General > General Technical Chat
Will our engineering resources become dominated by Chinese design?
Zeyneb:
--- Quote from: coppice on November 18, 2023, 03:15:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: Simon on November 18, 2023, 10:02:08 am ---The basic issue with china which my apprentice constantly fails to understand is that they do not work to a quality standard, they work to a price standard. This is a bigger barrier than most realize until they try doing business and the sharp ones end up using an agent that understands both mentalities and gets you what you want.
When I lived in Italy I worked for one of my teachers who wanted to import stuff. We would get samples of clothing in and the $0.50 Tshirt would have fabric with so few threads that you could poke your finger through it, but this met the $0.50 "spec".
--- End quote ---
The attitudes of most Chinese engineers have been set by Walmart being such a huge customer for the country. If you are working on something where the customer has said you need to comply with some spec for $19, your team will be very innovative in finding ways to reach that price goal while meeting the letter, if not always the spirit, of that spec. When you have a requirement for high performance, and price is less of a critical parameter, the team will still keep bringing you ideas for stripping out cost, rather than improving performance. It can be quite frustrating.
--- End quote ---
But still, having a healthy running factory in china and having many different customers provide expected quality expectations will provide so much feedback to the manufacturing process that the chineese engineering will develop strongly in their aim for quality. Even though they lack a bit in innovation and being better at meeting minimum customer specifications.
floobydust:
--- Quote from: coppice on November 18, 2023, 03:15:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: Simon on November 18, 2023, 10:02:08 am ---The basic issue with china which my apprentice constantly fails to understand is that they do not work to a quality standard, they work to a price standard. This is a bigger barrier than most realize until they try doing business and the sharp ones end up using an agent that understands both mentalities and gets you what you want.
When I lived in Italy I worked for one of my teachers who wanted to import stuff. We would get samples of clothing in and the $0.50 Tshirt would have fabric with so few threads that you could poke your finger through it, but this met the $0.50 "spec".
--- End quote ---
The attitudes of most Chinese engineers have been set by Walmart being such a huge customer for the country. If you are working on something where the customer has said you need to comply with some spec for $19, your team will be very innovative in finding ways to reach that price goal while meeting the letter, if not always the spirit, of that spec. When you have a requirement for high performance, and price is less of a critical parameter, the team will still keep bringing you ideas for stripping out cost, rather than improving performance. It can be quite frustrating.
--- End quote ---
Did you know there are dozens of Wal-Mart in china, Shenzhen included. You're missing it - every Western company that sets up shop over there gets cloned, ripped off. They loot the IP as part of their nationalism and Westerners are naive thinking it won't come back to bite them.
So I think it's not the price as much as the ideas, the "how to" is what they need and take.
asmi:
More than one HW person told me that if you want to design hardware, Shenzhen is by far the best place on the Earth to do it. The kind of turnarounds and access to all kinds of tech you get there are simply impossible anywhere else. Everything you ever need for hardware design can be found within a short reach, so you don't ever need to wait for anything. This allows for such quick iterations which are unachievable elsewhere.
coppice:
--- Quote from: floobydust on November 18, 2023, 08:47:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on November 18, 2023, 03:15:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: Simon on November 18, 2023, 10:02:08 am ---The basic issue with china which my apprentice constantly fails to understand is that they do not work to a quality standard, they work to a price standard. This is a bigger barrier than most realize until they try doing business and the sharp ones end up using an agent that understands both mentalities and gets you what you want.
When I lived in Italy I worked for one of my teachers who wanted to import stuff. We would get samples of clothing in and the $0.50 Tshirt would have fabric with so few threads that you could poke your finger through it, but this met the $0.50 "spec".
--- End quote ---
The attitudes of most Chinese engineers have been set by Walmart being such a huge customer for the country. If you are working on something where the customer has said you need to comply with some spec for $19, your team will be very innovative in finding ways to reach that price goal while meeting the letter, if not always the spirit, of that spec. When you have a requirement for high performance, and price is less of a critical parameter, the team will still keep bringing you ideas for stripping out cost, rather than improving performance. It can be quite frustrating.
--- End quote ---
Did you know there are dozens of Wal-Mart in china, Shenzhen included. You're missing it - every Western company that sets up shop over there gets cloned, ripped off. They loot the IP as part of their nationalism and Westerners are naive thinking it won't come back to bite them.
So I think it's not the price as much as the ideas, the "how to" is what they need and take.
--- End quote ---
Yes, there are dozens of genuine US owned Wal-Marts in many Chinese cities, and quite a few rip off look alikes that don't last very long. I've shopped at quite a few of them. The topic was design. What is your point?
nctnico:
--- Quote from: floobydust on November 18, 2023, 08:47:25 pm ---Did you know there are dozens of Wal-Mart in china, Shenzhen included. You're missing it - every Western company that sets up shop over there gets cloned, ripped off. They loot the IP as part of their nationalism and Westerners are naive thinking it won't come back to bite them.
So I think it's not the price as much as the ideas, the "how to" is what they need and take.
--- End quote ---
And yet the reason why you shouldn't worry at all is right in what you wrote. In Chinese totalitarian communist culture any form of self-thinking and creativity is hammered out. That leaves a workforce that can do manual labour but lacks any form of the creativity needed to come up with improvements or (a step further) their own products. Hence the endless, mindless copying. This will not go away until there is a generation of Chinese who where allowed to think freely right from their birth.
After WW2 Japan was with coming up with better products after copying western products for a while within 2 decades or so. The Chinese are still hopeless.
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