 4x cheaper than the Western counterpart (at my company).

Thanks, i agree, ...so Western  co's should design the power supply themselves, then send the BOM etc over to china and get them to manufacture it, with the cheaper components, which will be  "same part number" , but just cheaper.

[AndyC_772]

Bear in mind that a power supply is the component that's most likely to cause your product to fail EMC.

"We couldn't get part X, so we substituted Y" is poor consolation when you find the products you've been making are no longer compliant.

"But the new version is still CE marked" is even worse.

With power supplies, more than anything else, you *need* formal change control.

[TimNJ]

True, but I think most companies see this as a risk worth taking. Also, I really haven't really heard of/seen this hypothetical price-hike situation actually happening. Maybe you've experienced it?

[ocset]

Bear in mind that a power supply is the component that's most likely to cause your product to fail EMC.

Thanks, i agree, but we designed a 60W offline flyback, got the prototype PCB ready within 3 weeks, and had put in a minimal AC filter, and got a near-pass first time...as attached.
A bit more minor tweaking and we're through.

I really haven't really heard of/seen this hypothetical price-hike situation actually happening. Maybe you've experienced it?

As the west further looses its power supply design capability, we are going to see price hiking by China........because they know we increasingly cant do it ourselves.
The provision of ridiculously cheap power supplies to the west is hurting China....the reason they take this pain is because they are happy that they are knocking out the west's own design capability...making us dependent on them....ready for us to be really had over by them.

[TimNJ]

2.) For medium/high volume runs, you can't beat Chinese component pricing. On average, parts of similar quality come out about 4x cheaper than the Western counterpart (at my company).

Thanks, i agree, ...so Western  co's should design the power supply themselves, then send the BOM etc over to china and get them to manufacture it, with the cheaper components, which will be  "same part number" , but just cheaper.

Well, maybe. Getting access to the Chinese supply chain isn't so easy for outsiders. I suppose you could hire a Chinese contract manufacturer to handle sourcing of local components for you. But even then, I think there's likely to be complications.

I don't really think a company should design a power supply if it doesn't have to.

[nali]

Given the trouble we have hiring competent design folks

Thanks, this is  because people are not coming into electronics in the West.

Well, some UK folks seem to be doing not too bad - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45821600

[ocset]

Hi,

well, some UK folks seem to be doing not too bad - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45821600

Thanks, talking of UK, none of those companies is UK owned...uk has sold off most of its engineering industry, and stands ready to enter the third world within a decade...
https://massey276.wixsite.com/ukdecline

[rstofer]

Just buy the thing!  Unless it is covered by some kind of national security arrangement, who cares where it comes from?  It's also fallacy to think you can build a one-off thing (pretty much regardless of quantity) cheaper than a company that specializes in building that thing.  In any event, let them incur the overhead costs.

In Silicon Valley, a qualified engineer likely costs about $150k in salary plus 35% in benefits - a little over $200k.  Probably don't want to hire very many of those guys!

Labor and components are the same from the point of view of business management.  They don't want to pay for either one but they especially don't want pension and health care costs on previous employees.  That's why there are so many contract employees in the US.  Getting a 'real' full-time job, with benefits, isn't that easy!

Our labor has priced itself out of the worldwide market.  I'm not suggesting we degrade to 3rd world living standards but we better focus on where we excel:  inventing magic!

The problem is, not everyone is capable of inventing magic.

[ocset]

It's also fallacy to think you can build a one-off thing (pretty much regardless of quantity) cheaper than a company that specializes in building that thing.  In any event, let them incur the overhead costs.

Thanks but in UK, that may not apply, since the Chinese know that we in UK cant design offline power supplies...so they can charge us that  bit more.

Youre right about the specialisation, this is why UK must start a government power supply design company...then they can supply companies with power supplies, and the employees can eventually go out into the economy and work in power supplies for whichever  company needs them.............often, startups for example, arent ready to go over to china for a power supply, as there volumes are not big enough, and the spec is prone to quick change, and  so the power supply skill is needed in house at first......but in uk....we totally lack that.
Other western countries too,  are lapsing like uk...but nowhere near as bad....uk is capitalism gone mad....we sold off  most of our industry to make a quick profit....or somebody did.

I bet that a uk governement run power supply design company could design power supplies for cheaper than a Chinese power supply company....they may of course, end up using  chinese manufacture to make them cheaper...but only chinese manufacture, not chinese design.
In small qtys anyway, China is not cheap.

[coppercone2]

I can see where treez is coming from. SMPS is hard to design and most people don't want to make their own, then you need to deal with a mysterious black box powering your circuit. It's a major PITA to not have SMPS expertise in a company because compliance becomes mysterious.. is it my circuit effecting a SMPS in a weird way? should I buy a new SMPS?

[rstofer]

Youre right about the specialisation, this is why UK must start a government power supply design company...then they can supply companies with power supplies, and the employees can eventually go out into the economy and work in power supplies for whichever  company needs them

Governments are incapable of running companies.  They are not even capable of getting other people to run companies.  Companies produce only when essentially unrestrained.  Profit (and stock options) is a powerful motivator.

Your idea of a Public Works program is fantasy.  It would be like every other government agency where the primary goal is promotion, not production.

[vk6zgo]

Not really a "Western company, but back in the day, when Sony employed a new EE, the Boss said "Send him off to build a new switchmode power supply".

Or, at least, it seemed that way to those of us fixing them.
Each TV or picture monitor had a different design of power supply, with its own peculiarities.
Sanyo, on the other hand, seemed to stick to the same design through thick & thin.

These days, even if Sony make stuff in Japan, they would probably out source the PSU to China, & they would probably be standardised.

[vk6zgo]

Youre right about the specialisation, this is why UK must start a government power supply design company...then they can supply companies with power supplies, and the employees can eventually go out into the economy and work in power supplies for whichever  company needs them

Governments are incapable of running companies.  They are not even capable of getting other people to run companies.  Companies produce only when essentially unrestrained.  Profit (and stock options) is a powerful motivator.

Maybe in the USA, but in other countries, Govt run companies existed for years, running communications, Electricity supplies, water & gas, & other public utilities.

Their managers were Senior Public Servants, & were paid maybe three times the average workers wage, not ten to a hundred times as is common in large private sector companies.
In an orgy of ideological purity, such organisations were sold off at "fire sale" prices, & now it has come back to bite us on the butt, as utility prices skyrocket, & service levels plummet

Now, these "efficient" private sector companies are whinging for government " bail outs"!

Your idea of a Public Works program is fantasy.  It would be like every other government agency where the primary goal is promotion, not production.

In the govt agencies where I worked, promotion was obtained by competitive examinations, & if you then applied for a higher position, after tentatively  being selected, were still subject to challenge by others with equal or better qualifications and/or seniority.
It wasn't a fast process, but it pretty much eliminated cronyism, which can be a problem in large organisations.

After I left the govt, & worked in a private company, I was not on call when a major problem occurred, but headed up to the transmitter & sorted it out.
The Boss commended me, & gave me a (small) raise in pay.
In the Govt. job it would have been "What took you so long?"

We were expected to "go out of our way", simply because we were "Public Servants"!

[Jeroen3]

Youre right about the specialisation, this is why UK must start a government power supply design company...

http://www.epsma.org/ European Power Supplies Manufacturers’ Association (EPSMA)
I know UK an EU are not similar, especially in the coming years, but I found this.

Also, plenty of companies in the EU still design power supplies. Especially medical and very specific ones for trains or military.
But for many of our products, it's just much much cheaper to just buy some Traco Power module instead of adding a year (or more) to your development budget.

[ocset]

I think the area of general power supply design  is not rocket science and so even in the private sector, wages are not astronomical...i dont see the difference between staff working for the government in an engineering company or working for some private owner.
Admittedly, super good  engineers would leave to get more money in the private sector...but thats good, because UK, at least, at the moment , doesnt not have  a private sector involving any power supply design companies...so maybe we will finally get some decent uk owned PSU co's (same to your respective countries)....maybe these super engineers could set up the next dyson, and prevent the UK from dropping toward  third world status, which is what we are doing now.

...and other western  countries seem to be tending toward...though i think the EU and USA see the shambles that is UK and act more wisely.
https://massey276.wixsite.com/ukdecline

But for many of our products, it's just much much cheaper to just buy some Traco Power module instead of adding a year (or more) to your development budget.

Thanks, thats right , you have the luxury of making that choice because you sensibly held on to significant amounts of your industry....so probably you dont need a PSU company to be government run.

[Zero999]

We all know manufacturing is cheaper in China than say UK. However, if you get an offline  power supply designed in China, then you have to pay them for the maintenance of it as components go obsolete with time. Also, if your Chinese supplier hikes the price up, then you have to pay…whereas if you hold the design data yourself (eg transformer winding specs, BOM, gerbers, PCB tooling, stencil,   and schematic etc etc), then you are free to take the design elsewhere to be manufactured if  your Chinese supplier  decides  to hike up the price.
So in other words, getting a design done in UK , is cheaper than doing it in China……so why is virtually the whole of the west (especially UK) getting design done in China?

How is getting a design done in the UK cheaper than doing it in China?

If it's a standard power supply i.e 12V & 5V, then get the power supply as a standard module and leave plenty of room in the case to account for changes in dimensions, then you're free to go to a different supplier, if they hike up the price.

The only time when it might be more cost effective to design one's only power is when it's something bespoke, i.e. highly unusual dimensions, voltage and current limit, but quite often the latter two can be set with trimmer pots or made to order.

[free_electron]

Speccing a power brick is : here are the dimensions and we need these voltages at these currents.
done.
i dont give a rats ass about the guts of the module , what switching controller they use or what topology. i give an electrical and mechanical spec and that 's it. how it works inside the box i don't care.
As a matter of fact : as technology improves and newer ic's with higher switching frequencies and better topologies come available it pays to have re-shop the brick ever couple of years. you may get cheaper and smaller for the same specs.

[tooki]

treez, you have a knack for asking questions without ever considering the answers yourself — or pondering the baseline plausibility.

With regards to power supplies, look at Apple, the world’s most valuable company. Apple has the talent in-house to design its own damned CPUs, whose year-over-year performance improvements are beating the crap out of the competition. Yet if you buy an Apple product, its power supply will be made by any number of power supply specialists, including Delta, TDK-Lambda, and Flextronics. Apple could easily afford to hire power supply experts to design their own PSUs, and then just have a contract manufacturer build them. But they’re not, they’re even designed by the PSU companies, as evidenced by having multiple suppliers for most of their power supplies, whose actual designs vary by supplier. (Meaning that Apple just gave them mechanical, electrical, interface, and performance requirements and let them figure out implementation. I just replaced the internal power supply in my sister’s Time Capsule after the PSU died from water ingress. The replacement PSU was made by a different company, with a completely different circuit and totally different layout. But it’s still a custom part that is functionally interchangeable.)

If not even Apple, with its massive engineering resources and endlessly deep pockets, bothers doing power supplies in house, do you really think there is any  chance it makes sense for you to?!?

[rstofer]

In the govt agencies where I worked, promotion was obtained by competitive examinations, & if you then applied for a higher position, after tentatively  being selected, were still subject to challenge by others with equal or better qualifications and/or seniority.

For the US...

I was thinking more of promotion at the managerial level.  Promotions within the working group are whatever they are, usually  by changing employers.  In the US, public service jobs are all unionized, promotions are more often based on 'time in grade' and not merit.  But the employees have a defined benefit retirement plan, something private sector employers are abandoning.

Our public utility just found a way to cut their labor costs in half.  They invented a shovel that will stand up by itself!

One could argue that our education system (in the US) is a government run operation.  A local school board and a state regulating agency overwatched by a federal agency control everything that happens.  It is an abysmal failure!

[rstofer]

If not even Apple, with its massive engineering resources and endlessly deep pockets, bothers doing power supplies in house, do you really think there is any  chance it makes sense for you to?!?

Not building PSUs is one of the reasons their pockets are so deep!

The concept of 'core competency' runs rampant through businesses.  It is usually used to jettison overhead departments (facilities, payroll, janitorial, etc).

Designing a PSU could be a 'core competency' but it doesn't have to be because there are multiple vendors who do have that ability.  Just tell the vendors what you want and select the low bid (or not, there are reasons to avoid the low bidder).

[coppercone2]

Speccing a power brick is : here are the dimensions and we need these voltages at these currents.
done.
i dont give a rats ass about the guts of the module , what switching controller they use or what topology. i give an electrical and mechanical spec and that 's it. how it works inside the box i don't care.
As a matter of fact : as technology improves and newer ic's with higher switching frequencies and better topologies come available it pays to have re-shop the brick ever couple of years. you may get cheaper and smaller for the same specs.

This is how its done but you can't seriously tell me as a designer you like it this way. I want to scrutinize every aspect of my product to make it solve the intended problem as good as possible. I even feel this about IC's, custom made asics to your specification will always be a better solution.

[free_electron]

Speccing a power brick is : here are the dimensions and we need these voltages at these currents.
done.
i dont give a rats ass about the guts of the module , what switching controller they use or what topology. i give an electrical and mechanical spec and that 's it. how it works inside the box i don't care.
As a matter of fact : as technology improves and newer ic's with higher switching frequencies and better topologies come available it pays to have re-shop the brick ever couple of years. you may get cheaper and smaller for the same specs.

This is how its done but you can't seriously tell me as a designer you like it this way. I want to scrutinize every aspect of my product to make it solve the intended problem as good as possible. I even feel this about IC's, custom made asics to your specification will always be a better solution.

yup. i like it that way. i can't get myself to figure out the turns and wire gauge to make an smps transformer ... and then building it, testing it. getting the empty bobbin alone is a drag ...
go look at the prices at distributers for those things. i can get the whole supply made in china for that price. From reputable manufacturers like antec and delta and meanwell and others
like it or not but making a good SMPS is NOT easy ! especially the transformer part is a specialty.

it can be done in the west. XFMRS inc has good transformer building service. and you can get competitive on price for certain specialty apps. but for your run of the mill power brick ? buy it ready made.

[TimNJ]

Speccing a power brick is : here are the dimensions and we need these voltages at these currents.
done.
i dont give a rats ass about the guts of the module , what switching controller they use or what topology. i give an electrical and mechanical spec and that 's it. how it works inside the box i don't care.
As a matter of fact : as technology improves and newer ic's with higher switching frequencies and better topologies come available it pays to have re-shop the brick ever couple of years. you may get cheaper and smaller for the same specs.

This is how its done but you can't seriously tell me as a designer you like it this way. I want to scrutinize every aspect of my product to make it solve the intended problem as good as possible. I even feel this about IC's, custom made asics to your specification will always be a better solution.

I'm still not sold on the idea that Widget Company XYZ can build a power supply better than Power Supply Company ABC. And, even if they can, I'm still not sold on the idea that they should. Yes, some companies may have the talent to build custom power supplies for their widgets, but again, why do it? Like many things, power supply design is kind of an art, and can be challenging to do right.

Yes, power supplies aren't perfect black-box devices. They have quirks and peculiarities that might cause you to scratch your head occasionally. But generally, they do behave pretty well.

[tooki]

If not even Apple, with its massive engineering resources and endlessly deep pockets, bothers doing power supplies in house, do you really think there is any  chance it makes sense for you to?!?

Not building PSUs is one of the reasons their pockets are so deep!

The concept of 'core competency' runs rampant through businesses.  It is usually used to jettison overhead departments (facilities, payroll, janitorial, etc).

Designing a PSU could be a 'core competency' but it doesn't have to be because there are multiple vendors who do have that ability.  Just tell the vendors what you want and select the low bid (or not, there are reasons to avoid the low bidder).

Yep, absolutely!!!!

There’s also the related concept of comparative advantage, of doing only the things where you are significantly better than others. I’ll never forget the analogy my economics professor used: Suppose you’re on the starship Enterprise. The decks need scrubbing. An ensign can scrub the deck in 4 hours, while Spock can scrub it in just 1. But Spock has science and telepathy talents the ensign lacks, so Spock’s comparative advantage is in sciences and mind melds, which the ensign can’t do. Even though Spock could scrub the decks, the opportunity cost of doing so is enormous, so it makes sense to have the ensign scrub the decks. (Or four ensigns, if you need it done quick.)

[sokoloff]

Speccing a power brick is : here are the dimensions and we need these voltages at these currents.
done.
i dont give a rats ass about the guts of the module , what switching controller they use or what topology. i give an electrical and mechanical spec and that 's it. how it works inside the box i don't care.
As a matter of fact : as technology improves and newer ic's with higher switching frequencies and better topologies come available it pays to have re-shop the brick ever couple of years. you may get cheaper and smaller for the same specs.

This is how its done but you can't seriously tell me as a designer you like it this way. I want to scrutinize every aspect of my product to make it solve the intended problem as good as possible. I even feel this about IC's, custom made asics to your specification will always be a better solution.

Honestly, I do like it this way. I'd rather ship than obsess over minute details of a commodity element of my design... If you need an aluminum enclosure, do you start by mining bauxite as well?

[ocset]

Thanks, yes , I understand what you all mean….

I'm still not sold on the idea that Widget Company XYZ can build a power supply better than Power Supply Company ABC. And, even if they can, I'm still not sold on the idea that they should. Yes, some companies may have the talent to build custom power supplies for their widgets, but again, why do it?

…sure, if you live in a country  full of companies that make great widgets, then you don’t want to bother with specialising in general power supplies for those widgets.
What I am saying is, that for countries like  UK that don’t  have widget making companies in any  significant quantity, then UK (or others) should  start out by starting a power supply company, -one that can supply  “widget making companies”. The power supply company  should be government  run, because in countrys like UK,  the private sector has totally dropped the idea of a  “power supply company”  and wont do it. In fact, in UK, the private sector has gone on an orgy of selling off  UK owned industry to overseas buyers.
The reason the government run company should be a power supply one, is because its relatively straightforward (compared to eg making radar equipment), and  , I believe, can be done as cheaply as the Far East…or at least, nearly so. Also, engineers who work in it could eventually leave and go and be power supply engineers in widget companies. Widget companies, I find, very often need their first prototype widget to have a custom made power supply for it….so the ex-gov’t_run_PSU company engineers could go and do that kind of stuff. Who knows, maybe  some engineers could start  up a private power supply company and put the government  run one out of business…..thats an excellent scenario because it means the electronics sector has been stimulated.
But in the first place, there is a need for a government  run company to get the ball rolling. Uk (and other countries) cant attract  youngsters to come into electronics because there are too few  electronics companies around…..so government run ones need to be started. The government wont be running it as such……it will be run by engineers employed by the government.
Also, the UK should declare that if anyone in UK starts up a power supply company, then it will be illegal to sell it off overseas. 66% of uk manufacturing industry  (>500  staff) is now foreign owned, and the UK now has not enough companies to  pay off its enormous national debt. The uk will be a third world country within a decade, unless radical measures are taken....
https://massey276.wixsite.com/ukdecline

..other countries too, can look out for this, because politicians have a habit of  nuzzling up to huge companies and making decisions as a result that jeopardise their own country....eg the "enterprise act 2002" in UK  that made sure that the UK govenrment now has no duty of intervention when uk companies are  about to be sold overseas......The sale of UK companies  to overseas  buyers ramped up dramatically after this legislation was passed.

[mikeselectricstuff]

The West has a shortage of engineers.
It would make no sense for them to sped their time reinventing the wheel, rather than working on more innovative and profitable products. A PSU is something that you just buy from people who have experience and infrastructure to do it.

[ebastler]

@treez -- Fundamentally, your problem seems to be that you (personally, and/or the company you work for) are active in a field which the Chinese are perfectly capable of addressing, and which is a large enough market to be attractive for them to address. LED drivers and power supplies seem to be that general field, and your personal area of expertise.

Your response to this, and the topic of many similar-flavoured threads you have opened here, is that government regulation should somehow force the public and private sector to bring this business back to the UK. Honestly, I don't think this is ever going to happen.

Instead, you should think about ways to differentiate the products you develop: Add some unique technical twists, or tailor them to niche markets which are too small for Chinese competitors to bother with. (Or which the Chinese just are unaware of, since they are not close enough to these customers.)

This may require skills which you personally don't have -- digital design maybe, e.g. to add remote monitoring/remote control capability to your LED lighting. Or the skill to listen to potential customers with an open mind, to figure out their unmet needs. Maybe you can develop some of these new skills yourself; maybe you are better off working for a company which has (or can bring in) these skills, and which then needs your "core" analog expertise to design the complete product.

Either way, establishing yourself in product segments which evade the Chinese competition is the way to go, in my opinion. Asking for government action to force customers or companies to "buy British" or "buy European" just won't work.

[BravoV]

Ask an average person, does an ambulance is important/crucial to a hospital ? Doubt anyone will deny it.

But, ask again, does "every" hospital need a full blown ambulance car service/repair station equipped with highly trained/experienced car service personnels that can fix almost everything at the ambulance car ?

Your problem is, you've been whining for maybe years here ? That the hospital you're working at, and the country you're living at are not encouraging and supporting inhouse ambulance car repair, and in your case by an enthusiast grade but passionate to fix the ambulance at the hospital it self.

Pretty sad actually, imo you should move to China, or at least change your career, that hopefully will made enough money to support your hobby & passion in power electronics, so you can live happily.

[doobedoobedo]

Well some of us don't think Treez has ever set foot out of whichever Eastern European country he's from.

Also who in their right mind would advocate for an industry to be run by government? Unless of course the motivation was to piss away tax income.

[ebastler]

Well some of us don't think Treez has ever set foot out of whichever Eastern European country he's from.

Why would you think that? No, treez is for real and is working for a lighting company in Southern England. I am not going to dox him here, but he has certainly posted enough detail to be Google-able.

[rstofer]

There’s also the related concept of relative advantage, of doing only the things where you are significantly better than others.

When Jack Welch ran GE (back when it was running a lot better than it has lately), he had a plan.  If a business segment wasn't #1 in its market or #2 with a chance of becoming #1, he sold it.  If you aren't #1, you can't set the price!

They have dumped ballast manufacturing, are selling off the lighting division for overseas manufacturing, trying to find a way out of railroads and so on.

GE even sold the dog!  The famous "His Master's Voice" dog was an image that started in the UK (Grammophone), was bought by RCA and sold later to GE.  Then GE sold the dog to Thomson SA, a French multinational corporation.  There are a number of licensees...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice

How could anybody do that?

I guess if you want to make the argument that companies should build their own PSUs, you could argue that they should make the other stuff as well.  Monitors, disk drives, DVD drives, etc.  All of this is possible, there are people who know how to do it.  But these accessories, like PSUs, are just commodities.  Not unlike a dozen eggs.  And no, I'm not going to raise my own chickens!  You ever smelled a chicken farm?  Even cattle don't smell that bad!

[coppercone2]

Speccing a power brick is : here are the dimensions and we need these voltages at these currents.
done.
i dont give a rats ass about the guts of the module , what switching controller they use or what topology. i give an electrical and mechanical spec and that 's it. how it works inside the box i don't care.
As a matter of fact : as technology improves and newer ic's with higher switching frequencies and better topologies come available it pays to have re-shop the brick ever couple of years. you may get cheaper and smaller for the same specs.

This is how its done but you can't seriously tell me as a designer you like it this way. I want to scrutinize every aspect of my product to make it solve the intended problem as good as possible. I even feel this about IC's, custom made asics to your specification will always be a better solution.

Honestly, I do like it this way. I'd rather ship than obsess over minute details of a commodity element of my design... If you need an aluminum enclosure, do you start by mining bauxite as well?

If I could justify it some how, then yes. I think in general though the repeatability and reliability and quality of aluminum is such that the benefits would be slim (but I don't know much about aluminum). Very interesting however.

I think your analogy is too steep, I don't think its right to compare a very pure chemical element and the chemical/mining industry to a electrical PCB.

[ocset]

The point is, that both in USA and Europe, there are huge Western owned Power supply designer/manufacture companys…so this shows that it can be profitable…unless of course they are maintained by protectionist grants(?).
There are even hugh lighting designer/manufacturers…eg Tridonic, Philips.
I think the end-game of the West not doing any Power supply design/manufacture is bad news for the West……..and if you want to have a sucesful power supply design/manufacture industry, then you need to have available jobs for  Western people in general power supply design/manufacture….that is, you need, if necessary, to stimulate that by having a government funded power supply design/manufacture industry….if it eventually gets succesful enough to go private, then so be it.
Power supplys are in virtually all electronics products, the West cannot risk loosing this skill by over-outsourcing power supply design/manufacture to the Far East……..i mean, for one thing, it would just be helping to fund the building of islands off the coast of the Bahama’s and Philipines etc

[CJay]

Our labor has priced itself out of the worldwide market.  I'm not suggesting we degrade to 3rd world living standards but we better focus on where we excel:  inventing magic!

The problem is, not everyone is capable of inventing magic.

This, always this.

The 'bubble gum' rock bottom price mass market stuff can be done anywhere, what's important is to remain on the leading edge producing stuff that can't be done elsewhere, we are now an IP economy, the Bunnie Huang video explaining cellphone manufacture makes it abundantly clear that the west can never compete with developing economies and China etc. on a level playing field in manufacturing, where we can compete is in the creation of new IP and then take the first year or so of profits from outsourcing it to manufacture in those develoing markets, that way we all win.

To suggest bringing back manufacturing of parts like the every day consumer PSU is madness and utterly counterproductive, it will hold us back rather than propel us forward, we should be concentrating on new technolgies, for the same reason bringing back jobs in coal, steel etc. is moronic when the only way to be cometitive is to slant the playing field against your competitiors with artificial barriers, that might work short term if you can put them out of business but mid to long term its idiotic as it creates inflation in your own market..

[sokoloff]

The point is, that both in USA and Europe, there are huge Western owned Power supply designer/manufacture companys…so this shows that it can be profitable…unless of course they are maintained by protectionist grants(?).
There are even hugh lighting designer/manufacturers…eg Tridonic, Philips.
I think the end-game of the West not doing any Power supply design/manufacture is bad news for the West……..and if you want to have a sucesful power supply design/manufacture industry, then you need to have available jobs for  Western people in general power supply design/manufacture….that is, you need, if necessary, to stimulate that by having a government funded power supply design/manufacture industry….if it eventually gets succesful enough to go private, then so be it.
Power supplys are in virtually all electronics products, the West cannot risk loosing this skill by over-outsourcing power supply design/manufacture to the Far East……..i mean, for one thing, it would just be helping to fund the building of islands off the coast of the Bahama’s and Philipines etc

Does the west have a successful power supply industry? (Is your green text true and blue text not? Or green text is true, but you think the owners are going to walk away from a successful and profitable business for some reason?)

If your green text is true, why would we need the government intervention called for in the red text?

I'm honestly trying to follow your arguments in this thread (and the others), but they're coming across as "I have a strong opinion and I'm going to shout about it for a while" rather than "Here's the fact-based evidence that I see and that evidence leads me to the following conclusion that I'm concerned about." IMO, the latter is a much more effective way to engage with and convince others.

[rstofer]

I'm not in favor of some form of protectionist racket to support overpriced domestic manufacturing.  In terms of power supplies, who cares?

There are two classes of power supplies in my view:  Those required for national defense and the consumer stuff.  I don't care where the consumer stuff comes from and we do build overpriced national defense supplies.  But for the defense application, design requirements will obviously drive costs upward.

And I don't believe for one minute that we can't manufacture a consumer power supply in the US.  Who invented all those SMPS chips?  We have the capability, we just can't reach a price point.  Government subsidies only work in the EU; we aren't doing that kind of thing in the US very much.  Yes, there are examples of subsidized products, like tax breaks for battery cars, but those exist to create a market that will ultimately create a product which will ultimately improve the environment.

It's a tough world out there!  Sink or swim...

[rstofer]

I think your analogy is too steep, I don't think its right to compare a very pure chemical element and the chemical/mining industry to a electrical PCB.

But we obsess over sand every day.  Somebody has to go to the beach, dig up sand, melt it into slugs, slice it into wafers, print an image (yes, I know the process is more complex than that) and wind up with a PC.

[rstofer]

I'm not in favor of some form of protectionist racket to support overpriced domestic manufacturing.  In terms of power supplies, who cares?

There are two classes of power supplies in my view:  Those required for national defense and the consumer stuff.  I don't care where the consumer stuff comes from and we do build overpriced national defense supplies.  But for the defense application, design requirements will obviously drive costs upward.

And I don't believe for one minute that we can't manufacture a consumer power supply in the US.  Who invented all those SMPS chips?  We have the capability, we just can't reach a price point.  Government subsidies only work in the EU; we aren't doing that kind of thing in the US very much.  Yes, there are examples of subsidized products, like tax breaks for battery cars, but those exist (temporarily) to create a market that will ultimately create a product which will ultimately improve the environment.

It's a tough world out there!  Sink or swim...

[ocset]

There are huge companies in the west (eg USA and Europe), who design/manufacture lots of cheap consumer lighting and power supply stuff...eg Tridonic, Philips, Osram, parts of GE, Ecco, Traco, RECOM, etc etc...so there must be a case for doing this in the west.

Also, think what would happen if the West imposed a total ban on Chinese imports tomorrow, due to the "China Island building" issue.
The Chinese would stop selling Cheap domestic power supplies to the West, and the West wouldnt be able to cope, because we wouldnt have enough
trained engineers to  make all the power supplies and lighting products etc , that are needed.

Also, if you dont have a big , general, cheap domestic power supply design/manufacture operation going on in the west,
then you will not be able to get enough engineers for the military stuff.
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.
You need a big cohort of youngsters to come into electronics...then from that cohort you will get your 5% of "magic" electronics engineers....
..but if your cohort is too small in the first place, then your 5% is going to be too small (ie you wont get enough "magic" level electronics engineers.

By the way, when i worked at Alstom, on the electric warships, we were told that we may struggle to get
high power thyristors , because in USA, they were struggling to train up enough semiconductor specialists.
My take is because they arent getting enough people into electronics in the first place....because we in the west have sacked our
large basic domestic electronics industry.

It wouldnt be pure protectionism.....if the west started this kind of industry, it wouldnt be that much lower than breaking even....its not like it wouldnt be able to sell the stuff.
-And the spinoffs, as ive said, would be great.

Of course, in the ideal situation, the west would only do the high end electronics stuff...but you have got to have loads of low end electronics
jobs in your economy if you want to produce  a sufficient  quantity of  those "magic" level electronics engineers.

[rstofer]

You're claiming that we need more engineers for an industry that you claim doesn't exist.  If we had an excess of engineers, salaries would go down and I'm not paying a huge amount of money for my grandson to get a first rate engineering education to have him work for burger-flipping wages.  I expect him to start at over $100k and work up quickly!

We have plenty of engineers - what we might not have is someone trained in a specialty.  So, they have to learn on the job.  That's true of all engineering.  What we turn out of colleges is a bunch of young people who are pretty good in math, know a little about a lot of things but know a lot about nothing.  And that's the way it should be.

In those engineering fields where registration is a requirement, there will also be a requirement for a 4 year apprenticeship under a registered engineer.  And this only starts AFTER the student passes the Engineer In Training exam and that isn't particularly easy since it covers ALL fields of engineering.  Electronic Engineers are at a serious disadvantage because a) electronics isn't tested and b) they didn't take enough Civil and Mechanical Engineering courses.  There's a reason I know this!  The test was REALLY difficult and I had to study a lot of subjects that never came up in an electronics program.

Then there are programs at universities for post grad work sponsored, or at least highly encouraged, by industry.  Hughes Aircraft wanted a bunch of MSEEs.  Turns out the local university wanted a bunch of grad students.  The industry, as a whole, wanted advanced education so my employer (not Hughes) paid ALL of my costs for grad school - no conditions imposed.

Industry must plan to provide advanced education.  They may not want to do that but, overall, when they increase funding for training/education, they raise the level for the industry as a whole.  Silicon Valley works a lot like that.  People change jobs, people learn new stuff and change jobs again.

At one point, National Semiconductor teamed up with Stanford University to help create a "non-registered option" program where working engineers could take the same televised engineering classes at the plant that students were taking on campus.  Same homework, same tests, the only thing missing was the microphones for interrupting the instructor and those weren't used on campus either.  This was way back in the mid '70s so it's nothing new!  Oh, it was in real time so the classes were during working hours!  And you got paid for attending!

We have plenty of talent.  If you drill down on this page to "Electronic Engineers - except computer" and then look up California, you will see a mean income of $122K and if you scroll down further for Sunnyvale-San Jose-Santa Clara (Silicon Valley) you will see $130K mean income.  Now we're talking!  Alas, that won't buy a house in the local area...  But that's a separate issue.

We have plenty of engineers, we have plenty of programmers, AFAIK, we have plenty of everything.  But you don't use $130K engineers to develop consumer grade power supplies.  They have better things to do.

I haven't heard the military complaining about not being able to find engineers.  They don't hire them directly (for the most part) but rather expect them to work for Raytheon, Grumman, General Dynamics and other contractors.  AFAIK, these companies can find plenty of engineers.  They just aren't cheap!  And, usually, they need to be US citizens (to get the security clearances) so we don't have to worry about H1B imports taking the jobs.

[coppice]

Government subsidies only work in the EU; we aren't doing that kind of thing in the US very much.  Yes, there are examples of subsidized products, like tax breaks for battery cars, but those exist to create a market that will ultimately create a product which will ultimately improve the environment.

It's a tough world out there!  Sink or swim...

That sounds delusional. The entire US semiconductor industry, aerospace industry and many others were built entirely on government money.

[SiliconWizard]

I agree with most of your points.

But it's still much cheaper. Like much much cheaper. In quantities, you can get the whole supply for like the cost of a flyback transformer only. Or even less. We just can't compete with that.

Yes there's still a market for western electronic products. As you suggested, mainly the high-end stuff with an aura of quality. But you have to be able to pull that off. And you'll still address a much smaller market. High-volume markets usually care about cost first. Quality comes second. Maintenance costs may even be a non-issue since the costs are often not upon the same shoulders.

Even subsidies work only for the highish-end stuff. No government will give you much money for making crap products that can be bought at 1/10th the cost in China.

[rstofer]

Government subsidies only work in the EU; we aren't doing that kind of thing in the US very much.  Yes, there are examples of subsidized products, like tax breaks for battery cars, but those exist to create a market that will ultimately create a product which will ultimately improve the environment.

It's a tough world out there!  Sink or swim...

That sounds delusional. The entire US semiconductor industry, aerospace industry and many others were built entirely on government money.

To start...  The initial transistors were far too expensive for consumer use.  Same with chips, without government purchases, there would have never been sufficient volume to get things started.

That's pretty much true with any new technology.  The government is almost always at the bleeding edge of technology and consumers get a cheaper ride.  NASA is a great example of that!  They needed integrated circuits to build the guidance computers so they created an industry to build them.

But, once the commercialization starts, military parts are a small part of the total number of devices.  In fact, we used to have 54xxx devices for military (and maybe still do) and 74xxx devices for commercial.  Needless to say, the burn-in and inspection of the 54xxx devices leads to higher costs.

I pointed out the tax breaks on battery cars.  That is about to stop because it only covered the first 200,000 cars per manufacturer.  Tesla's break is expiring right now.  Chevy and others will be expiring soon.  Hopefully, this impetus will have created a market and helped drive manufacturing costs down.  No rational company would have gotten into battery cars if they had to sell them at what they actually cost (plus a markup).  The batteries were too expensive.  I don't know if I'll be able to afford another battery car after the tax breaks expire.  Maybe not...

Same tax breaks with solar energy and utility costs.  Just to get something going.  The utility savings are forever but any tax breaks are likely to expire soon.  But there would have never been inexpensive panels if production volume hadn't ramped up and it would have never ramped up if the .fed didn't cough up some tax savings.

But this isn't a forever subsidy like treez is asking for.  Nothing good comes from the .gov getting involved with business.  They don't have the skills to run a company, for profit.  If it isn't 'for profit', and a LOT of profit, investors won't buy stock and the .gov is forced to pay for everything, forever.  And the price will be artificially high and some form of protectionism must guarantee the survival of the company.  All around bad idea!

[ocset]

Well i think in USA at the moment, you dont need to do this protectionism thing, as you have a sucessful economy anyway.
But i still think USA would be more sucessful if it  carried out my idea.
After all, the USA isnt doing that well......in 2014, little Germany, a country of just 80 million people,
was the world's biggest exporter by capital value, beating the USA.
I think the USA could take a protectionist leaf out of the German book.
The US isnt anywhere near as far gone as the UK, but to an extent, the US business owners are more pro themselves rather
than pro-USA......Though i'd admit that your industry managers aren't as self interested as over here in UK.
In Germany, the managers and workers go to work first for Germany, second for their company. -Thats how it should be.

[coppice]

In fact, we used to have 54xxx devices for military (and maybe still do) and 74xxx devices for commercial.  Needless to say, the burn-in and inspection of the 54xxx devices leads to higher costs.

The 54xxx series devices were not military qualified. They were -55C to 125C temperature spec. For a while there was also a 64xxx series with an industrial temperature range. The military qualified parts had a completely different nomenclature, and massively higher prices. Many semiconductor makers had parallel lines of devices with different temperature ranges, such as National with the LM124, LM224 and LM324. These days its usually just a suffix that specifies the temperature range, where multiple ranges are offered.

[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?

[rstofer]

Though i'd admit that your industry managers aren't as self interested as over here in UK.
In Germany, the managers and workers go to work first for Germany, second for their company. -Thats how it should be.

I disagree!  Working for a living is a lot like prostitution, we sell our time for money.  Whoever wants to pay the most for my time has my allegiance until the equation changes.  I owe a company nothing, they owe me nothing.  They will lay me off in a heartbeat is they think they can do without me and I will quit in a heartbeat if another company pays more money.  We both understand that.  There are no misunderstandings in employment.

There are no longer any defined benefit pension plans in the private sector (at least for new employees), today everything is defined contribution (some percentage of an employees contribution toward a 401(k) style plan).  I think my last company matched half of the first 6% I contributed.  So, there is no compelling reason for me to stay based on earning toward a pension benefit and my 401(k) can be transferred between employers or other plans.

Managers are absolutely self-interested.  At most salaried levels (including engineers), there are stock option plans.  I am granted so many shares at today's price, payable in the future, at whatever the stock value is at that time.  So, if I'm lucky (and important enough) to get, say, a 1000 share option at today's price of, say, $25 per share exercisable, say, 3 years in the future then, if the price doubles over 3 years due in part to my excellent performance, I get a $25,000 bonus.

Top level managers are getting millions of shares and their bonus is going to be a lot of money.  If the company grows.  They get nothing if the stock price stays the same or goes down.  They can still buy the stock on the exercise date but why buy into a loss?

The trick is to get option grants every year.  A few thousand shares here, a few thousand shares there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

It is not uncommon to double your salary with stock options.  In fact, most startups give out options instead of salary.  Facebook made a lot of multi-millionaires when they went public and their employees cashed in.  Even secretaries were suddenly multi-millionaires.

In the end, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good!" - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street".  Unfortunately, the .gov has to stick their nose in.

https://www.thebalance.com/greed-is-good-or-is-it-quote-and-meaning-3306247

[rstofer]

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?

Based on the number of H1B visas we grant every year, you would think we were short.  But that's not the issue, the issue is cost.  An outsider, obligated to a particular company, will quite often be paid less than prevailing rate.  This also helps drive down salaries for other engineers so, in general, we don't want H1B visas issued at all.

It's a really complicated situation but, theoretically, H1B visas go to people with advanced degrees.  So the great hope is that they contribute a lot to our economy (like they pay for, but can't collect, Social Security).

https://www.investopedia.com/news/h1b-visa-issue-explained-msft-goog/

75% of the H1B visas go to India and most of those are for computer programmers.

[cdev]

(Parity means US minimum wage, i.e. the lowest legal wage, not real wage parity)

$6.47 an hour (assuming a 40 hour week) was too little.

----

Re: whether they want more US engineers and other STEM people? (By 'they' I mean our nasty politicians and perhaps the leadership of some really huge companies, that have too much power)

My gut feeling, is that they want to winnow down the list of people who they 'need' to help in any way they can. Basically the people 'who have done everything right' including get an education, but who still cant find work.

The rich and powerful are not like you or I.

Their values and goals are similar all around the world, and very dissimilar to those of most of the rest of us.

Its a potentially very bad situation for working people.

All that said, as far as working people are concerned, in-demand engineering fields may be among the best areas to be in, assuming you have a Masters or better, and are coming from outside the US and are willing to work for next to nothing. (Note below that food and a place to sleep were provided.)

Even amazing skills and willingness to work wont be enough in the coming years, without family money, to suspatin you while you work for almost nothing, because wages will plummet as the amount of work falls, and the number of people looking for jobs globally rises. Spending will plummet too, leading to business failures. Nobody will be happy to say the least.

See below.

[tooki]

There are huge companies in the west (eg USA and Europe), who design/manufacture lots of cheap consumer lighting and power supply stuff...eg Tridonic, Philips, Osram, parts of GE, Ecco, Traco, RECOM, etc etc...so there must be a case for doing this in the west.

They might do the engineering in USA or western Europe, but where do you think they do their manufacturing? You think that happens in USA, the Netherlands, or Germany? No. It's all made in places like Mexico, Poland, and Hungary — the low-cost countries that are nearby.

Philips has, in recent years, invested in bringing some manufacturing back to western Europe, for example their electric shavers. But it's in fully-automated factories.

Well i think in USA at the moment, you dont need to do this protectionism thing, as you have a sucessful economy anyway.
But i still think USA would be more sucessful if it  carried out my idea.
After all, the USA isnt doing that well......in 2014, little Germany, a country of just 80 million people,
was the world's biggest exporter by capital value, beating the USA.
I think the USA could take a protectionist leaf out of the German book.
The US isnt anywhere near as far gone as the UK, but to an extent, the US business owners are more pro themselves rather
than pro-USA......Though i'd admit that your industry managers aren't as self interested as over here in UK.
In Germany, the managers and workers go to work first for Germany, second for their company. -Thats how it should be.

Hah, you're a piece of work…

That is absolute nonsense. Germans go and work for their paycheck, just like everyone else. If you knew anything about Germans, you'd realize that if anything, it's a country that is (understandably) reluctant to show national pride. And if Germans worked "first for Germany", then how do you explain the hundreds of thousands of Germans who moved to Switzerland for work? They just wanted a better life, which Switzerland can offer (thanks to salaries double those of Germany).

[tooki]

We have plenty of engineers - what we might not have is someone trained in a specialty.  So, they have to learn on the job.  That's true of all engineering.  What we turn out of colleges is a bunch of young people who are pretty good in math, know a little about a lot of things but know a lot about nothing.  And that's the way it should be.

Well… I remember a few years ago when Apple was explaining why it is, at the moment, categorically impossible for them to move their manufacturing back to USA. They said that cost wasn't even the biggest issue (with assembly making up a smaller cost than I would have expected), but rather agility. They said that if they need to ramp up production and need to find 200 engineers to oversee the lines, they can find them within 2 weeks, whereas in USA they couldn't find half of that in a year. (The other aspect is China's supply chain, where you can get custom parts made in hours instead of weeks.)

Here's a more recent Apple comment on it: https://www.inc.com/glenn-leibowitz/apple-ceo-tim-cook-this-is-number-1-reason-we-make-iphones-in-china-its-not-what-you-think.html

Cook:

There's a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago. And that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is.

[BravoV]

Well, there is a hope, with recent development at international political scene, as US pulled out from the nuclear arms treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) with Russia yesterday.

The upcoming events are expected, Western Europe countries will be queuing up like Apple hardcore fans to shop for mid range or protection missiles/systems, probably most will buy from US  .

As some Western block countries are capable of building those missiles/systems them self, and your country UK, is one of them, probably they will sell like hot cakes too. 

If you are still passionate on power electronics ...

 "AND"

... you are good enough for military electronics ..

"AND"

... you're true Brit, not an ex. immigrant from Eastern block as people here are suspecting, hence security clearance will be good for you ...

"IF"

... you are able to work with one of local Brit's military contractors, surely they will pay handsomely as gov budget will be pouring in, and market will be blossoming too. 

"AGAIN"

... provided that your skill n experience are good enough in this market.


Now, go, hurry and apply application letters and spread your CV like there is no tomorrow to those companies, its probably once in a life time opportunity that can change you life drastically as you dreamed of, rather than keep disgruntling every days working at your current company that is just another Chinese importer.

My 2 cents, wish this comes true to your life.

[ocset]

Thanks

They might do the engineering in USA or western Europe, but where do you think they do their manufacturing? You think that happens in USA, the Netherlands, or Germany? No. It's all made in places like Mexico, Poland, and Hungary — the low-cost countries that are nearby.

So  do you agree that  government funded power supply "design centres" would be good?….they  could get the manufacture done in the Far East……it would give electronics  jobs for western engineers, and thereby enthuse more  western kids to get into electronics.

Also, supposing in UK, we in UK designed a 60W offline flyback led driver with no electrolytic capacitors…and it also contained a 10W, 24V auxiliary supply, and the cost of the components alone cost £18 ($23.5)……that’s just the components…ie  not including the two flyback  transformers, the two heatsinks, the two 4 layer PCBs, and the enclosure, and the cost of assembling all that……so,  if we ask a Far Eastern company to manufacture that for us, what would the cost likely be of the finished product bought from the Far East?

Presumably the cost would be less than if we got a Far Eastern design house to do the design bit?

The component pricing is the cheapest pricing we could find on findchips.com based on  a few 1000 quantity for each component.
The components are made by western companies (aswell as others) such as Texas, microchip, onsemi, richtek, yageo, stackpole etc etc.

Government subsidies only work in the EU; we aren't doing that kind of thing in the US very much.

I think it could work in the US too.....i mean,  pound for pound, the Germans are more sucessful than the USA....because in 2014 they were the worlds biggest exporter.
The USA would be more successful if it operated some protectionism.......in electronics, as i explained, its for the purpose of getting more people into electronics...then you could get ahead of the Germans.

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

[dmills]

Presumably the cost would be less than if we got a Far Eastern design house to do the design bit?

I doubt it, a guy working in the country where you are having the production done will have a FAR better handle on local supply chain issues and pricing then you will from half a world away, and there are interesting and useful parts where the datasheets are not even available in English that are perfectly good parts. 

If I wanted 10k units of some random LED driver and weirdly could not find a suitable existing part, I would absolutely be using a design house in China to design it and handle the production contracts, it would overall be far cheaper then doing the design and sending it out to a CM over there (Actually I would probably just get Meanwell or the like to modify some stock design for me, this can be an option at surprisingly low volumes).

Regards, Dan.

[tooki]

Thanks

They might do the engineering in USA or western Europe, but where do you think they do their manufacturing? You think that happens in USA, the Netherlands, or Germany? No. It's all made in places like Mexico, Poland, and Hungary — the low-cost countries that are nearby.

So  do you agree that  government funded power supply "design centres" would be good?….they  could get the manufacture done in the Far East……it would give electronics  jobs for western engineers, and thereby enthuse more  western kids to get into electronics.

Ummmm… there's a reason why "made by the government" generally denotes that something is crappy: "government cheese", "court-appointed lawyer", etc. Without competitive pressures to keep you on your toes, you may not be making the best stuff.

The only exception is aerospace and military (which overlap tremendously), where the requirements for quality are extreme. But of course, for defense items, the government does not allow production abroad. The high specs, small volume, and domestic production are why defense equipment is so very expensive. (And that's before we even factor in corruption in that field…)

Also, supposing in UK, we in UK designed a 60W offline flyback led driver with no electrolytic capacitors…and it also contained a 10W, 24V auxiliary supply, and the cost of the components alone cost £18 ($23.5)……that’s just the components…ie  not including the two flyback  transformers, the two heatsinks, the two 4 layer PCBs, and the enclosure, and the cost of assembling all that……so,  if we ask a Far Eastern company to manufacture that for us, what would the cost likely be of the finished product bought from the Far East?

Presumably the cost would be less than if we got a Far Eastern design house to do the design bit?

I don't know what the cost would be, but it'd be less.

But even doing the design locally doesn't necessarily make sense for something as basic as an LED driver. There will be suppliers in Asia who specialize in this, and probably have dozens of reference designs that can be quickly adapted to your needs. And they'll have all the know-how on compliance issues and testing.

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

The US unquestionably is short on engineers in some fields. That's a result of dumb use of immigrant engineers, who are willing to come to USA at lower salaries, thus making engineering less attractive to American students, thus reducing the supply of domestic engineers!

[ocset]

Without competitive pressures to keep you on your toes, you may not be making the best stuff.

Thanks, the competitive pressure is for  some person, as a government  electroncis employee, to do good work and get good at their job, so that they can one day go and work in the private sector on some more exotic projects.

[coppercone2]

Missile defense engineering would be a sweet ass job

[rstofer]

We have plenty of engineers - what we might not have is someone trained in a specialty.  So, they have to learn on the job.  That's true of all engineering.  What we turn out of colleges is a bunch of young people who are pretty good in math, know a little about a lot of things but know a lot about nothing.  And that's the way it should be.

Well… I remember a few years ago when Apple was explaining why it is, at the moment, categorically impossible for them to move their manufacturing back to USA. They said that cost wasn't even the biggest issue (with assembly making up a smaller cost than I would have expected), but rather agility. They said that if they need to ramp up production and need to find 200 engineers to oversee the lines, they can find them within 2 weeks, whereas in USA they couldn't find half of that in a year. (The other aspect is China's supply chain, where you can get custom parts made in hours instead of weeks.)

Here's a more recent Apple comment on it: https://www.inc.com/glenn-leibowitz/apple-ceo-tim-cook-this-is-number-1-reason-we-make-iphones-in-china-its-not-what-you-think.html

Cook:

There's a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago. And that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is.

Finding a couple of hundred engineers is easy if the pay is right AND the location is right.  You can't plunk a factory down in the middle of a corn field and expect the surrounding community to include a bunch of engineers.  Nor can you expect a bunch of engineers to move to a one-horse town where your company is the only game for hundreds of miles.  You basically have to place your factory where the other factories are located.

In the '70s, we were putting semiconductor plants in Albuquerque, Fort Collins and Austin.  At least these were population centers even if specifically trained engineers might have been scarce.  The thing that was missing was infrastructure.  Where to buy specialty gases, chemicals, disposables?  Basically, an entire industry had to move.  The thing is, the engineers didn't want to move, regardless of the lifestyle and lower cost of living.  They would get to a place where there was only one company in town and if they didn't work there, they wouldn't work at all.

Small shops:  When I was a kid (18+) I worked in a small machine shop.  There were dozens of these shops around my small town and all were building stuff for the government (military or NASA).  If the .gov needed a widget built in a short period of time, there were a dozen shops in my town alone that could meet the schedule.  I don't see that infrastructure around where I live today.  There are a few shops but nowhere near the density that occurred in San Diego in the mid '60s.  That infrastructure has been dying out since the '70s.  Aerospace shutting down had a lot to do with it.

Machinists and Tool and Die Makers don't make very much money and job growth is almost non-existent.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/machinists-and-tool-and-die-makers.htm

Now we have to negotiate with the Mexican machine shops to get parts built because that's where we sent our factories.  NAFTA...

If we had the will, we could bring all that work back.  The question is whether people would pay the increases in the cost of manufactured goods.  Absent tariffs, we really can't compete with foreign labor.

I always point to July 20, 1969, as the technological achievement of all time.  We walked on the Moon and nobody else has done it since!  Here we are almost 50 years later and nobody has come close.  In fact, we had 6 landings and 12 astronauts on the surface so it wasn't a one-off event.

The point is, we had the scientists/engineers (several stolen from Germany) plus enough homegrown talent to pull off such an achievement.  All we need is the will!  Don't ever think that the US lacks the skills!

[tooki]

Without competitive pressures to keep you on your toes, you may not be making the best stuff.

Thanks, the competitive pressure is for  some person, as a government  electroncis employee, to do good work and get good at their job, so that they can one day go and work in the private sector on some more exotic projects.

Oh, LOL, sweetie no, that's not what competition in the marketplace means.

[cdev]

Soon the automation will be so good and so easy to train the factories for US products will be here and almost fully automated. They wont employ non-technical people at all.

[tooki]

Finding a couple of hundred engineers is easy if the pay is right AND the location is right.  You can't plunk a factory down in the middle of a corn field and expect the surrounding community to include a bunch of engineers.  Nor can you expect a bunch of engineers to move to a one-horse town where your company is the only game for hundreds of miles.  You basically have to place your factory where the other factories are located.

I didn't say finding 200 engineers was impossible to do in USA. I said (that they said) that it's impossible to find them quickly. (Your other points about location are, of course, absolutely true!)

In the '70s, we were putting semiconductor plants in Albuquerque, Fort Collins and Austin.  At least these were population centers even if specifically trained engineers might have been scarce.  The thing that was missing was infrastructure.  Where to buy specialty gases, chemicals, disposables?  Basically, an entire industry had to move.  The thing is, the engineers didn't want to move, regardless of the lifestyle and lower cost of living.  They would get to a place where there was only one company in town and if they didn't work there, they wouldn't work at all.

Totally.

Small shops:  When I was a kid (18+) I worked in a small machine shop.  There were dozens of these shops around my small town and all were building stuff for the government (military or NASA).  If the .gov needed a widget built in a short period of time, there were a dozen shops in my town alone that could meet the schedule.  I don't see that infrastructure around where I live today.  There are a few shops but nowhere near the density that occurred in San Diego in the mid '60s.  That infrastructure has been dying out since the '70s.  Aerospace shutting down had a lot to do with it.

Machinists and Tool and Die Makers don't make very much money and job growth is almost non-existent.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/machinists-and-tool-and-die-makers.htm

Now we have to negotiate with the Mexican machine shops to get parts built because that's where we sent our factories.  NAFTA...

If we had the will, we could bring all that work back.  The question is whether people would pay the increases in the cost of manufactured goods.  Absent tariffs, we really can't compete with foreign labor.

I always point to July 20, 1969, as the technological achievement of all time.  We walked on the Moon and nobody else has done it since!  Here we are almost 50 years later and nobody has come close.  In fact, we had 6 landings and 12 astronauts on the surface so it wasn't a one-off event.

The point is, we had the scientists/engineers (several stolen from Germany) plus enough homegrown talent to pull off such an achievement.  All we need is the will!  Don't ever thing that the US lacks the skills!

You hit on a point I (an American living abroad) have made many times (in other contexts, not this thread): the US has completely lost its will. Back in the early and mid-20th century, the US had tremendous will as a nation, and accomplished incredible feats in very little time. (Manhattan project, the moon landing, etc.) But since then, the US has become incredibly fatalistic. Any time something is hard, we back down.

I see this very often when I attempt to discuss things like healthcare reform with Americans. For example — and this is true, not a contrived example — I will say that the healthcare system here in Switzerland (of an individual mandate, with insurance on a well-regulated but competitive market) would probably be the simplest system to transition the US to, in that (until the 1991 reform), Switzerland's healthcare system used to be structured very much like the pre-Obamacare US system. But Americans almost invariably reply something like "no, USA is much bigger, it could NEVER work here", just shutting down the conversation. Like… I don't say it would be easy, nor that it's definitely the right solution. Just that it's something we should explore. But the reply is usually something to the effect of it being too hard to even bother investigating. It's very, very frustrating.

And I guess that it's just that living abroad, you encounter countries/peoples that absolutely do say "This thing we wanna do, it's gonna be hard. But it'll be worth it in the end, so let's do it!"

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.



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 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!

[tooki]

Soon the automation will be so good and so easy to train the factories for US products will be here and almost fully automated. They wont employ non-technical people at all.

I know that's how Philips implemented its shaver factory in the Netherlands. And for sure, it's how semiconductor fabs already are — and the next generation or two of fabs is expected to be "dark fabs", an allusion to needing no lighting, because they will be fully automated, with no pesky filthy bipedal "organics"/ "carbon bags of mostly water" shedding contaminants onto the wafers. (Kudos if you get the references! )

So yeah, I totally agree with you — anyone who thinks that highly-manual mass production is returning to USA is delusional. Any manufacturing that does come back will be highly automated.

[BravoV]

Missile defense engineering would be a sweet ass job

If you are interested and qualified, act now as vacations are limited and competition surely will be very brutal.

[coppice]

Missile defense engineering would be a sweet ass job

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

[cdev]

That day may come sooner than we think.

Without competitive pressures to keep you on your toes, you may not be making the best stuff.

Thanks, the competitive pressure is for  some person, as a government  electroncis employee, to do good work and get good at their job, so that they can one day go and work in the private sector on some more exotic projects.

[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..

[rstofer]

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.

It's really about risk.  The company takes a substantial financial risk every time they bring a product to market.  The engineer, OTOH, just works for wages with no financial risk if a product fails - worst case they look for another job.  But they're not bankrupt!

Now, if that engineer wants to take some risk, they do indeed form their own startup.   It happens all the time in Silicon Valley.  They find some venture capitalist to assume some of the risk in exchange for an ownership position and away they go.  Some succeed, some fail but if nobody tries, nobody gains.

The question engineers need to ask themselves is "How much money do I want to make and how much risk am I wiling to take?".  It's probably easier if there are two wage earners or perhaps being single with no family to support.

Look at Dave, he doesn't work for a company any longer (AFAIK) and seems to make a very good living producing videos.  Sure, he has a lot of technical skills and seems comfortable talking in front of a microphone but it all works for him.

If you want to succeed, you need to take some risk!

[rstofer]

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.

I have been on both sides of this debate.  From the point of view of a Project Manager, I will always try to use union labor.  Among other things, the workers will have been through a comprehensive apprenticeship program and will, on average, have far higher skills than non-union workers.  That's not to say that all non-union shops are bad, that isn't true at all.  But I have bigger issues than the cost of labor and it really gets down to 'game theory'.

If I use a union contractor and the project succeeds, I get a small bonus because I spent too much but I was successful.  The job is done, it's a success, everybody is happy!

If I use a union contractor and the project fails, I don't get hammered all that bad because at least I was smart enough to use qualified contractors.  We just need to toss more money at it to recover.

Now...

If I use a non-union contractor and the project succeeds, I might get a slightly higher bonus because I succeeded and saved a little on the way by.  But this additional bonus won't be much because the job is done and nobody cares how much it cost.

BUT

If I use a non-union contractor and the project fails, I'll get fired!  I was too stupid to realize that my chosen contractor was incapable of performing the work.  I lose in a really big way.

So, given that payoff matrix, I never work in the row and column that results in a maximum loss - I never hire a non-union contractor.

And that's pretty much how I made my choices over 30 years of dealing with contractors.  Game theory!

Good book: "The Ropes To Skip and The Ropes To Know"

https://www.amazon.com/Ropes-Skip-Know-Organizational-Behavior/dp/0470169672

Study hard!

Of course the unions want to increase membership.  More money for salaries and more clout by numbers.  That's why the SCOTUS decision that government employees don't have to become/stay union members is considered devastating to the unions and most of the employees.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-union-membership-supreme-court-ruling-20180627-story.html

[cdev]

Some kinds of risk, yes, but other kinds of risk, not as much.

Corporations are putting taxpayers on the hook to 'insure' them against things like regulatory changes - even when their products have proven to be unsafe and they knew it!

(I'm thinking of Phillip Morris's battle with Australia over tobacco packaging)

Thats what all-risk insurance should be used for, taxpayers should never be held liable for governments changing laws because they needed to.  But thats happening on a massive scale.

That really was one of the only major risks large corporations used to face. Now entire countries' policies are hijacked or held hostage and the people's lives are changed irreversibly, but transnational corporations are indemnified against pretty much all risks they used to face from regulators. While people (the real 'investors' in a nation) are exposed to huge new risks they don't even know about which can change their entire life. Now they face arbitrary shifts in the corporate regulatory scene that are so nasty they are hidden by regulators and corporations alike..

It's really about risk.  The company takes a substantial financial risk every time they bring a product to market.  The engineer, OTOH, just works for wages with no financial risk if a product fails - worst case they look for another job.  But they're not bankrupt!

Now, if that engineer wants to take some risk, they do indeed form their own startup.   It happens all the time in Silicon Valley.  They find some venture capitalist to assume some of the risk in exchange for an ownership position and away they go.  Some succeed, some fail but if nobody tries, nobody gains.

The question engineers need to ask themselves is "How much money do I want to make and how much risk am I wiling to take?".  It's probably easier if there are two wage earners or perhaps being single with no family to support.

Look at Dave, he doesn't work for a company any longer (AFAIK) and seems to make a very good living producing videos.  Sure, he has a lot of technical skills and seems comfortable talking in front of a microphone but it all works for him.

If you want to succeed, you need to take some risk!

We do now every time we vote, and thanks to ratchet clauses, no matter who 'wins' at the ballot box, we are likely to lose.

rstopher, did you know that huge numbers of government jobs we all think of as stable are about to be put up for international bidding? And that that will likely destroy unions, among other things? If you were in Europe there would be a small chance you would know but in the US... nobody does. What are all those workers, priced out of the market by their high cost of living and everything else, going to do? Its going to be such a big and radical change that the outcome is really unpredictable. They have been working on the particulars for 30 years. I am not kidding.

[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.

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

Joseph Lucas should have copied the way Bosch made their equipment.
PYE should have copied NEC's idea of "over speccing" their rectifiers, & Andrew's design & quality for the RF switches.
I didn't specifically point it out, but NEC's parts distribution system was much better.
Not that they needed to be, as their reliability was superior.

Barco should have copied Sony's emphasis on functionality & their parts distribution system.

There is a lot more to "copying" than just replicating the engineering .
If you do it in a shoddy manner, you will have a shoddy product, but at least that is better than living in an "ivory tower" where you think you always know best!

[rstofer]

rstofer, did you know that huge numbers of government jobs we all think of as stable are about to be put up for international bidding? And that that will likely destroy unions, among other things? If you were in Europe there would be a small chance you would know but in the US... nobody does. What are all those workers, priced out of the market by their high cost of living and everything else, going to do? Its going to be such a big and radical change that the outcome is really unpredictable. They have been working on the particulars for 30 years. I am not kidding.

None of the military government jobs will be put up to offshore bidding.  Those other government jobs that require touching an end product or interacting with people won't go offshore either.  Some will move to web based interactions but that is happening so slowly that the workers will retire long before it happens.

I don't believe in your doomsaying, you seem to be caught in a rut.  Fact is we have record low unemployment rate with gradually increasing wages.  Yes, we have a lot of people who are not in the labor pool but, for them, living under a bridge and/or taking welfare is acceptable (to them).  I have no idea what people are doing for a living nor how much they are making.  It must be more than welfare and/or they have run out of unemployment benefits.  It sure seems like everybody is working!

I have always said that the only jobs to have are those that require you to actually touch the product.  Better still if the product is military or otherwise classified.

I started working in '64 and retired in '03 and I have never been unemployed except by choice.  Work has always been available but, then, I didn't major in "Navel Gazing".

In the end, people have to have jobs to pay enough taxes to support a bloated government.  One way or another, people have to have jobs and the .gov will make sure they do by how they tax multinationals.

The good news with Trump is he lowered the marginal tax brackets (by a lot!) and although I have lost some deductions, it looks like I might come out a few thousand ahead.  Wait until March/April and see if there are complaints with the tax cuts.  A few thousand here, a few thousand there and pretty soon it adds up to something.

The median price of a home in California is $393,000.  In my neighborhood it is $484,000 and the house across the street just sold for $700,000.  In Silicon Valley, this piece of crap house sold for $2 million.

https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/2/17073100/silicon-valley-house-home-sunnyvale-record-price-crisis

Somebody is making a good living!  Alas, not me...  I'm retired.

[cdev]

It seems awfully stupid and dangerous to make it so that the maintenance, at a huge cost to society, of a continuous state of anxiety and near hysteria verging on warfare could become all that sustains stable domestic employment.

Also a recipe for voter disenfranchisement if all those jobs that involve even just a smigin of tax money, that cant be framed as totally nonprofit (thats how it works) or secret, can and increasingly will be put up for international public bidding, a race that US companies cannot win unless they fully automate almost everything. Because our wages are higher than the wages in Eastern Europe, India and Africa. (Africa is where they expect the biggest growth to be, and its not to help them, its because they can and will likely be paid almost nothing compared to the people currently holding those jobs)

So the jobs will quite suddenly become precarious labor. That will eventually include local government administration, teaching, construction, infrastructure work of all kinds, including engineering, hospital work, and perhaps even big chunks of what we still think of as the military. (contracts could be restricted to 'friendly' countries, such as the Eastern European allies whose wages are stuck at a few hundred dollars a month would seem to be likely to win them) Oh yes, and perhaps even the new "space force' no doubt proposed as a means of keeping money in the country, might end up outsourced despite their best laid plans. (I think thats not unlikely because of how the WTO handles precedents involving "like" goods and services- see the Bananas case, keeping in mind that the US and EU have already outsourced a great deal of space work.. to - of all countries- Russia!)

(BTW, keep your eye on the WTO next week, especially the controversy between it and the US over dispute settlement body appellate judges. Also, note that a little known case involving the US and India - filed March 2016, is long overdue for a decision. Considering the havoc it could wreak, the silence is a bit strange, isn't it?)

But - for the sake of the argument now, suppose the tiny percentage of jobs that involve secret stuff (perhaps even things as mundane as generic networking or smart infrastructure) and space force and drone force too, areas that likely sill still employ a lot of engineers (that may be the point)  are deemed privatize-able but not off-shoreable. Becoming an oasis of stability bin a sea of job-crapification.. (not the quality of the workers, I don't think that we can say with any certainty that the quality of engineers from any one country or another is that much superior to be determinative of such a huge differential in wages under trade rules which pretend that factors such as costs of living or longstanding labor standards and rules - such as minimum wages even- are not important enough to stand in the way of their global market liberalization)

To workers everywhere, the ways they are treated determines the desirability of the job- So suppose most jobs go but the secret ones can stay (a likely outcome I think) Even after suits brought against us by would be subcontractors tendering dirt low bids.  Remember, what is deemed a fair price in the market is determined by supply and demand. If supply suddenly rises tremendously, and rules creating artificial scarcities no longer apply, wages will fall until equilibrium is reached, like two basins with a tube connecting them equalize in pressure.

Thats an unpleasant world, isn't it, where increasingly rare stable jobs all require security clearances (or are vulnerable to liberalization, i.e. offshoring/outsourcing)

So, everybody who has a stable job will be in some secret profession and will be terrified of expressing any kind of opinion? And at the same time all the things that have held society together, public education, affordable health care, police, fire, teaching and academia, research.. are all tendered out to giant companies that base themselves in the cheapest and least regulated countries in the trading webs.

I'm happy to see that you at least have everything under control.

But where will our future engineers come from if there were no decent jobs for engineers any more?

[SiliconWizard]

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..

The numbers he gave are obviously biased and the real ones are publicly unknown, but I can confirm the trend (even though not quite as drastic) in a lot of western countries.

And for simple reasons. Engineering jobs are just not attractive anymore to young people raised in western countries. First because engineering is not seen as "cool" anymore. It mostly passes as geeky. That's a cultural trend, a global disinterest for technics as technology becomes ubiquitous. And to most of them, the potential jobs sound boring, unfulfilling and increasingly badly paid.

[SiliconWizard]

But where will our future engineers come from if there were no decent jobs for engineers any more?

You probably know the answer. There is no lack of poor countries full of young people dying to move up the social ladder. For them, our crap jobs will be a godsend.

[Kjelt]

It's really about risk.  The company takes a substantial financial risk every time they bring a product to market.  The engineer, OTOH, just works for wages with no financial risk if a product fails - worst case they look for another job.  But they're not bankrupt!

I agree with you that risk should be rewarded but I disagree that a CEO is the company, he is not! He is just an employee like everyone else, perhaps with more influence and power but still an employee that gets his salary every month.

The company is everyone inside the company. From the secretary to the CEO everyone, and everyone should profit when it goes well for the company and everyone will suffer (a bit) when it goes bad with the company.
If you look at the NXP takeover two years ago, the CEO would get 300 million or something if the takeover succeeded, what ? what ? Why? The worth of the company has been built up the past 30 years in patents, products etc. etc. 2 generations of engineers have put in their energy to come up with the productportfolio what makes the company worth what it is worth and now a CEO starts 3 years ago makes a deal with another company and gets 300 million while the employees get nothing ? That is what is wrong in the world today, we live in a collective , everyone contributes and everyone has risk to be fired.
If you have worked for 25 years at a company and get layedoff due to reorganisations when you are over 55 you will have a very difficult job finding something new.
If you did not work for that company but worked in multiple domains for many companies that might be different, so that is the signal which is being sent: don't be loyal to a single company or you get screwed. Start your own company if you have a businesscase. So the trend is towards individualist vs collective organisations and I can predict that small companies will never be as succesfull as a large company because they don't have the deep pockets which are needed for big inventions unless some investment company will back them up and then the employees again don't own the company anymore.

[ferdieCX]

(I'm thinking of Phillip Morris's battle with Australia over tobacco packaging)

Not just Australia, Phillip Morris also sued Uruguay for its anti-tobacco law.

[ferdieCX]

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.

I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?
It seems, that our technological development exceeds by far our moral development.
I am afraid, that mankind is heading toward some form of a new dark "Middle Age"

[rstofer]

I agree with you that risk should be rewarded but I disagree that a CEO is the company, he is not! He is just an employee like everyone else, perhaps with more influence and power but still an employee that gets his salary every month.

Yes, the CEO made a lot more money than me.  Somehow, that never bothered me very much.  I didn't want the CEO's job nor was I necessarily capable of doing it.

The company is everyone inside the company. From the secretary to the CEO everyone, and everyone should profit when it goes well for the company and everyone will suffer (a bit) when it goes bad with the company.
If you look at the NXP takeover two years ago, the CEO would get 300 million or something if the takeover succeeded, what ? what ? Why? The worth of the company has been built up the past 30 years in patents, products etc. etc. 2 generations of engineers have put in their energy to come up with the productportfolio what makes the company worth what it is worth and now a CEO starts 3 years ago makes a deal with another company and gets 300 million while the employees get nothing ? That is what is wrong in the world today, we live in a collective , everyone contributes and everyone has risk to be fired.

CEOs are paid by the Board of Directors who are elected by the shareholders.  Somehow they all got together and said what a wonderful goal the acquisition would be and how much more money the company could make.  Then they decided to add a bonus to the CEOs compensation if he could bring it about.

Sounds right to me!  Remember, I am a shareholder!  In fact, I may be a shareholder a lot longer than I am an employee.  I want the company to succeed for my own personal gain whether I work there or not!  I'm counting on the Board of Directors to install the best performing officers possible.

If you have worked for 25 years at a company and get layedoff due to reorganisations when you are over 55 you will have a very difficult job finding something new.
If you did not work for that company but worked in multiple domains for many companies that might be different, so that is the signal which is being sent: don't be loyal to a single company or you get screwed. Start your own company if you have a businesscase. So the trend is towards individualist vs collective organisations and I can predict that small companies will never be as succesfull as a large company because they don't have the deep pockets which are needed for big inventions unless some investment company will back them up and then the employees again don't own the company anymore.

It is also an indication of the necessity of maximizing your 401(k) contributions (where applicable).  First because most companies match some percentage and you want to get ALL of the matching money and, second, so when you retire at the tender age of 58, you don't have to worry about money - ever!

There are quite a few employee owned businesses.  This usually means is the employees own company stock and perhaps that stock is what they invest their 401(k) money into.  If the company fails, their retirement goes out the window!  I don't know what to think of this idea.  It's good to own stock, it's nice to be able to see how the company works, it's good to be able to improve the company and, hence, the value of your retirement fund.  However, the guy working in the stock room isn't going to sway the CEO so the idea that the employees run the company is dubious.  The officers will have a LOT more voting stock than the employees.

I am not a fan of the current thinking re: equal outcomes.  There seems to be an idea floating around that everybody should have essentially the same advantages, especially financial.  Left out of the idea is equal effort!  The CEO is smarter at running a business than I am because he has spent time learning to run a business.  All I ever wanted to do was build stuff.  I'm real good at building stuff but it doesn't pay as much as being a CEO.

[rstofer]

The numbers he gave are obviously biased and the real ones are publicly unknown, but I can confirm the trend (even though not quite as drastic) in a lot of western countries.

And for simple reasons. Engineering jobs are just not attractive anymore to young people raised in western countries. First because engineering is not seen as "cool" anymore. It mostly passes as geeky. That's a cultural trend, a global disinterest for technics as technology becomes ubiquitous. And to most of them, the potential jobs sound boring, unfulfilling and increasingly badly paid.

So, how do the non-participants plan to make a decent living?  I don't have a basement and all 3 bedrooms are full.  And, no, nobody is going to camp out in our gym.

All of the technology was invented by engineers - somewhere.  As technology itself increases, there will be an exponentially greater effort to employ it.  Kind of like the early days of the Web.  Anybody who could make a screen pop up suddenly had work.  Some of the web pages were truly trash but over some period of time, things settled down and now creating web pages probably is routine, ie, boring.

But there's always something else.  We haven't even started with Robotics and AI is going to be a really big deal.  Computer vision is the talk of the town.  People need to get involved with these emerging technologies.

There will always be work for people with cutting edge skills and education.  The others are going to be left behind.

[Bassman59]

I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?

This is the question that needs an answer. The rest is commentary.

[coppice]

I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?

I think the key word here is equilibrium.

[cdev]

The unemployed engineers?

I don't see there as being much of a market for burger flippers, they have machines that do that now, they look kind of like a laser printer for meat.

I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?

This is the question that needs an answer. The rest is commentary.

What about YouTube , Ebay and Uber?

[cdev]

From where I sit (and I read a lot of papers on economics these days) the world is very much removed from the idea you proposed. Instead the dominant way of thinking is basically this one.

" \should A be allowed to harm B or should B be allowed to
harm  A"?   His  solution  to  this  question:  \avoid  the  more  serious (in financial terms)   harm".   That  is,  Coase
suggests we need to weigh the marginal benefits of polluting activities with it's associated marginal  costs. (I.e. lost wages, this is why polluters always locate in poor countries or areas)

"For  example,  in  the  case  of  the  contamination  of  a  stream,  or aquifer we  need  to decide \is the value of the  "fish" lost greater or less than the value of the product which the contamination of the stream makes possible?"

So thats the exact opposite of what you're proposing.

I am not a fan of the current thinking re: equal outcomes.  There seems to be an idea floating around that everybody should have essentially the same advantages, especially financial.  Left out of the idea is equal effort!  The CEO is smarter at running a business than I am because he has spent time learning to run a business.  All I ever wanted to do was build stuff.  I'm real good at building stuff but it doesn't pay as much as being a CEO.

The same logic applies to the "bullshit promises" made by corporations and unfortunately also politicians. Its widely known and accepted that politicians 'have to' make outlandish promises to get elected, and in certain circles they are accepted as having nothing whatsoever to do with reality.  As sort of a joke. They just pick a target audience and make stuff up that they think that audience wants to hear. People fall for this every time.

Even the good ones do this.

[cdev]

To remain employed, people have to keep in mind that the time from lab to commercialized product to unprofitable is now just a few years, by the time a technology is taught in schools it may no longer be profitable. It may be old hat.

[ocset]

The  following shows that even in the United States, there were only somewhere between  3000 and 11300 US_citizens who qualified with a degree in  Electrical/Electronics in 2015….
https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/15EngineeringbytheNumbersPart1.pdf
…that’s nowhere near enough to sustain USA industry at current levels.

This is likely to be because……
1….The USA does not adequately encourage USA  youngsters to get into electronics.
2…The USA has, to a large extent,  “opted out” of “easier electronics”….ie stuff like massive SMPS design and build companies. This means that there are seen to be less jobs in Electronics in the US, and also that the remaining jobs in electronics are too highly specialised to encourage a large number of youngsters to enter into electronics, as they fear they will not attain the high skill level in order to ultimately get a job.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This could be remedied by starting up a large  government funded company to design/build SMPS’s (and other companies  to design/build other such “easier” stuff).
This then would encourage the USA youngsters to get into Electronics, as they would then  feel that there are a  sufficient number of  potential jobs available, and also jobs  available that they  stand a chance of  getting good enough to do.
Its important to get high numbers of students into electronics…because out of any undergrad cohort, there will only be a very  small number of the “brilliant” engineers….so therefore you need a big number coming in,  in order to reap a sufficient number of  the “brilliant” ones.
However, the following people would, for reasons of self-interest, never agree with what I have just written…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1….Current engineers who are making a good living, since they would fear the job market getting saturated with job competitors. (however, their  fears are actually irrational…..the situation would actually improve for them).
2…Large electronics corporations…since the last thing they want is loads of electronics engineers  saturating the market, and being available to work for their smaller competitors and make them turn into bigger rival companies.
2A….Politicians who are under the influence of the corporations of Part 2.
3…….College lecturers……the last thing college lecturers want is the market getting saturated with loads of  qualified engineers…because they will feel that this makes their job under threat…(however again, this is an irrational fear)
4…”Middle men” who are making  a fortune out of taking a cut out of large consignments of power supplies imported from the Far East.
5…Retired engineers who have sons/daughters who work as electronics engineers…because again they would fear the  saturation of engineers in the market bringing wages down (but as I said before, this is actually irrational…the opposite would happen)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A government run company could, if it became very  successful, go private, but the government would have to stipulate  that if sold into private hands, it would never be allowed to be sold out of US ownership.
“Mass electronics” industries like SMPS companys, do not make much  profit  in the West…….not enough profit to entice a big Western corporation to do it. However, such an industry could be made to “break even” when run in the west….obviously it would have to be a government  supported entity, because no private company wants to just “break even”….The fact that there is a definite market for power supplies means that the  taxpayers would  always get their money back. Also,  their would be advantageous spin-offs, such as the training/experiencing of lots of engineers who could later  go and work for more exotic companies in the private sector. Also, there is the fact that the prescence of  such huge electronics companies  in the USA would encourage USA youngsters that there are plenty jobs in electronics that they can go for…..so then they would choose to study electronics  in large numbers.
All the above applies to other Western countries too.
Incidentally, there is no reason, why,  in the beginning, this government run company could not buy in  a certain amount of power supplies itself from the Far East..and distribute these within the USA…..it could use the profits from  this to help fund itself…..this is a lot better than dubious, private,  unknown “middle men” taking a huge  “middle man cut”.
-None of us knows what this “middle man cut” is. Suffice to say, what the American citizen ends up paying for a Far Eastern power supply is a lot more than what the Middle man payed.

[rstofer]

Are you nuts?  Governments don't run companies in any capitalistic system.  Mostly because a) they don't know how and b) the employees don't take risks, it upsets their promotion opportunities.  Visit any government office and see how much is actually getting accomplished.

Companies solve problems by throwing money at them.  Just toss out some bonuses, stock options, education grants, <whatever> and see what can happen.  Governments don't think that way.  They have to write a thesis on every expenditure and soon the bonuses become an established fact - expected every year or after every little job.

We don't have to grow our own 'brilliant' engineers, we buy them.  Any engineer with an advanced degree can apply for a visa and work permit.  Where they go from there is up to them.  EB-2 visa...

True geniuses represent a small portion of any population and we treat ours pretty well.  Some wander into academia, some create startups, some just work for companies.  We seem to have our share.

I'm not going to chase it down a rathole but the US has almost 3 times as many Nobel Prize winners as the second place country.  We must be doing something right:

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-30-countries-with-nobel-prize-winners.html

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, we need to add only 26,000 EEs between 2016 and 2026 - not accounting for attrition, I suppose.  That's not a very big number over 10 years.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm

In other words, we have all the engineers we need and are growing them at a sufficient rate (your number) to meet the anticipated needs.

We are NOT going to get into the jelly bean business of making power supplies.  If we need some, we buy them.  The money is not made on the power supply, it's on the widget it powers.  And we won't make that either.  We'll farm it out and use our engineers to design the next generation widget.

Do you really believe that if China cut us off from power supplies that we couldn't make them starting right after lunch?  We invent the stuff, of course we can build it.  We can't build it as cheap but, national interest involved, we can still get it done.

Your views on supply and demand are at odds with reality.  If there is a plentiful supply, price drops - always!  Scarcity drives prices up - always!

When my father was teaching me the electrical trade he told me: "I'll teach you all you will ever know about this trade but I won't teach you all I know!".  Never train your replacement.  Age discrimination is still a thing!  Older engineers are viewed as obsolete and overpaid.  Of course they aren't going to tutor their replacements.

[rstofer]

The US military/aerospace/ship-building industries are as close to government run businesses as possible.  All contracts are "cost plus a fee" so where is the incentive to cut costs?  You haven't experienced bureaucracy until you work in aerospace!  It's an amazing industry!  No business could operate that way and survive.  But bless their hearts, they had two IBM 1130 computers in a little lab that weren't used very often.  I had unlimited access!  It was great!

http://ibm1130.org/

NASA lets the booster rockets fall into the ocean, SpaceX recovers them.  I don't know what they are worth but I'm betting that the profit motive of SpaceX trumps "cost is no object" at NASA.  In fact, NASA is just about privatized by SpaceX.

It's good to have an organization like NASA drive the need for advanced technology and fund its initial development (like integrated circuits) but once the requirements are understood, private industry will find a way to make it profitable.  Nothing succeeds like greed!

There's nothing wrong with DARPA and NSF funding basic research.  They have the money to burn studying new technologies (like the Internet from DARPA) but once the technology is reaching some level of maturity, private industry brings down the cost and develops the market.  DARPA came up with the requirements for universities to exchange information and proposed some kind of network.  Universities developed the hardware and software and then along came WWW and Google.  Now we have networking on cell phones!  We need to applaud the .gov for getting the technology off the ground but it is industry that brought it to your pocket.

DARPA had autonomous cars driving across the desert many years ago.  Now just about everybody is working on the project.  Eventually, it will be commercialized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

We're working on going to Mars, somebody else can build power supplies!

[cdev]

rstofer, governments by and large are not allowed to engage in business any more.

The WTO sets up a new system that basically turns all this into a web of cross entitlements to sell them any and everything they might be, even services which we normally think of as being supplied by locals.. Thats no longer what the rules say, though.

Shhhh! - big secret!

They can't tell the countries this, but the fact is, they set up a whole system that makes it illegal for governments to go into business in any area where others already have or may, and then attempts to force countries to put everything up for competitive bidding and they are required to buy the cheapest one thats good enough quality.

Whomever is cheapest gets an entitlement to sell and even in the case of services, may get the entitlement to sell their services. Across borders. Any rules that stand in the way may even in some cases have to be changed. Even ones people rely on like core labor standards, they may be framed as trade barriers.

Even if that is extremely disruptive or costs a huge number of jobs.

The whole system in no small part works on precedent.

If you let one country do something.. others - they all - may get a right to, IF they bid it cheaper.

Governments that are signatory to the WTO agreements are constrained from getting involved in any business unless its provided "in the exercise of governmental authority" defined VERY narrowly.

Also in many cases "Any conditions, limitations and qualifications to the commitments noted below shall be limited to existing non-conforming measures", basically, involvement or regulation is frozen and has to be reduced, never enlarged.

and also in many areas under WTO and in US style 'negative list' everything thats not excluded in writing at the beginning - things like this apply- for example - "Each Member shall list in its schedule pertaining to financial services existing monopoly rights and shall endeavour to eliminate them or reduce their scope."

They keep this secret because people want to think the government can step in and help them in a financial disaster, like the 1930s, but the fact is, all those things that they did back then are off the table now.

Not only are people on their own, the owners of everything everywhere, are almost totally united, against them "as a matter of principle".  Because they feel that its a slippery slope, you know what I mean?

[ocset]

In other words, we have all the engineers we need and are growing them at a sufficient rate (your number) to meet the anticipated needs.

Thanks, but im not so sure, the US is loosing ground to China in a big way.
I think China can do most of the stuff that the West can do now, and the growth of technology  in China is at a faster rate than anywhere in  the west...and the Chinese have enormous Power Suply design /manufacture companies....and all their industry is essentially tightly controlled by the Chinese government.
By the way, both the USA and UK  have virtually payed the cost of China building these islands in the South China Sea, by all the electronics we have bought off them.

I was at a big UK University in 2001......the 5th floor was all for PhD students studying in Microwave Engineering.......this whole 5th floor was occupied by Chinese PhD students.

[BravoV]

By the way, both the USA and UK  have virtually payed the cost of China building these islands in the South China Sea, by all the electronics we have bought off them.

I was at a big UK University in 2001......the 5th floor was all for PhD students studying in Microwave Engineering.......this whole 5th floor was occupied by Chinese PhD students.

C'mon, although its expected coming from you, your demagoguery is popping out like popcorn now.

So are you saying that the Chinese are also funding the UK's education, that at the same time it is abandoned by the native Brits ?

Instead of bashing the Chinese, you should be thanking them feeding the UK education staffs, at least at UK universities as you claimed above.

Don't be lazy, go promote and campaign to Brit's youngsters to attend the Engineering class, instead of wasting your time here.

 

[cdev]

Some American grads are fleeing the US because their wages are so low their student loans cant be repaid and they just grow and grow. They cant get out of debt.

Many people in their 60s here, even, are in default and have been struggling for decades, and then when they get older they lose jobs and cant get new ones. They go into default and their lives just fall apart.

The wealthy in the US REALLY don't want any more college grads with student loans. Could they be messaging it any clearer? But one needs a degree to get a good job.

The wealthy globally seem to be circling the wagons. They are forming partnerships with one another to futureproof the future, and don't want to owe others anything.

[ebastler]

Therefore, people will only vote for people whom they know, aka famous people

This guarantees only powerful elite citizens can have political power -- be it wealthy people, famous professors, religious leaders or famous actors, but you have to be famous, which implies being elite.

I can't put my finger on it, but there sems to be a flaw in your argument.
Which other country was it that fared so well by electing a wealthy TV celebrity as their president...?

[Kjelt]

Rethinking the original question I have another possible answer:

- consumers in the West have %wise less to spent than 30 yrs ago
- consumers in the West are accustomed to lowering prices for electronics over the years
- consumers in the West are accustomed to replacing their electronics each 2-4 years
- the result is that the electronics producers have to cut all BOM cost as much as possible and the NRE costs also when possible.

So you want to produce there where the labour and cost of producing electronics is the lowest which at the moment is China and surrounding countries.

Compare it to Ikea and the current generations.
My father had furniture from his great grandfather, his grandfather and some of his own.
I still have some stuff. New generations get a job a house and buy everything new, and again in 6-10 years because their taste has changed. So what happened to the skilled craftman furniture makers? They are al ost all gone since no one is going to spent thousands on a piece of furniture.

Or computers, only the people of this forum own computers >10 yrs old, let alone build one from scratch  .
 Most people buy a new computer every 3-4 yrs and sell or throw the old one out. So is there any western company making consumer computers anymore in the west?

Its called evolution, shifts of balances, we had our good decades in the previous century, the east are having theirs now, afrika will have theirs in two to three decades and so on. We just have to face it that our children and grand children will have it far worse then we have, not much to do about it or invent something everyone wants.

[Kjelt]

We don't have to grow our own 'brilliant' engineers, we buy them.  Any engineer with an advanced degree can apply for a visa and work permit.  Where they go from there is up to them.  EB-2 visa...

You are making a big thinking mistake here IMO.
1) for an engineer it is not only all about money:
A)it is also about being at the front of where new tech happens. New technologies are often an evolution of working with older technologies, if you don't build anything anymore you can also not think about an improvement on that since you don't know what you don't know.

B) it is also having a nice place to stay and a friendly country and community and people. Your country was a nice country before 911 but now it is ugly in many places IMO. If I read also on this forum that in the high tech dev places you can not get a house anymore and the "brilliant" people live in trailers and motels than I can tell you that is not going to last. Looking at your countries debt it is a rollercoaster to the bottom.

2)  how about your other not so brilliant members of the population. They need jobs and meaningfull fullfillment of their lives also or what do you think is going to happen? 

[ocset]

Don't be lazy, go promote and campaign to Brit's youngsters to attend the Engineering class, instead of wasting your time here.

You cannot really promote that because there is little left of the UK electronics industry for them to go into.....thats why it needs building up a bit first.

There are  some “rocket science” jobs in places like the Cambridge Science Park in UK, but you cant go and talk to a bunch of 15 year olds and tell then to choose to study for a job in that arena…….they’d be too scared that they may fail and end up with no job at all. Good old regular electronics  jobs are what’s needed to get the masses back into electronics…then from that big number, you get your 2% of “brilliant” ones.

We don't have to grow our own 'brilliant' engineers, we buy them.  Any engineer with an advanced degree can apply for a visa and work permit.  Where they go from there is up to them.  EB-2 visa...

…that’s what we in UK used to say about 30 years ago….and look what’s happened to us since…we’ve collapsed, we’re on the way to the third world…..We’ve massively lost our industry…we’ve gone from the worlds biggest exporter of cars (those cars being UK designed/built), to practically not making any cars at all.
https://massey276.wixsite.com/ukdecline

So you want to produce there where the labour and cost of producing electronics is the lowest which at the moment is China and surrounding countries.

I would accept that in the first place, to stop  the  government funding levels getting too high, much manufacture would have to be done in the Far East....but it should be illegal for power supply design work to be out-sourced out of the country.

if you don't build anything anymore you can also not think about an improvement on that since you don't know what you don't know.

Thanks, My sentiments exactly...we must look to bring back manufacture in bigger amounts....even if in the first place, it has to be government funded.

[rstofer]

rstofer, governments by and large are not allowed to engage in business any more.

WTO rules are merely 'suggestions' and are subject to change at a moment's notice.  In fact, there is no compelling reason to even belong to the WTO.  In particular, the US, as the world's largest economy, can pretty much do anything it wants.  And Trump is doing it!  It's not popular in some countries but that's the way it goes.

Governments definitely participate in business - think about China or Taiwan.  Probably most of the EU.  And in the US, the .gov directs businesses by way of taxation.  How about

And then there are the never ending lawsuits between Boeing and Airbus over .gov subsidies.  Both receive subsidies but in different forms.  Some forms are legal, some are not.  And then there is China (COMAC) which is definitely government subsidized.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41152544

The US wants battery cars but they cost too much to produce because there is no economy of scale.  So, what to do?  Oh!  I know!  Let's have state and federal tax advantages for those people who buy the cars to get the price down to where there will become a market.

The .gov wants solar energy at a residential level.  How to get people to buy very expensive systems?  Oh!  I know!  Let's have state and federal tax advantages for those people who buy solar systems to get the price down to where there will become a market.

There's a theme here!  The .gov doesn't build battery cars or, that is true.  But it influences the cost of battery cars to make them on par with gasoline cars.  And it's the same story in a lot of products/markets.

It's hard to create a new market when there is no economy of scale.  Governments step in with some form of  financial reward.

[ocset]

When the Chinese (or other Far Eastern country with massive power supply design/manufacture industry) need to build a power supply for a low-volume application, they will do it much better than the West…simply because they have a bigger power  supply industry, and loads of power supply engineers who conveniently “cut their teeth”  on their country’s mass market power supply industry. The West doesn’t have   big power supply   industrys. For low volumes, its not financially viable for the west  to get the Chinese (or another country)  to do it.
Also, when the Chinese need a power supply for their  Military aircraft (something that you cant ask another country to do for you)…the Chinese will be able to do this much better than in the west…for the same reason as above. (the Chinese have a bigger amount of Power Supply engineers, and  have overall, more expertise in power supply design than the west...because they do it much more than the west)
Similarly when a startup in the west  needs a  “first-go” power supply for a new product under development , they will not be able to do this as well as the Chinese…..typically, when a new  product under development  is evolving, the power supply spec is constantly changing , and you just can’t get another country to do it for you….you need a local person to come “ in-house”  and work on the PSU with you…..the Chinese, for the same reason as given above, will be much better able to do a good job of   something like this than the west.
And as I discussed before, countries that have big power supply design/manufacture industries are easier able to get lots of youngsters to come into electronics, because those youngsters can see a load of attainable jobs that are available to them in electronics. In the west, all the youngsters can see today is a few “rocket science”  electronics jobs…jobs which they may not be able to get even if they qualify in electronics.
Another point, is that all power supplies need EMC filters…..and this is to a large extent similar to microwave engineering……….in any given power supply development project, the Chinese would beat the West hands down, because they have more people who know the tricks of passing EMC,  whilst using the smallest size EMC filter.
I think the West needs to bring bulk  power supply design/manufacture  industry back home.  –At least, all the design part  needs to come back…maybe some of the manufacture can stay overseas…but definitely not all.

[rstofer]

When the Chinese (or other Far Eastern country with massive power supply design/manufacture industry) need to build a power supply for a low-volume application, they will do it much better than the West…simply because they have a bigger power  supply industry, and loads of power supply engineers who conveniently “cut their teeth”  on their country’s mass market power supply industry. The West doesn’t have   big power supply   industrys. For low volumes, its not financially viable for the west  to get the Chinese (or another country)  to do it.
Also, when the Chinese need a power supply for their  Military aircraft (something that you cant ask another country to do for you)…the Chinese will be able to do this much better than in the west…for the same reason as above. (the Chinese have a bigger amount of Power Supply engineers, and  have overall, more expertise in power supply design than the west...because they do it much more than the west)
Similarly when a startup in the west  needs a  “first-go” power supply for a new product under development , they will not be able to do this as well as the Chinese…..typically, when a new  product under development  is evolving, the power supply spec is constantly changing , and you just can’t get another country to do it for you….you need a local person to come “ in-house”  and work on the PSU with you…..the Chinese, for the same reason as given above, will be much better able to do a good job of   something like this than the west.
And as I discussed before, countries that have big power supply design/manufacture industries are easier able to get lots of youngsters to come into electronics, because those youngsters can see a load of attainable jobs that are available to them in electronics. In the west, all the youngsters can see is a few “rocket science” jobs…jobs which they may not be able to get even if they qualify in electronics.
Another point, is that all power supplies need EMC filters…..and this is to a large extent similar to microwave engfineering……….in any given power supply development project, the Chinese would beat the West hands down, because they have more people who know the tricks of passing EMC,  whilst using the smallest size EMC filter.
I think the West needs to bring bulk  power supply design/manufacture  industry back home.  –At least, all the design part  needs to come back…maybe some of the manufacture can stay overseas…but definitely not all.

Why would something as insignificant as  power supply design encourage anyone to study electronics?  Everything is known, there's nothing new and it's down to grunt work.  Boring!  Pick standards from Column A, parts from Column B and enclosures from Column C.  Munge them together and, voila', a power supply is born!  At most, it is worth a single semester class of 3 units.  Or maybe just a 1 unit seminar...  As a subject, it's pretty meaningless.

In fact, I can't see why anyone would study electronic engineering anyway.  There are a few glamor jobs (Intel CPU design) but the rest of it is just work.  Same thing, different day.  Look around!  What is currently going on in electronic design that is the least bit interesting?  Cell phones?  Cable TV?  Boring!  No new magic, just incremental upgrades of stuff we have had for a decade or more.

Given that ARM and Intel own the CPU market (yes there are other bit players), I'm not sure why anyone would study computer architecture.  It is well known and well understood - nothing new is coming down the pipeline (pun intended).  I wonder if we haven't chased that as far down a rathole as we can go.  Even then, most of the 'advances' in uCs are things that were done on mainframes 40 years ago.  All that has happened is a reduction in the size of logic gates.  Arguably, the CDC 6600 was a RISC processor and it was built in '64.  It isn't truly RISC but it is darn close!

Sure, I studied EE but I never worked at it.  There are a couple of reasons but boredom was near the top of the list.  It was, and still is, sufficient to know how it works without having to spend a career doing it.  The last thing I would want to be is the resident power supply guy!  The heyday of EE was in the mid to late '70s when all the magic was being created.

Software!  That's where the money is and that's where innovation will come from.  We have all the uCs and CPUs we will ever need.  What we need is more high end code wienies to come up with AI and computer vision software.  We already have vastly parallel computers and high speed GPU  processors, what we need is new code.

[coppice]

Why would something as insignificant as  power supply design encourage anyone to study electronics?  Everything is known, there's nothing new and it's down to grunt work.  Boring!

You might not have noticed, but the ability to design first class power supplies is one of the best paid roles in electronics. Do you think they are being paid a lot to tolerate the boredom?

[rstofer]

Why would something as insignificant as  power supply design encourage anyone to study electronics?  Everything is known, there's nothing new and it's down to grunt work.  Boring!

You might not have noticed, but the ability to design first class power supplies is one of the best paid roles in electronics. Do you think they are being paid a lot to tolerate the boredom?

We're all being paid a lot to tolerate boredom, regardless of the field.

I seriously doubt that the guy who designs wall warts is especially well paid.  Now, back when we used 400 Hz (input) power supplies for mainframe power, it was probably interesting.  I remember very well installing 75 kVA frequency changers to create that 400 Hz for CDC and IBM mainframes.

Are there intricate power supplies?  Sure!  But that's not the grunt level stuff we're talking about here.  At least that's not what I am thinking about when the topic is lots of commercial supplies.  I rather expect some military power supplies would be interesting just for the requirements.  The next great +5 VDC supply?  Not so much!  Bench power supplies might be interesting - once!  Even there, the customer is more interested in the GUI than in the heatsink (as long as it is adequate).  Software (firmware) sells the power supply!

Power supplies for LEDs?  It's been done!  Power supplies for streetlights - done!  Wall warts?  They're all over the place.  I can't imagine getting out of bed in the morning knowing all I had to look forward to was yet another power supply.  I suspect that's why we don't make them.  They're boring and available as a commodity.

The market exists, government involvement is not needed.  They are commodity items and can be made anywhere.  Design engineers are plentiful (they invented the controller chips) and assembly houses are all over the world.  Just not interesting (to me!).

Simple test:  Consider your favorite project(s) and write down a) what was exciting and b) what you learned.  If it isn't fun and it isn't educational, it's just grunt work.  I never found engineering (of any kind) to be especially fun.  On very rare occasions there was something to learn but, for what I did for a living, I just bought engineering.  The companies are in the phone book and there are a lot of them.

We're not going to have the government building power supplies!
We're not going to flood the market with EEs!
There are things to design that are more fun and more educational than power supplies.  Unless you are trying to build terrawatt lasers.  That would be fun!
Engineers are making a good living and it's going to stay that way.  We're not going to try to compete with 3rd world countries for wages.
In terms of power supplies, there are countries all over the world building them.  China isn't the only game in town even if they are the biggest.  Taiwan is hanging in there as is Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Viet Nam.  We might even set up a plant in Mexico.  Any place where wages are low.

Do the design in a first world country if you want, that's just an NRE cost.  Manufacturing will be done by the lowest bidder.

[coppice]

Now, back when we used 400 Hz (input) power supplies for mainframe power, it was probably interesting.  I remember very well installing 75 kVA frequency changers to create that 400 Hz for CDC and IBM mainframes.

When mainframes ran on 400Hz the supplies were all linear and very crude. There were no challenges at all in designing them. The smart guys went into switch mode supply development, which was a huge challenge in the early days.

[vk6zgo]

When the Chinese (or other Far Eastern country with massive power supply design/manufacture industry) need to build a power supply for a low-volume application, they will do it much better than the West

Yes, ----If they either go to a large specialist supplier like Meanwell, or poach someone who has worked at one.
If, as seems to be the case sometimes, they grab some "rent an Engineers" off the street, they will get something designed from a manufacturer's application note.

The SMPS on some "custom designed" transmitters I worked on were made the latter way, as was the RF design.
As soon as the EEs have done their work, they are "let go", so there is no continuity.
The equipment I am referring to were definitely "low volume" ( there were only five ever made)!

It wasn't really the PSU's fault that they were "smoked"-- it was a power level control which oscillated at 18kHz, over modulating (AM) the PA stages of these supposedly CW transmitters ("rent an EE" strikes again!).

I have seen failed SMPS before, but never have I seen anything as "cooked" as these were.(not repairable).
After much correspondence, we got a new board for one, which was pre mounted on a different sized heat sink, so we had to refit it to the old one or it wouldn't fit into the required space.

From this, it is evident that even in China, small volume manufacturers don't always go to the major suppliers.
I am willing to bet that, if they had gone to Meanwell, the supply would have survived the abuse, & if it had failed, would be repairable.

As to Chinese expertise in microwave work ( although you limit the comment to the,similarities to EMC problems), my experience may give me a jaundiced view, but the level of RF design knowledge revealed by the equipment referred to above points to a "look on the Internet"level.

This company claimed they also supplied transmitters for TV Broadcasting in their home country.
Either they were lying, or Chinese transmitter Techs are the best, (& most stressed) in the world!

Obviously, the big players do it right, but with "small volume" from China "you pays your money, & you takes your chance".

[Kjelt]

Obviously, the big players do it right, but with "small volume" from China "you pays your money, & you takes your chance".

I am unsure if this has to do with quantity.
Look for instance at the millions of unsafe "apple PSU clones", with insufficient distance between tracks, lack of airgaps and other critical safety issues.
That is high quantity but still low quality.

[mikeselectricstuff]

In other words, we have all the engineers we need and are growing them at a sufficient rate (your number) to meet the anticipated needs.

Thanks, but im not so sure, the US is loosing ground to China in a big way.
I think China can do most of the stuff that the West can do now,

Except software, and any aspect of design that needs imagination and creativity. They are still a long way behind here due to the nature of their education system

[tooki]

Obviously, the big players do it right, but with "small volume" from China "you pays your money, & you takes your chance".

I am unsure if this has to do with quantity.
Look for instance at the millions of unsafe "apple PSU clones", with insufficient distance between tracks, lack of airgaps and other critical safety issues.
That is high quantity but still low quality.

Well, I think it’s been sort-of implicit in this discussion that we are talking about the original designs, not counterfeits or other knock-offs. Those are clearly created with entirely different goals, neither of which is safety or performance.

[Kjelt]

Well, I think it’s been sort-of implicit in this discussion that we are talking about the original designs, not counterfeits or other knock-offs. Those are clearly created with entirely different goals, neither of which is safety or performance.

It sure are no 100% clones or they would have been safe. It was a redesign with probably BOM costs as the first and utmost requirement.
It clearly shows an example that some designs and product choices that in China might be allowed and tolerated with an ultra low cost benefit are not suitable and should not be accepted on the western markets.

[Kjelt]

Except software, and any aspect of design that needs imagination and creativity. They are still a long way behind here due to the nature of their education system

I would have agreed till a couple of years ago but lately I have seen SW engineers that can compete with western SW engineers without problem.
It all depends on the university/college and the student, actually the same as it is here, I see very bad SW engineers here as well 
Also a lot of chinese students graduate or even do PhD's on western universities before returning to their home country, those are government sponsored and very bright, met a few that graduated cum laude without a sweat. You don't graduate by copying someone elses work 

BTW a good SW engineer in Bejing has these days the same salary as one here in the Netherlands.
So don't judge their software skills on what you buy or see on Ebay and the likes, those examples are probably relative tiny companies where the HW engineer also writes the "software" , whatever it takes as long as it works.

[tooki]

Well, I think it’s been sort-of implicit in this discussion that we are talking about the original designs, not counterfeits or other knock-offs. Those are clearly created with entirely different goals, neither of which is safety or performance.

It sure are no 100% clones or they would have been safe. It was a redesign with probably BOM costs as the first and utmost requirement.
It clearly shows an example that some designs and product choices that in China might be allowed and tolerated with an ultra low cost benefit are not suitable and should not be accepted on the western markets.

Everyone here understands this. My point was that including that el-cheapo crap is not really within the scope of what’s being discussed here.

[vk6zgo]

Well, I think it’s been sort-of implicit in this discussion that we are talking about the original designs, not counterfeits or other knock-offs. Those are clearly created with entirely different goals, neither of which is safety or performance.

It sure are no 100% clones or they would have been safe. It was a redesign with probably BOM costs as the first and utmost requirement.
It clearly shows an example that some designs and product choices that in China might be allowed and tolerated with an ultra low cost benefit are not suitable and should not be accepted on the western markets.

Everyone here understands this. My point was that including that el-cheapo crap is not really within the scope of what’s being discussed here.

The devices these PSUs were used in were not cheap, by any standards-- definitely cheaper than something built in Australia, EU ( including UK), USA, Japan, etc, but still costing a serious amount of money.
Whether the PSUs were made outside the final equipment maker, or not, is unknown.

What is known, is the cause of their demise was due to poor design in the equipment they powered.
When several of the transmitters were set to their lowest power setting, the PSU would begin to squeal
 (I know that, because we got to one in time to save it).

This was due to an op Amp in the power level control going into oscillation, &, as I mentioned earlier, causing the output of the Tx to be over modulated at around an 18kHz rate.

It seems the PSUs were not designed to operate with such dynamic loads, causing failure.
Where I suggest that they are poorly designed, is in the fact that they completely self destructed in this situation.

The most annoying aspect of this series of events is that making UHF transmitters in the several kW range is not "rocket science"-----they only had to copy something from NEC, or any of the larger TV transmitter manufacturers.
Even granted they didn't do this, perhaps a bit more care in designing (or procuring) their PSUs, may have yielded a happier result.

My original point is that, even Chinese companies do not access the undoubted expertise available in that country.

[tooki]

My comment about el-cheapo crap was referring to the counterfeit Apple chargers mentioned by kjelt.

[rstofer]

The most annoying aspect of this series of events is that making UHF transmitters in the several kW range is not "rocket science"-----they only had to copy something from NEC, or any of the larger TV transmitter manufacturers.

Why didn't your company just buy a known good product from NEC (or equal)?

[vk6zgo]

The most annoying aspect of this series of events is that making UHF transmitters in the several kW range is not "rocket science"-----they only had to copy something from NEC, or any of the larger TV transmitter manufacturers.

Why didn't your company just buy a known good product from NEC (or equal)?

Shoestring budget!, plus NEC etc, probably would have considered us too small an order to specially build for.

We eventually went through a stage of using Icom IC 915A's with an external tube linear amplifier, to ultimately, (after my time) buying proper transmitters from Tomco in South Australia, who are small enough to custom build, but big enough to make a good product.

Tomco have looked at the design leaders in this field, & built to their standard.

[TimNJ]

At most, it is worth a single semester class of 3 units.  Or maybe just a 1 unit seminar...  As a subject, it's pretty meaningless.

I made my PhD out of designing power supplies. I earned 78 credit hours after BS degree, among them 45 are course credits and the rest are research credits.

rstofer, that's quite a bold and ignorant stance to take on the state of power supply design.

It is continually evolving, just like any other field. Achieving efficiencies >95% in the last few years didn't just magically happen. There have been lots of people hard at work!

[Kjelt]

Indeed and the frequencies that are increasing also will increase problems with emc, rf and so on, I am very interested what developments the coming years will bring. One of the challenges is constant high efficiency with a variable power output.

[Bassman59]

2)  how about your other not so brilliant members of the population. They need jobs and meaningfull fullfillment of their lives also or what do you think is going to happen?

This very real issue seems to be blithely ignored by all of the Ayn Randian "Who Is John Galt?" geniuses.

Also, those people are called "customers." They buy the creates on the self-described geniuses. Otherwise, the geniuses wouldn't be necessary.

[BravoV]

So you want something similar to this paid by UK tax payers money ?

Of course believe you understand this fully, say something like this from a person's POV that has high interest and passionate about making a coffee pot like you on power electronics. 

Air Force paid $1,280 apiece for coffee cups.

[ocset]

Governments don't run companies in any capitalistic system.  Mostly because a) they don't know how and b) the employees don't take risks, it upsets their promotion opportunities.

There are many examples of great government run companies...eg Transport for London (TfL), the French rail network, the German rail network, Most Chinese companies.

Harvard Technology  is a great British  lighting company that manufactures all of its products in UK. 
https://www.harvardtechnology.com/
Every single piece of every  single product that they have is manufactured in UK. This shows that manufacturing electronics in UK is just as cheap as anywhere else in the world, else they wouldn’t  do it. The truth is, that although offshore manufacture used to be cheaper, its price has been creeping higher and higher over the years. And now, if you are in the West,  its not cheaper to manufacture overseas any more….however, if your volumes are huge, then you will struggle to find the capacity in the West…but this is only because we in the West stupidly got rid of our manufacturing capacity so that we could get all our manufacturing done overseas………now they’ve raised their prices (which all along should have been  totally predictable)  and we’re stuffed!
As you know, the Far East is not a Charity manufacturer for the West……the Far Eastern manufacturers charge the West as much as they possibly can charge. As the Far Eastern manufacturers realise that the West has denuded itself of its manufacturing capability, they therefore, and quite understandably, are putting up their prices big time.
Another point is that a lot of Western investors won’t tolerate a British (Western)  Manufacturing operation because  although it makes money, it doesn’t make much money. This is why Western Governments must take up the mantle and take on Government run manufacturing of electronics in UK….Western Private investors are just not interested unless they can be dripping in mega-wealth within a short space of time.
When Western Government run  operations go wrong, it is inevitably because greedy  western private companies leach the government of their money…….this is what we have to tackle.
There is a part-government funded  company in the west called Commsaudit.com
https://www.commsaudit.com/
…..this company gets hired by the British Government to   build duplicates of RF equipment ordered by the British MOD……Commsaudit report their findings to the British Government , and state whether  or not the British Government has been overcharged for the RF equipment…..if the British Government gets overcharged…the MOD gets the money back from the private  RF consultancies.

[vk6zgo]

So you want something similar to this paid by UK tax payers money ?

Of course believe you understand this fully, say something like this from a person's POV that has high interest and passionate about making a coffee pot like you on power electronics. 

Air Force paid $1,280 apiece for coffee cups.

In fairness, it isn't your everyday K-Mart  "cup" .

It is closer in concept to an electric kettle, needs to operate off the power supplies readily available on Military aircraft, needs to be leakproof (do you want  hot coffee spilt all over sensitive equipment in the event of a vigorous evasive manoeuvre?).

On top of that, this is not going to be a mass market, so not much economies of scale, security concerns require it to be made in the USA, all of which  push up the price.

In general, flight rated stuff, even in the commercial aviation industry, is fiendishly expensive compared to consumer items.

[SiliconWizard]

Governments don't run companies in any capitalistic system.  Mostly because a) they don't know how and b) the employees don't take risks, it upsets their promotion opportunities.

There are many examples of great government run companies...eg Transport for London (TfL), the French rail network, the German rail network, Most Chinese companies.

I would beg to slightly differ. I don't know much about chinese companies, but the two others you mentioned... I wouldn't call them well run companies. Those are companies that have offered good service to their users, so in that sense they are "working right", but they have also made erratic investments and choices in the last 20 to 30 years which have gotten them in huge debts. People running those public companies tend to take minimal risks for themselves, and maximal risks on the tax payers' shoulders.

Chinese companies - as I said, I don't know a lot about them, but I know China is a communist country. You can't really compare them with our public companies IMO.

[ocset]

China claims to be, which we all know it's not. How can a communist country have not one, but two of the world's largest stock exchanges?

..Isn't  it just a facade?....I thought that was just a way of bringing in foreign investment to China. I must admit ,  many years ago, i had a couple of shares in a Chinese oil company, and i'm from the West.

I would beg to slightly differ. I don't know much about chinese companies, but the two others you mentioned... I wouldn't call them well run companies. Those are companies that have offered good service to their users, so in that sense they are "working right", but they have also made erratic investments and choices in the last 20 to 30 years which have gotten them in huge debts. People running those public companies tend to take minimal risks for themselves, and maximal risks on the tax payers' shoulders.

...Thanks, yes, thats why we need companies like commsaudit.com...the one i mentioned  just a couple of posts previous to this (#153)......a way of moderating the behaviour so we dont get these mess-ups

[ocset]

The Chinese, as discussed and as we know, are not a  Charity Manufacturer to the West, neither are the Chinese doing anything wrong, though i hear stories of Chinese workers starving, on which i await confirmation.  The Chinese charge the West as much as they possibly can for manufacture and design services……..typically the Chinese pitch the price just below what a British manufacturer would do it for.  They will keep dropping the price until the orders come through….Because the more of the West’s manufacture industry that can be stagnated by price undercutting, the more western manufacture industry dies off……then  in turn, the more the Chinese can charge the West for manufacture services. The Chinese are having a field day in UK…because self-centred UK industrialists will do anything to  pay any lesser amount of money on manufacturing. And there is massive die-off of UK manufacturing. We in UK are storing up a nightmare for ourselves.
What private UK “entrepreneurs” are now seeing,  is that  over the years there has been a steady increase of the cost of Far Eastern Manufacture to UK…….the trapdoor is almost shut on the UK…..nearly there……nearly done for.

[rstofer]

The Chinese are playing the game the same way any other company would play.  Start at a low-ball price to get orders and build a client base.  Then gradually raise the prices until profitable.  Along the way, competition will drop out early and not survive long enough to see the eventual price increases.

EVERY company would do the same thing if they were capable of surviving long enough at the reduced price points.  Government subsidies help and while the EU prohibits such subsidies, the Chinese can do anything they want.  It's the long game that's important to the Chinese.

A big concern of the EU with BREXIT is the UK government getting back into subsidies and undercutting EU prices to the detriment of Germany.  Just the idea that the UK will reduce tax rates scares the EU, not to mention the tax haven known as Gibraltar.  It's going to be very interesting come March 30th, 2019.  Unless PM May gives away the store...  That's why the EU wants 'alignment'.  And the UK shouldn't give it to them!

[ebastler]

A big concern of the EU with BREXIT is the UK government getting back into subsidies and undercutting EU prices to the detriment of Germany.  Just the idea that the UK will reduce tax rates scares the EU, not to mention the tax haven known as Gibraltar.  It's going to be very interesting come March 30th, 2019.  Unless PM May gives away the store...  That's why the EU wants 'alignment'.  And the UK shouldn't give it to them!

The options for the UK seem straightforward enough:

(a) "Align", i.e. continue play by the EU rules, and get access to the common market without import duties etc. Or
(b) do whatever you want, and pay import duties and tariffs when selling into the EU.

I'm sure Mrs. May will be all ears if you can recommend a third path. 

[rstofer]

A big concern of the EU with BREXIT is the UK government getting back into subsidies and undercutting EU prices to the detriment of Germany.  Just the idea that the UK will reduce tax rates scares the EU, not to mention the tax haven known as Gibraltar.  It's going to be very interesting come March 30th, 2019.  Unless PM May gives away the store...  That's why the EU wants 'alignment'.  And the UK shouldn't give it to them!

The options for the UK seem straightforward enough:

(a) "Align", i.e. continue play by the EU rules, and get access to the common market without import duties etc. Or
(b) do whatever you want, and pay import duties and tariffs when selling into the EU.

I'm sure Mrs. May will be all ears if you can recommend a third path. 

In gross terms, there probably isn't a 3rd path.  You're either a EU subject or you're not.  You're inside or you're outside.  You accept the ECJ or you don't.

Nevertheless, outside doesn't have to be a train wreck even though the EU is pushing in that direction.  They can settle on trade issues like tariffs and make them as low or high as they want.  They would be bilateral in any event.  Maybe WTO rules would work well.  The issues on the table aren't even trade, they're things like the Irish Border (Unsolvable, admit it and move on! See how it looks the day after.), Galileo, EU/NATO, free movement, open borders and a host of other things (retirees, among them).

As I see it, none of the issues will ever be resolved to the satisfaction of the EU short of the UK becoming a non-voting subject.  So, run out the clock and see what's really important beginning on the 30th of March 2019.  Things will be a lot more clear when trucks block up the tunnel, ferries have no place to dock and the UK enforces restrictions on fishing in their waters.  Lack of landing rights might suddenly get important to Italy and Spain, maybe even France.  Politicians' focus will sharpen considerably on March 30.  Ryanair might as well close up shop!

Other countries, even the US, trade with the EU every day without signing on to the ECJ.  Sure, there are tariffs but those are arbitrary and often capricious.  Why does Germany have a higher tariff on US cars than the US has on German cars?  Good question!  Maybe that's why we're arguing about it.

Just run out the clock!  And quit groveling, it's unseemly!

Paul Simon said it best:  "Just slip out the back, Jack!"