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Old 12-15-2018, 11:41 AM
on3
 
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US auto manufacturers shouldn't have allowed Honda and Toyota to become better than them back when it all started. Talk about an epic failure.
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Old 12-18-2018, 09:10 PM
 
Location: In the heights
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Quote:
Originally Posted by on3 View Post
US auto manufacturers shouldn't have allowed Honda and Toyota to become better than them back when it all started. Talk about an epic failure.
Even worse than the cars were semiconductors and consumer electronics. Now it's photovoltaic panels and potentially electric vehicles in the near future.

Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-18-2018 at 09:28 PM..
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Old 12-19-2018, 02:27 PM
 
194 posts, read 190,202 times
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Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
Even worse than the cars were semiconductors and consumer electronics. Now it's photovoltaic panels and potentially electric vehicles in the near future.
Manufacturing tends to go to the the location with the lowest total cost. What's your solution to retain the manufacturing sector in the US (and NE Ohio in particular)?
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Old 12-19-2018, 03:11 PM
 
Location: In the heights
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Originally Posted by reioh View Post
Manufacturing tends to go to the the location with the lowest total cost. What's your solution to retain the manufacturing sector in the US (and NE Ohio in particular)?
That actually isn't always true as it's possible to have specialized enough that you become more effective within certain sectors of the market as both Germany and Japan have been able to do with consumer electronics and automobiles among other sectors despite having maintained fairly high standards of living, arguably better than that of the US in some ways, while maintaining productive manufacturing sectors. The key has been to constantly adapt and retool the sector while aiming upmarket for higher margins which many US legacy companies had not done. Much more recently, South Korea has also done the same with consumer electronics and appliances where it was once bottom of the barrel competing solely on lower total cost.

There's a bit of that constant retooling that was adapted from a Japanese version of it during the surge of Japanese imports when US automakers were selling a lot more lemons and that lesson somewhat worked out, but the domestic automotive company that's actually taken it to the largest extreme is Tesla where the adapting and retooling of assembly lines is at a speed that'd probably be considered extreme for automotive manufactures almost anywhere.

There's a pretty interesting lineage that goes into all of this with Sony and its consumer electronics division having had a massive effect on Silicon Valley's hardware and software methodologies and a lot of software adopting or adapting lean strategies or just-in-time strategies that early on sometimes explicitly used consumer electronics and automotive production as analogies or reference points. As software companies increasingly turn towards hardware and as China's labor has become increasingly expensive, it makes sense that more of those in the more software-based technology sector turn to hardware production with these faster and more adaptive methodologies and you're seeing it now. In terms of actual government policy, I believe consumer-side credits on a graduating schedule is better than buttressing the companies themselves, so I'm for the extension of electric vehicle tax credits are and solar panel credits are but legally differentiating between domestic and foreign production for different crediting amounts though there is some legal murkiness in that. The US was strongly ahead in both initially, especially photovoltaic panels, but never put out the level of support that other governments had during the nascent years of the industry though it still has a chance to do so with electric vehicles and all of its allied industries.

There's a long game to be played regarding job (re)training and education and there are a lot of issues converging and it's a dogpile of sorts with no quick single silver bullet. College should be less costly on the student's side, public primary and secondary education should probably have longer hours for underachieving districts and funding for such, and community college should work towards better and standardized vocational programs for CAD, programming, circuit board design, etc. In the long run, Cleveland and Northeast Ohio should work towards these things soon to get the payoff sooner, but the short run is probably to make urban Cleveland a more attractive place to live and to try to get the word out and get that tech money, hopefully with the price of materials and space so much less costly than elsewhere that more people might feel comfortable striking out on their own to create hardware and manufacturing startups.

For the Lordstown plant, as I said, I think it's a tricky location possibly and the town should compel GM to give an auditing and setting up a sell package of sorts to help market the plant to potential other companies and basically make it easier to imagine what the plant could be used for or retooled for.
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Old 12-19-2018, 04:41 PM
 
Location: Cleveland
1,223 posts, read 1,029,198 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
That actually isn't always true as it's possible to have specialized enough that you become more effective within certain sectors of the market as both Germany and Japan have been able to do with consumer electronics and automobiles among other sectors despite having maintained fairly high standards of living, arguably better than that of the US in some ways, while maintaining productive manufacturing sectors. The key has been to constantly adapt and retool the sector while aiming upmarket for higher margins which many US legacy companies had not done. Much more recently, South Korea has also done the same with consumer electronics and appliances where it was once bottom of the barrel competing solely on lower total cost.

There's a bit of that constant retooling that was adapted from a Japanese version of it during the surge of Japanese imports when US automakers were selling a lot more lemons and that lesson somewhat worked out, but the domestic automotive company that's actually taken it to the largest extreme is Tesla where the adapting and retooling of assembly lines is at a speed that'd probably be considered extreme for automotive manufactures almost anywhere.

There's a pretty interesting lineage that goes into all of this with Sony and its consumer electronics division having had a massive effect on Silicon Valley's hardware and software methodologies and a lot of software adopting or adapting lean strategies or just-in-time strategies that early on sometimes explicitly used consumer electronics and automotive production as analogies or reference points. As software companies increasingly turn towards hardware and as China's labor has become increasingly expensive, it makes sense that more of those in the more software-based technology sector turn to hardware production with these faster and more adaptive methodologies and you're seeing it now. In terms of actual government policy, I believe consumer-side credits on a graduating schedule is better than buttressing the companies themselves, so I'm for the extension of electric vehicle tax credits are and solar panel credits are but legally differentiating between domestic and foreign production for different crediting amounts though there is some legal murkiness in that. The US was strongly ahead in both initially, especially photovoltaic panels, but never put out the level of support that other governments had during the nascent years of the industry though it still has a chance to do so with electric vehicles and all of its allied industries.

There's a long game to be played regarding job (re)training and education and there are a lot of issues converging and it's a dogpile of sorts with no quick single silver bullet. College should be less costly on the student's side, public primary and secondary education should probably have longer hours for underachieving districts and funding for such, and community college should work towards better and standardized vocational programs for CAD, programming, circuit board design, etc. In the long run, Cleveland and Northeast Ohio should work towards these things soon to get the payoff sooner, but the short run is probably to make urban Cleveland a more attractive place to live and to try to get the word out and get that tech money, hopefully with the price of materials and space so much less costly than elsewhere that more people might feel comfortable striking out on their own to create hardware and manufacturing startups.

For the Lordstown plant, as I said, I think it's a tricky location possibly and the town should compel GM to give an auditing and setting up a sell package of sorts to help market the plant to potential other companies and basically make it easier to imagine what the plant could be used for or retooled for.
I wouldn't compare the homogenous societies of Germany and Japan with the US. The US economy has proved to be much more versatile, diversified and resilient than both of those - particularly Japan. When you look at total productivity, international influence, new business creation, new market creation - the US wins easily.

Manufacturing will continue to seek the lower wage areas of the world which definitely includes China and India. Make no mistake about it, their wages will continue to be significantly lower than US wages for the foreseeable future and any product with high labor content will be subject to leveraging that low cost labor somehow.

I can say from firsthand knowledge that software and hardware engineers in India make 1/4 to 1/3 of their US counterparts - and - contrary to popular belief, they are generally well trained and work hard at focused, well-defined tasks, another threat to US jobs.

Technology, mainly electronic communication (the Internet) continues to have a profound impact on nearly all aspects of our lives. I can have daily skype meetings with my engineering team in Bangalore and my manufacturing team in China. And it works pretty well - the communications, the outsourcing, the satellite engineering office - it works. The world is shrinking.
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Old 09-20-2019, 12:10 PM
 
Location: North Carolina
6,957 posts, read 8,456,187 times
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How do the former Lordtown GM employees feel about GM using the plant to produce electric batteries for their new models. I know there won't be as many employed at the plant, as there used to be, but isn't something better than nothing?
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