I just watched a bit of the opening ceremony, and i had a realization that kind of made me sad. America will never win the manufacturing and production competition.
We should just give up now, and send all our manufacturing to China. Sure it may not be top quality, but chances are for most things it will be good enough. What made me realize it was the part of the opening ceremony where there were these square pillars moving up and down in sequence, forming patterns, etc.
It was well executed, precise, and pretty much seemed to be automated. It wasn’t. It was about 200 Chinese dudes, 1 inside each column, moving them up and down, by hand… Seriously, thats why china wins in manufacturing. Why automate something when you have 1.2 billion people looking for work? Just pay someone to be an automaton for you.
My friend Paul was once telling me about how the heat-sinks for computer processors are made, and that there is a problem with them. The fins need to be as thin as possible, which means that when they are forged, and they are still hot, they can bend and touch just because of gravity, which would ruin it. So, they had been looking into how they could possibly manufacture the chip coolers, since he owns a CNC machine shop, and started researching. They found out how the guys in China do it… A line of workers stand there with hot gloves, waiting for the machine to spit out a newly forged heatsink, which they catch, and then hold upside down so the fins don’t bend. They apparently never even bothered to see if they even could automate it, since the solution was simple if you used people.
We will never beat that… ever.
The picture above, of the drummers, that is what kind of started this weird vision in my head. I just started to see 1000 women, at sewing machines, churning out tee shirts, 500 guys assembling phones, 10,000 people making the little parts that actually make your car work. Save goes for call centers in india, not to mention programming.
Quality seems to be the only trait we have left that we can defend, but that seems to be slipping as well. Were does this mean we are headed?
Photo credit: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au
