Made In China

[Kludge]

My next lathe will be a Sieg C0. The fact that it's made in China and that it has to be touched up a bit aren't factors. It's small and I like small. I guess the closest I have to it is my Taig but the C0 will do things the Taig won't and, if I can breath on the C0 just right, I may sell off the Taig in favor of the C0.

I looked at Lifan's offerings and was disappointed. No Jeep equivalents. I think only Mitsubishi makes one and they're not an export item. I may have to order a Toyota-powered M-38A1 copy made in the Philippines. Cost? Roughly one month's pension check. (Plus shipping but I think I can get a really good break on that.) Quality? Better than the original and, for a slight fee, they'll make the coachwork from stainless steel. Why so cheap? Because my pension check is worth some 50,000 Philippine Pesos and that's a heck of a lot for them.

So let's go back to the C0. I don't know what HF's markup is but let's assume that $100 (out of $279) goes to the company for each lathe. That's 685 Chinese Yuan (today's market, rounded to nearest whole) per machine. That's a lot in their economy. The other machines bring more, of course, so the factory is making much money which means they can pay the workers relatively well ... for the economy. Even better, they listen to the buyers and fix things as they can. It takes a while but it does happen.

China will likely follow Japan's postwar model, make what they can and constantly work to improve to become a major player in the international market. The quality might not come up to Japan's or any of the other top contenders but they will be there and they will have an affect on the economy. And that's when things will get very interesting.

Just my opinion, of course, and worth at least half what you paid for it.

Best regards,

Kludge

 

[Loose nut]

we "Civilised" Nations have become fat, lazy and overpaid,

You might be right but it beats being poor and hungry any day!

 

[Lew Hartswick]

Isn't monday morning quarterbacking great??
...lew...

 

[BobWarfield]

Countries, cultures, systems, and regions all have different strengths and weaknesses. No one owns supremacy everywhere. They may think they do, but it's fleeting.

There is a natural evolution of things. First, it is new. It is hard to get. It is shiny and precious. Only Really Smart Creative People are first, and there are only so many of these around. Moreover, only Really Smart Creative People living in a system that believes in Small Businesses (we call that "entrepreneurialism") can produce anything new, hard to get, shiny, and precious.

There is huge profit in being first. Nobody else knows how to do it yet, so the first ones can make an inordinate profit from it. The companies, people, or other entities making the profit grow so fast and get so rich that they seldom invest enough in figuring out what the next shiny precious thing will be. Instead, they milk their cash cow and enjoy the good times. They focus on making their shiny precious thing cheaper and cheaper. They invent things like interchangeable parts, assembly lines, and time and motion studies to facilitate this. Because they are Really Smart Creative People.

Eventually there is not one more improvement the Really Smart Creative People can make to the shiny precious thing that makes it more valuable to very many people. In fact, in the quest for profit and milking the cash cow they typically have gone way up market and killed whatever down market solutions that were competitors. We are so proud of our Hardinge and Monarch lathes. We are so proud of our IBM computers. We are so proud of our Microsoft software.

Along comes the new generation. There are always hungry out there. Eventually the knowledge of how to make the shiny precious thing is no longer proprietary. In fact, in our quest to build Monarchs and Hardinges as cheaply as possible, we typically show the world how to build cheap lathes VERY cheaply that are better than the original cheap lathes we killed with our Monarchs and Hardinges. It doesn't occur to us anyone would want these cheap lathes because we sell Shiny Precious Things. We sell Monarchs and Hardinges.

Unfortunately, with no new features of interest, all that's left to compete on is price. And the cycle reverses. The market no longer needs Monarchs and Hardinges. Instead, they want pretty good lathes REALLY CHEAP. We call this commoditization. Once commoditization sets in, those with the cheapest resources benefit the most. They build something just good enough to wipe out the Shiny Precious Machines. And even though the Shiny Precious people are Really Smart And Creative, they never do seem to figure out what hit them. They shake their heads. Who would want a REALLY CHEAP PRETTY GOOD LATHE?

But there are always hungry people out there. So low and behold, in trying to understand what's better than a REALLY CHEAP PRETTY GOOD LATHE, someone Really Smart and Creative comes up with the idea that a Somewhat Expensive Lathe that is so Automated it can do the work of 10 REALLY CHEAP PRETTY GOOD LATHES might be the right idea. We call that one CNC because what I just did call it is way too long. And lo' the market for manual lathes of any kind dries up in the "civilized" world and it is only in those markets where one can have 10 REALLY CHEAP PRETTY GOOD LATHES for less money than 1 CNC (because our workers are so cheap) that they prosper. And even there, certain products cannot be made by REALLY CHEAP PRETTY GOOD LATHES. Mostly those are Shiny Precious Things (like Stealth Bombers) that are being built in countries that have lots of Really Smart and Creative People who built those Shiny Precious things.

Life is good again. For a little while. But there are always hungry people. And by now, we've built so many CNC's that they're cash cows. And those who build REALLY CHEAP PRETTY GOOD LATHES now know how to build REALLY CHEAP PRETTY GOOD CNC.

The cycle continues.

What is next?

Well, commoditization requires scale. What if we had lots of little businesses able to produce lots of really unique Shiny Precious Things that only appealed to small audiences but that were impeccably and relatively cheaply made and sold using CNC, outsourced manufacturing, and cheap selling channels due to the Internet? Then, the really smart creative people that made CNC could once again be rewarded for being really smart and creative. And the big giant REALLY CHEAP factories wouldn't matter, because so many Really Smart and Creative people would create so many creative Shiny Precious Things that they could prosper again.

And that's what some are doing.

End of story.

LOL! :big:

 

[Circlip]

Really enjoyed that one Bob, :bow: FOMAL, but don't forget that globalization can only be effected by the minor modernization of mechanization by the use of the adoption of the english languagization (despite its bastardization) for industrialization to succeed. :big: :big: :big:

Best Regards, Ian

 

[tel]

Well put, Bob. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

 

[Kludge]

Well done, Bob.

Of course, some of us love our old Widgets and won't change no matter how many Shiny Precious Things come around that can do the same things. All of my watchmaker's lathes were made in the first half (third?) of the 20th century and they're still good to .00005" precision using collets. I can't find anything that comes even close for what I can afford. I'd love to see someone do it but I doubt it'll ever happen - at least in my lifetime.

Best regards,

Kludge

 

[baldrocker]

Damn! wish I'd said that Bob
Paul

 

[BobWarfield]

Thanks for the kind words.

It was prompted by a study from one of the business schools I read on the demise of the US machine tool industry. The report's conclusion was fundamentally that the company owners, in many cases not the same generation that founded, were too focused on extracting cash and didn't bother to continue innovating.

Always a bad idea!

Meanwhile, the best part of these boards is there are a lot of Really Smart and Creative People making many Shiny Precious Things. Most go chuff chuff chuff and that's even better!

Cheers,

BW

 

[dsquire]

Bob:

An excellent post. I have thought some of the same things a few times but could never have put it into words like you did. I guess it is the same old story, people can not learn by listening to others, they have to get burned themselves before they believe it.

Cheers

Don

 

[rake60]

Very real points Bob!

History will inevitably repeat it's self.
The cheap, shoddy and low quality good that came out of Japan in the 1960's
Have evolved into, well better quality than most other countries can produce.

Made in Japan was a joke.

Today Made in China is a joke but their quality is improving daily.

The Joke will continue....

Next in the "Better" countries bashing line come Korea.
Vietnam is right there in line behind them.

Isn't that great!
This can go on for years!
Only the names will change...

They will make everything we want cheaper then we can ourselves.
The average income family will buy those products.

The early ones will be junk, and people will ***** about being taken.
(Wait a minute, I need to referr to the history book.)
No problem I'm still right on line.

When I was just a kid my Grandfather set me straight.
His exact words were:

"You are no better than any other person who's ever walked this earth, but
by God there is no other person who's ever walked this earth that in any
better than you!"

I believe that, and see the demeaning of developing countries as going totally
against the belief.

Rick

 

[shred]

Part of the trouble is that small companies that do well selling innovative shiny things become big companies selling less innovative shiny things because the really creative lot have either moved on somewhere else or moved up into positions where they don't get to make things much anymore...

 

[BobWarfield]

Part of the trouble is that small companies that do well selling innovative shiny things become big companies selling less innovative shiny things because the really creative lot have either moved on somewhere else or moved up into positions where they don't get to make things much anymore...

Indeed!

It takes a particular kind of culture to sustain ongoing innovation and scale that to a quite large organization. Silicon Valley High Tech companies (where I live and work) do a surprisingly lousy job of it in any particular company, and a surprisingly good job of it as a region with an ecosystem (aka Venture Capitalists + Startups + Entrepreneurs).

A former boss used to say, "We have no monopoly on genius here." He meant that even though we were smart, we shouldn't be complacent as there are many more smart people outside our company. So it is with the rest of the world too.

It's actually a good thing, though it can be painful to be bested.

Cheers,

BW

 

[Circlip]

You might be right but it beats being poor and hungry any day!

But It's coming to a store near to you.

Well put, Bob. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

Got it in one Tel.

The average income family will buy those products.

Only trouble is Rick, you're assuming a family income.
The bottom line is that Joe public will ALWAYS chase the more product per buck,so why the surprise when there ain't no more bucks to be earned cos they're being earned by another economy. We should all help our fellow man, but at the end of the day, charity begins at home.
Lets all join hands and have a group hug, and I'd love to "Hug" the guys over there who are making and profiting from counterfeit medicines. Not a parallel? ? ?
Regards Ian.