British Manufacturing!
Discussion
thinfourth2 said:
freecar said:
Why be shocked, what about all the people who work in finance, retail and the like, not many robots there.
FinanceHave you seen what a modern printer/photocopier can do? All that sorting, hole punching and stapling it meets my definition of a robot
But i'm pretty certain they haven't counted those as robots
Many people who knock the competitiveness of UK or European manufacturing with Far East or sub continent need to learn to compare apples with apples.
Many is the time I've heard, but we've an offer from ABC Widgets at x% below you. When you get them to look at the two offers, they are comparing a fully finished, properly packed and protected finished product, fully tested and certified to the appropriate standards, delivered to their door, duty paid. All they have to is unload it.
The low price alternative is a factory end of production price. Oh you want it packed? that'll be extra, Certificates, extra. Shipping, freight insurance, landing fees, duty, delivery from port to customer bla bla bla, all extra.
That is even before getting down to consideration of the relative quality and technical backup and service which may or may not be comparable.
Many is the time I've heard, but we've an offer from ABC Widgets at x% below you. When you get them to look at the two offers, they are comparing a fully finished, properly packed and protected finished product, fully tested and certified to the appropriate standards, delivered to their door, duty paid. All they have to is unload it.
The low price alternative is a factory end of production price. Oh you want it packed? that'll be extra, Certificates, extra. Shipping, freight insurance, landing fees, duty, delivery from port to customer bla bla bla, all extra.
That is even before getting down to consideration of the relative quality and technical backup and service which may or may not be comparable.
F i F said:
Many people who knock the competitiveness of UK or European manufacturing with Far East or sub continent need to learn to compare apples with apples.
We lost a choke valve contract to a chinese competitorThe boss said " No problem they will be back in a years time when they find out why the chinese ones are so cheap"
I work in print and 5 years ago the chinese were killing the UK on price and if you went to the right factory the quality was very good too. In 2012 unless your product has a lot of handwork or packing then the UK is very competitive. Some buyers have now gone to India and Indonesia and Malaysia chasing the lowest prices, but doing business in those countries is a lot harder than doing business with the chinese.
thinfourth2 said:
We lost a choke valve contract to a chinese competitor
The boss said " No problem they will be back in a years time when they find out why the chinese ones are so cheap"
I wouldn't be so sure. Chinese industry is evolving very fast. The boss said " No problem they will be back in a years time when they find out why the chinese ones are so cheap"
I remember laughing at Japanese cars with funny names like Datsun and Toyota back in the 70s. 20 years later they had effectively replaced our motor industry.
China makes most everything. We take imports from them on a massive scale. What are they taking from the uk by way of return? They don't list there currency for trading either.
Everyone seems of the opinion that we daren't put any import tax on them as that would be protectionist. I can see it may hurt in the short term. The price of all the goods we import ( a lot) goes through the roof. How about long term.
What hope have I got of setting up a business designing and crucially manufacturing, say t-shirts, here in the uk, when I know they can be produced and shipped here from the other side of the world CHEAPER, than if I sourced everything here. We wonder why manufacturing is dead here, the answer is surely because we have allowed China and the east to utilise their child labour, lack of ethics, no holiday, sick or maternity pay in order to produce things cheaply, so we can buy them cheaply.
In a few decades the price of this will be a significant number of the populace here unable to find work. Who will buy their cheap clothes when no one has a job or any money.
I'm sure the economists will be along to shout how wrong I am but the government could have acted but chose not to...
L
Everyone seems of the opinion that we daren't put any import tax on them as that would be protectionist. I can see it may hurt in the short term. The price of all the goods we import ( a lot) goes through the roof. How about long term.
What hope have I got of setting up a business designing and crucially manufacturing, say t-shirts, here in the uk, when I know they can be produced and shipped here from the other side of the world CHEAPER, than if I sourced everything here. We wonder why manufacturing is dead here, the answer is surely because we have allowed China and the east to utilise their child labour, lack of ethics, no holiday, sick or maternity pay in order to produce things cheaply, so we can buy them cheaply.
In a few decades the price of this will be a significant number of the populace here unable to find work. Who will buy their cheap clothes when no one has a job or any money.
I'm sure the economists will be along to shout how wrong I am but the government could have acted but chose not to...
L
highway said:
China makes most everything. We take imports from them on a massive scale. What are they taking from the uk by way of return? They don't list there currency for trading either.
Everyone seems of the opinion that we daren't put any import tax on them as that would be protectionist. I can see it may hurt in the short term. The price of all the goods we import ( a lot) goes through the roof. How about long term.
What hope have I got of setting up a business designing and crucially manufacturing, say t-shirts, here in the uk, when I know they can be produced and shipped here from the other side of the world CHEAPER, than if I sourced everything here. We wonder why manufacturing is dead here, the answer is surely because we have allowed China and the east to utilise their child labour, lack of ethics, no holiday, sick or maternity pay in order to produce things cheaply, so we can buy them cheaply.
In a few decades the price of this will be a significant number of the populace here unable to find work. Who will buy their cheap clothes when no one has a job or any money.
I'm sure the economists will be along to shout how wrong I am but the government could have acted but chose not to...
L
No Govt would last too long if it implemented policies that had the effect of massively increasing the cost of living. There have been numerous examples of countries who decided to implement protectionist policies, and effectivey closed their borders for trade. On the whole this has tended not to work out all that well for the populations of those countries (slight sarcasm their). Everyone seems of the opinion that we daren't put any import tax on them as that would be protectionist. I can see it may hurt in the short term. The price of all the goods we import ( a lot) goes through the roof. How about long term.
What hope have I got of setting up a business designing and crucially manufacturing, say t-shirts, here in the uk, when I know they can be produced and shipped here from the other side of the world CHEAPER, than if I sourced everything here. We wonder why manufacturing is dead here, the answer is surely because we have allowed China and the east to utilise their child labour, lack of ethics, no holiday, sick or maternity pay in order to produce things cheaply, so we can buy them cheaply.
In a few decades the price of this will be a significant number of the populace here unable to find work. Who will buy their cheap clothes when no one has a job or any money.
I'm sure the economists will be along to shout how wrong I am but the government could have acted but chose not to...
L
Its one area where there appears to be a general consensus in Economics.
highway said:
It's all one way traffic though, we take their exports on mass. Yet they take nothing from us in return.
We turn a blind eye to why they make things cheaply as in the now it suits us. What about long term though?
They buy all our debt so we can keep buying tat we don't need, add ever complicated bureaucracy and keep living the dream. We turn a blind eye to why they make things cheaply as in the now it suits us. What about long term though?
People generally cite Germany as a very good example of a successful manufacturing based economy.
And rightly so.
But, note the things they make & sell that are reasonably well known:
high quality cars - Audi, BMW, Merc, VW - all good products.
high quality household goods - good quality kitchen appliances, washing machines etc.
An earlier poster mentioned something interesting - many people like to buy cheap products. I'm guilty of the same thing.
It seems to me that there is no reason the UK cannot create a larger manuf. base on the basis of making very high quality goods. As earlier posted, the designers/creators of the machines make more than the factories that churn them out.
And rightly so.
But, note the things they make & sell that are reasonably well known:
high quality cars - Audi, BMW, Merc, VW - all good products.
high quality household goods - good quality kitchen appliances, washing machines etc.
An earlier poster mentioned something interesting - many people like to buy cheap products. I'm guilty of the same thing.
It seems to me that there is no reason the UK cannot create a larger manuf. base on the basis of making very high quality goods. As earlier posted, the designers/creators of the machines make more than the factories that churn them out.
thinfourth2 said:
We lost a choke valve contract to a chinese competitor
The boss said " No problem they will be back in a years time when they find out why the chinese ones are so cheap"
The boss said " No problem they will be back in a years time when they find out why the chinese ones are so cheap"
We had a similar situation with a UK based car manufacturer who sent all of their tooling to China because it was slightly cheaper than what we quoted. A month before the vehicle model was due to launch, they flew all of the tooling back to the UK at a cost of £500k because the Chinese company could not get the panels off at an acceptable quality and were behind schedule.
Similar happened with Nissan, Honda and Ford. In fact I believe that Nissan no longer want tooling to be built in China due to the issues they've suffered.
If some of you saw the crap coming out of China, you'd wonder why British manufacturing is at risk from the Far East and their shoddy workmanship.
Disco_Dale said:
thinfourth2 said:
We lost a choke valve contract to a chinese competitor
The boss said " No problem they will be back in a years time when they find out why the chinese ones are so cheap"
I wouldn't be so sure. Chinese industry is evolving very fast. The boss said " No problem they will be back in a years time when they find out why the chinese ones are so cheap"
I remember laughing at Japanese cars with funny names like Datsun and Toyota back in the 70s. 20 years later they had effectively replaced our motor industry.
I work for a canadian based company and while most of the machining is done in Canada all the top end valve bodies are forged in the UK as no one else can reach the same level of quality.
We probably have the best valve on the market.
There was a well where the sand screens had failed and one of our chokes was fitted and it failed after 6 days. This naturally caused a lot of headaches in the design office until the client spoke up and said they were delighted as the chinese one had last 12 minutes before it got minced by the high pressure sand. They then order another dozen at 80grand a pop
Disco_Dale said:
I wouldn't be so sure. Chinese industry is evolving very fast.
I remember laughing at Japanese cars with funny names like Datsun and Toyota back in the 70s. 20 years later they had effectively replaced our motor industry.
And most of the people who worked in our motor industry were actually driving a Toyota or Datsun.I remember laughing at Japanese cars with funny names like Datsun and Toyota back in the 70s. 20 years later they had effectively replaced our motor industry.
GeraldSmith said:
King Herald said:
And most of the people who worked in our motor industry were actually driving a Toyota or Datsun.
Is this the defunct motor industry that made 1.2 million cars in the UK last year and exported over 900,000 of them....The U.K. is seen as hot bed for low volume, high value specialist manufacturing. This is all well and good, but it can't hope to pay the bills. As for robots, the main advantage with them, over blood bags, is that you only need to punch the instructions into them once. The downsides are fairly evident, from films such as I robot, 2000 a space odyssey, and lost in space.
johnfm said:
Of those cars, how many were made by UK companies?
What is a UK company? Is it where the head office is located or the stock exchange it is listed on or the nationality of the majority of the shareholders? It's a pretty meaningless concept, the point is that we have a very successful motor industry in the country but that's good news, so not something that people seem to want to hear.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff