[Coco] off-topic, space program

[jdaggett at gate.net]

David

I used to work for Motorola and in the division I was in, by the mid 90's all our 
PCBs except for prototypes were from Sinagapore or Taiwan. One help was 
that several products were able to use 2 sided boards. By 1998 we were 
using mainland China PCB vendors. Many of the components were sourced 
out of Asia for plastics and speakers and transducers along with some other 
IC's. Resistors/caps/inductors came from the standard like AVX, Kemet and 
so forth. They have facilities all over the world. 

Motorola now has no manufactureing in the US. All is second sourced or is 
done in Mexico and China. Motorola now has design centers in China and 
about 20 billion dollars invested into China. Yes there are still the Jabil, 
Flextrtonics and other manufacturers. But for them to stay alive now they 
need to either be partly in defense and into medical/biomedical segments. 
Consumer electronics is not a money maker here. 

I agree on the quality from China is not up to speed. They are not used to 
doing business the western way. They are  gaining experience yearly though. 
With teh movement to China yes transportation costs become more than 
labor. The beauty of China is that their Yuan is pegged to our dollar. So as 
the US dollar floats to others, the exchange rate bwteen the US and China 
remains somewhat constant. That is a nice feature for US companies. 

it is all part of globalization. When you ultimately look at wher einthe world is 
the largest potential for gropwth in consumerism , the US is just not the palce 
anymore not is Europe. China and India are the two areas that can sustain 
10% or more growth for the next 20 years. That is where the money is to be 
made and that is where everyone will end up.

james


On 15 Jan 2004 at 18:33, David Hazelton wrote:

Date sent:      	Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:33:09 -0500
From:           	David Hazelton <davehazelton at access-4-free.com>
To:             	CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts 
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Subject:        	Re: [Coco] off-topic, space program
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> jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
> > John
> > 
> > ALL consumer electronics has some or all of its parts manufactured
> > outside the US. Even Motorola does not manufacture cellphones in the
> > US anymore, Mexico and mostly China.  Sunbeam does not manufacture
> > any of their products. Some thrid parrty company builds it for them
> > in Taiwan or China. 
> > 
> > The state of Engineering here in the US is trending to project
> > management. The engineers are overseeing designs and manufacture
> > outside the US. The only real place to do full enegineering  and
> > manufacture is in defense related electronics and in Civil
> > Engineering. IF I had children entering college I would not instruct
> > them to become an ELectrical or Mechanical Engineer. A Civil
> > Engineer is okay. Civil Engineering is about one of the engineering
> > jobs that will be difficult to ship oversees. 
> > 
> > 
> > james
> > 
> 
> This is not always true,  I used to work for a contract manufacture,
> which was international.  We built things for IBM, Cisco, Lucent,
> Dell, Nokia and the likes of these.   Most PCB boards are still
> manufactured in USA,  the quality is much better here, thus a better
> product.  The Plant I worked at was in a custom free zone, so we could
> build products that said built in China "legally".
> 
> Anyways, shipping is the number one concern, our Asia plants built
> things for the Asian market, our North American plants the US/Canada
> market. Our European plants for Europe. Most of our R&D was in Canada.
> 
> 
> That was what I saw in the technology market.
> 
> ~David Hazelton
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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