Author Topic: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?  (Read 20790 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8605
  • Country: gb
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: ebastler, ocset

Offline SiliconWizard

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 14297
  • Country: fr
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline rstofer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9886
  • Country: us
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!


 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline ocsetTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1516
  • Country: 00
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.
 

Offline coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8605
  • Country: gb
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.

 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8605
  • Country: gb
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?
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline rstofer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9886
  • Country: us
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
« Last Edit: October 21, 2018, 03:35:31 pm by rstofer »
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline rstofer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9886
  • Country: us
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: tooki, ocset

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
(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.





« Last Edit: October 21, 2018, 03:29:08 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Online tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11332
  • Country: ch
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).
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Online tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11332
  • Country: ch
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:
Quote
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline BravoV

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7547
  • Country: 00
  • +++ ATH1
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  :-DD.

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.  >:D

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.  >:D

"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.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2018, 12:07:46 pm by BravoV »
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline ocsetTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1516
  • Country: 00
Thanks

Quote
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.

Quote
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
« Last Edit: October 21, 2018, 02:35:53 pm by treez »
 

Online dmills

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2093
  • Country: gb
Quote
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Online tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11332
  • Country: ch
Thanks

Quote
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!
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline ocsetTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1516
  • Country: 00
Quote
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.
 

Online coppercone2

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9232
  • Country: us
  • $
Missile defense engineering would be a sweet ass job
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline rstofer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9886
  • Country: us
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:
Quote
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!

« Last Edit: October 21, 2018, 05:59:41 pm by rstofer »
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Online tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11332
  • Country: ch
Quote
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
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.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2018, 04:40:11 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Online tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11332
  • Country: ch
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!
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Online tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11332
  • Country: ch
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline BravoV

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7547
  • Country: 00
  • +++ ATH1
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.
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8605
  • Country: gb
Missile defense engineering would be a sweet ass job
Spoken by someone who has no idea what that kind of work is like.
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
That day may come sooner than we think.

Quote
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.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
The following users thanked this post: ocset


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf