anyone else buying up parts before tariffs hit?

[Bonnewagon]

Everyone should remember one thing. China did not 'steal'. anything. American businessmen GAVE China our manufacturing base. Remember when Japan Inc was the problem? The 'rust belt' began way back then. We built up Japan, Germany, Taiwan, etc, after WWII so they would be able to compete on the world stage as Democracies. That worked very well, and some would say, too well, regarding Japan. In the 1950's 'made in Japan' was a joke meaning the item was crap. But as time went on, we bought the crap, they re-invested, and became a dominant source of everything from toys, to cameras, to computers, to cars. And we are still buying their stuff even though reality has caught up to them and prices are higher than before. So, businessmen, being always on the lookout to save money, saw China, and other countries, as a source of even cheaper labor. Soon China was flooding us with $1 hammers and other things. It was not as good as the American $10 hammer, but we bought it anyway. So the American hammer company went out of business. Soon the Chinese hammer was costing almost the same as the American hammer, but the businessman was pocketing the difference and getting very rich. He could care less that the little town in America that made the hammer shut down and went on food stamps. HE made a killing and laughed all the way to the bank. Soon every business that could, was moving to China. " I can't compete unless I do" was the excuse. No one stopped them from doing that. And slowly our country was drained of manufacturing jobs. China did not do that. WE did, Then China did something no one expected. They grew, they re-invested, they improvised, they copied, they stole, and they kept prices so low no one complained. Now they make everything and are becoming innovators in their own right. The EV that BYD and Toyota collaborated on is a game changer. It is going to revolutionize transportation. So are we going to sit back and whine about how 'unfair' this all is? Or are we going to get off our asses and compete? Tariffs will not fix this. Only hard work will. Let China make all they stuff we don't want to make. But let's make stuff that the world will want and no one else can make. We used to do that and we can do it again.

 

[Malibu795]

I agree Boone, we've been substantially stupid last few generations and the world has taken advantage of us.. so if we're to be mad at anyone should be ourselves

 

[Ribbedroof]

We as a nation have been very short-sighted. We want top wages, but want to buy everything as cheaply as possible.

Somewhere along the way, some decided that having the most money was "winning". If you had all you needed, having twice or 3 times or more was better. There is a ceratain very public entity that continues to remark that "we're going to make so much money"....at the cost of losing everything we USED to believe in (IMO)

 

[78Delta88]

Maybe one of the biggest positives of all of this, is maybe we'll have robust manufacturing in the United States again.

I was MOOG trained back in early 80s as a newly certified mechanic and back then MOOG was top of the line. And I can think of others like ACCEL. Yet, as all of these get off sourced overseas with no quality control, we end up with what we have.

As things move back to the United States hopefully things will get better.

 

[pagrunt]

Everyone should remember one thing. China did not 'steal'. anything. American businessmen GAVE China our manufacturing base. Remember when Japan Inc was the problem? The 'rust belt' began way back then. We built up Japan, Germany, Taiwan, etc, after WWII so they would be able to compete on the world stage as Democracies. That worked very well, and some would say, too well, regarding Japan. In the 1950's 'made in Japan' was a joke meaning the item was crap. But as time went on, we bought the crap, they re-invested, and became a dominant source of everything from toys, to cameras, to computers, to cars. And we are still buying their stuff even though reality has caught up to them and prices are higher than before. So, businessmen, being always on the lookout to save money, saw China, and other countries, as a source of even cheaper labor. Soon China was flooding us with $1 hammers and other things. It was not as good as the American $10 hammer, but we bought it anyway. So the American hammer company went out of business. Soon the Chinese hammer was costing almost the same as the American hammer, but the businessman was pocketing the difference and getting very rich. He could care less that the little town in America that made the hammer shut down and went on food stamps. HE made a killing and laughed all the way to the bank. Soon every business that could, was moving to China. " I can't compete unless I do" was the excuse. No one stopped them from doing that. And slowly our country was drained of manufacturing jobs. China did not do that. WE did, Then China did something no one expected. They grew, they re-invested, they improvised, they copied, they stole, and they kept prices so low no one complained. Now they make everything and are becoming innovators in their own right. The EV that BYD and Toyota collaborated on is a game changer. It is going to revolutionize transportation. So are we going to sit back and whine about how 'unfair' this all is? Or are we going to get off our asses and compete? Tariffs will not fix this. Only hard work will. Let China make all they stuff we don't want to make. But let's make stuff that the world will want and no one else can make. We used to do that and we can do it again.

Don't forget how Nixon got us involed with China which helped to open this version of Pandora's Box. If this was a hockey gam I guess he would get an assist.

 

[Bonnewagon]

It was in 1972, right? I remember. But they knew China under Mao needed much help, and we figured if they started making money they would be less inclined to interfere in places like Korea and Viet Nam. It took some time after Mao passed that they opened up to Western production methods and began to produce things. At first anything Chinese was total crap. But we bought it anyway. Like Amazon, they showed no profits and re-invested in better equipment. It is all pretty fascinating. Now they have the best, most efficient, and most productive manufacturing infrastructure. New cities have gone up. Most people are doing OK. Say what you will about Communism, but if a bridge needs building, it gets built. If a river valley needs damming, it gets done. No one argues, no one complains, under threat of prison or worse. I don't know how long the Chinese people will tolerate that. There is a huge demand for freedom and human rights. I'm not sure the CCP can keep the shackles on forever.

 

[pagrunt]

It was '72 when he was able to get Mao to open up to the west.

 

[86LK]

Everyone should remember one thing. China did not 'steal'. anything. American businessmen GAVE China our manufacturing base. Remember when Japan Inc was the problem? The 'rust belt' began way back then. We built up Japan, Germany, Taiwan, etc, after WWII so they would be able to compete on the world stage as Democracies. That worked very well, and some would say, too well, regarding Japan. In the 1950's 'made in Japan' was a joke meaning the item was crap. But as time went on, we bought the crap, they re-invested, and became a dominant source of everything from toys, to cameras, to computers, to cars. And we are still buying their stuff even though reality has caught up to them and prices are higher than before. So, businessmen, being always on the lookout to save money, saw China, and other countries, as a source of even cheaper labor. Soon China was flooding us with $1 hammers and other things. It was not as good as the American $10 hammer, but we bought it anyway. So the American hammer company went out of business. Soon the Chinese hammer was costing almost the same as the American hammer, but the businessman was pocketing the difference and getting very rich. He could care less that the little town in America that made the hammer shut down and went on food stamps. HE made a killing and laughed all the way to the bank. Soon every business that could, was moving to China. " I can't compete unless I do" was the excuse. No one stopped them from doing that. And slowly our country was drained of manufacturing jobs. China did not do that. WE did, Then China did something no one expected. They grew, they re-invested, they improvised, they copied, they stole, and they kept prices so low no one complained. Now they make everything and are becoming innovators in their own right. The EV that BYD and Toyota collaborated on is a game changer. It is going to revolutionize transportation. So are we going to sit back and whine about how 'unfair' this all is? Or are we going to get off our asses and compete? Tariffs will not fix this. Only hard work will. Let China make all they stuff we don't want to make. But let's make stuff that the world will want and no one else can make. We used to do that and we can do it again.

W. Edwards Deming - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He is also known as the father of the quality movement and was hugely influential in post-WWII Japan, credited with revolutionizing Japan's industry and making it one of the most dominant economies in the world.

Deming's teachings and philosophy are clearly illustrated by examining the results they produced after they were adopted by Japanese industry,as the following example (called the Ford-Mazda study) shows. Ford Motor Company was simultaneously manufacturing a car model with transmissions made in Japan (by Mazda) and the United States (by Ford). Soon after the car model was on the market (c. 1950), Ford customers were requesting the model with Japanese transmissions over the US-made transmissions, and they were willing to wait for the Japanese model. As both transmissions were made to the same specifications, Ford engineers could not understand the customer preference for the model with Japanese transmissions. Finally, Ford engineers decided to take apart the two different transmissions. The American-made car parts were all within specified tolerance levels. However, the Japanese car parts were virtually identical to each other, and much closer to the nominal values for the parts—e.g., if a part was supposed to be one foot long, plus or minus 1/8 of an inch (300 mm ± 3 mm)—then the Japanese parts were all within 1⁄16 of an inch (1.6 mm), less variation. This made the Japanese cars run more smoothly and customers experienced fewer problems.

 

[78Delta88]

This is an interesting post. In 1985 I had a chance random meeting with Mr Deming. I was working with Motorola on a 6-month project which was the beginning of MMI, which is the Motorola Manufacturing Institute. He had actually come there with one of his major training tools, a box full of all different colored marbles. And through this he was able to teach the difference of random selection in its relation to quality control.

From there you get SPC which is Statistical Process Control, and as MMI continued on this started the beginning of what we know today is Black Belt Six Sigma. The discussion at the time, and in some of the training that we had from Harvard Business School, was GM's discussion of the difference between Cadillac and Chevette quality.

One of the things that happened at GM were parts that were not made to specification. They would work, but they were not to specification. So the better quality parts like ball joints and bearings, brake rotors or other stuff, would go into the higher-end cars, Cadillac, Oldsmobile 98, etc... The parts that were off spec., would go into the Chevy Impala or other low end cars.

In 1985 what was being discussed, was that you should have one quality standard. One quality standard only and if it was not within spec it got scrapped. This is where they started talking about Cadillac quality, producing everything at Cadillac quality. If you remember back at that time is when Ford came out with their TV commercials Quality is Job One.

For too long the idea was, and speaking about the general public as the customer base, there was no concern about quality, because where else are they going to go? When the Japanese cars started hitting this country in the seventies the Japanese cars were more efficient, could pass emissions, and less expensive, with less history of breakdown.

The American customer noticed this and also the big three noticed this. They realized if they didn't start focusing on producing a quality product nobody was going to buy the cars anymore. So from there you end up with QS9000, ISO 9000 and now I think we're at ISO 14,000 or something like that. They finally realized they had to make an affordable quality product.

 

[86LK]

This is an interesting post. In 1985 I had a chance random meeting with Mr Deming. I was working with Motorola on a 6-month project which was the beginning of MMI, which is the Motorola Manufacturing Institute. He had actually come there with one of his major training tools, a box full of all different colored marbles. And through this he was able to teach the difference of random selection in its relation to quality control.

From there you get SPC which is Statistical Process Control, and as MMI continued on this started the beginning of what we know today is Black Belt Six Sigma. The discussion at the time, and in some of the training that we had from Harvard Business School, was GM's discussion of the difference between Cadillac and Chevette quality.

One of the things that happened at GM were parts that were not made to specification. They would work, but they were not to specification. So the better quality parts like ball joints and bearings, brake rotors or other stuff, would go into the higher-end cars, Cadillac, Oldsmobile 98, etc... The parts that were off spec., would go into the Chevy Impala or other low end cars.

In 1985 what was being discussed, was that you should have one quality standard. One quality standard only and if it was not within spec it got scrapped. This is where they started talking about Cadillac quality, producing everything at Cadillac quality. If you remember back at that time is when Ford came out with their TV commercials Quality is Job One.

For too long the idea was, and speaking about the general public as the customer base, there was no concern about quality, because where else are they going to go? When the Japanese cars started hitting this country in the seventies the Japanese cars were more efficient, could pass emissions, and less expensive, with less history of breakdown.

The American customer noticed this and also the big three noticed this. They realized if they didn't start focusing on producing a quality product nobody was going to buy the cars anymore. So from there you end up with QS9000, ISO 9000 and now I think we're at ISO 14,000 or something like that. They finally realized they had to make an affordable quality product.

as a similar aside, I started working at Dell Computers back in January 1995. typical hardware orientation tech classes. some of you may recall the Pentium processors had just come out within the last year. (Pentium 90s, 90 million instructions per second!) but why did they also sell pentium 60, 66, 75, 90, 100 and more? you may think something for everyone? some people want a Corvette, some can only afford a Chevette?
nope! instructor told us (and showed us) dies containing non-functional cpus. apparently Intel would manufacture the die, cut the cpus out, test each one for stability, and then price it accordingly for whatever speed it ran at reliably. given that there can be almost 32 chips on a die.... they would pray for p133 but get some lower speed chips, don't throw them away just sell them at a lower price point