Why High Tech Manufacturing Jobs Aren’t Coming Back to the U.S.
January 22nd, 2012Via: New York Times:
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
…
“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”
…
Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.
In China, it took 15 days.
Take special note of how ‘efficiency’ works in China :
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given A (1) biscuit and A cup of tea, guided (marched?) to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames.
( I can’t help wondering whether the guards there carry sidearms or whips? Maybe both ? )
Apparently THIS is how all the ipods and ipads and electronic gizmos are made ? By Chinese slave labor.
And apparently THIS is why the hi-tech manufacturing jobs won’t be back in the USA. Because the US masters of industry, are MASTERs of efficiency, ($$$) first and foremost.
But I am sure this isn’t the end of the story. Don’t worry. I’m sure those same MASTERs of industry are working out exactly how to bring the same kind of EFFICIENCY to America.
Note how the Apple executive is about to cream his pants over this kind of ‘efficiency’.
“The speed and flexibility (of the Chinese slave labor system) is breathtaking” the (Apple) executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that. (Yet)”
breathtaking, eh? Sounds like this really works him up. Do you suppose it gets him panting ?
If you become an engineer here in North America, you will be competing with these 8,700 engineers for lower and lower wages. The transition to using domestic engineers will happen once the combination of higher transportation costs, politics and leveling of global wages cuts in. We are well on our way.