Google On-shores Manufacturing of the Nexus Q 326
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the NY Times:
"Etched into the base of Google's new wireless home media player that was introduced on Wednesday is its most intriguing feature. On the underside of the Nexus Q is a simple inscription: Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A. The Google executives and engineers who decided to build the player here are engaged in an experiment in American manufacturing. 'We've been absent for so long, we decided, "Why don't we try it and see what happens?" ... It has become accepted wisdom that consumer electronics products can no longer be made in the United States. During the last decade, abundant low-cost Chinese labor and looser environmental regulations have virtually erased what was once a vibrant American industry. ... At $299, the device costs significantly more than competing systems from companies like Apple and Roku. Google says this is in part because of the higher costs of manufacturing in the United States, but the company expects to bring the price down as it increases volume. The company is hoping that consumers will be willing to pay more, though it is unlikely that the “Made in America” lineage will be part of any marketing campaign.'"
Re:It *should* be part of the marketing (Score:4, Interesting)
its not just americans that want things made-in-usa.
I'm quite aware of how bad manuf in china can be. CAN be. not always but most times, assembly is under too tight of a schedule and quality is not important; # of units is!
the US workers may not be under such slavish work conditions and chances are that they are treated better and make a living wage. sweatshops as not a US phenomenon anymore (well, if you excluse software houses, but that's a different tangent..)
the world would like to see china lose its foothold on 'all' manufacturing. collectively, we are tired of the bullshit that is china and their 'sell and run' mentality.
Re:It *should* be part of the marketing (Score:4, Interesting)
I live and work in China and my students are always mystified as to why a rich westerner would own any products that were made in China. I can't blame them for that, the Chinese products I buy here in China are of significantly lower quality than the ones I buy in the US.
More than that, companies don't offshore work because they want better quality, offshoring generally means that it's harder to maintain quality as it's harder to monitor the quality by the CEO and staff.
Re:It *should* be part of the marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
"The company is hoping that consumers will be willing to pay more, though it is unlikely that the “Made in America” lineage will be part of any marketing campaign.'"
People excoriate execs and companies who move parts of their businesses offshore (often rightly, and also often without questioning the policies that contribute to it often being cheaper and easier to employ people thousands of miles away in other countries).
I use to work in manufacturing (wrote machine vision algorithms back then...fun stuff) and the cost can be very competitive with overseas. The key is design for manufacturing and automating as much as possible.
Labor isn't your highest expense when you have high-speed chip shooting lines and automated assembly processes. For a high volume builder such as Apple, the economies of scale work in it's favor too. Low volume manufacturing needs a board house to do the work otherwise capital equipment goes under utilized. That's not Apple or Google's problem.
I'm sure Apple and everyone's designs fit in the designed for manufacturability category so why not assemble in the states. Invest the capital on equipment and put some assemblers back to work!
I know having a lack of locally sourced parts (they are all over seas now, right?) will make it hard, but I would love to see leading brands bring manufacturing back to the states. For Apple, this would be a blessing in minimizing knock-offs and leaks anyway and a little less margin isn't going to put them out of business.
Re:It *should* be part of the marketing (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree on the very different levels in quality of experience (that goes triple for us AT&T customers), and I don't think there's anything wrong with the Nexus part.
I just think they should swap the cryptic letter or number on their devices for something descriptive. I mean, this is an android friendly, relatively device savvy geek site, and the first handful of posts all got the devices mixed up. It ain't gunna be much better than that for the rest of the world.
Let's just hope they don't call Project Glass the Nexus C, for "See". ;)
Re:Industry clusters are also important. (Score:5, Interesting)
My father runs a small custom electronics manufacturing plant. They basically build one-off type parts for companies. For example, building a gas station chain? Need a coin-op for your car washes? Well, you only need 100 of them... it's hard to get an order like that done out of asia. So that's where his company fits in. One of their biggest problems is sourcing parts. EVERYTHING is in asia, and everything is geared to that market now. It wasn't that way 20 years ago but it certainly is now. Often it's cheaper for them to buy pre-assembled boards designed for something out and remove the components they need to put on the new product. One time they found a lamp at the home depot that had a part they needed in it, that met spec. The lamp was cheaper than ordering the part from anywhere so they bought 5 pallets of the lamp from home depot and set about tearing them down. Silly, but it got the job done.
Re:It *should* be part of the marketing (Score:2, Interesting)
"Keeping jobs on American soil. There's a phone for that."
It's not about that. They needed not only a hardware reference model for third party manufacturers, but, having trouble with takers, like Microsoft, forced one into existance at the consumer level to show it was viable. As the goal is to convince Samsung and friends to make them, making them in the more-expensive US is simply a non-threatening gesture. Should a third party pick up the ball, easy to take market control via price advantage.