Yup. Race to the bottom.
Additionally the ease of cross shopping on price has gone up tremendously in the past 20 years so the pressure to bring down cost has increased accordingly. This is especially applicable to anything available on Amazon.
Yup. Race to the bottom.
Additionally the ease of cross shopping on price has gone up tremendously in the past 20 years so the pressure to bring down cost has increased accordingly. This is especially applicable to anything available on Amazon.
I just assumed it was an extension of the subscription model that all businesses seem to want. No one in their right mind would purchase a subscription for a water pump, tie rod end or alternator but, they will purchase low priced items that require replacement often enough that they might as well be.
Mr. Peabody said:In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
I worked in that industry for most of my career, and service parts was always a PIA. One of the companies I worked for determined that it was more economical to produce more parts than required for the order and set aside the leftovers for service.
That would be possible with some parts, depending on their size. I could fill my entire finished goods warehouse (60K sq ft) from empty to overflowing in about 36 hours. There was no room to store extra parts and no guarantee there would ever be another order anyway. Service parts orders were random events in a very structured supply chain for us.
Apexcarver said:In reply to trigun7469 :
I have seen a story repeated in the automotive aftermarket over and over. Stateside company designs and produces a part. They do a good job of it, they charge $x. Someone buys that part and sends it to a factory in China. They reverse engineer the part, often shoddily, and produce it out of cheaper materials, with cheaper processes, with less quality control, in bulk. They do this without out the R&D costs, just the reverse engineering costs. That someone who sent it off to China, they are often stateside, then can sell the part for $ (x*0.75) and still have as good of (or better) profit margin than the stateside company that designed the part. Because its cheaper, it starts outselling the stateside company by a large factor and the stateside company cannot compete and is lucky to stay in business, despite producing a much better part from a quality/durability perspective.
We've had that happen. We had a product we put a lot of R&D into and was made in the US. Good piece. One of our resellers sent it overseas to be duplicated, offered to sell us the result, and proceeded to undercut us badly. We finally had to move production overseas to compete - and ironically, ended up at the same manufacturer as the knockoff. The manufacturer just used the same drawings without telling us because the designs were so similar. The reseller got upset, overseas manufacturer stuck with their original client and we were left looking for a third party to build the parts. Quality is less consistent but the price is now competitive with the knockoff. Yay.
In reply to Duke :
Okay read your reply, Apex's and then apply it to US business philosophy. Why did all the manufacturing move offshore? I will give you a hint it wasn't because the MBAs wanted to deliver better quality products.
Blaming the consumer is a myopic view of the problem. People are responding to crap products, crap jobs, ridiculous inflation that has been masked for decades...... why? So the rich can get richer. Greed. It's that simple. We live in a world where everyone is so smart now Occam's razor has been debunked by fact checkers therefore simple reality cannot be true.
I've made this same point multiple times here on different posts. Lots have denied it. No one has disproven it. I will submit to you the wealth gap and stock market inflated to all time highs as proof. Let's also talk about increasing homelessness and poverty. The sad part is greed knows no limits.
And just because a new tool is polished and shiny, that doesn't make it a better tool which is also being claimed here.
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
We are just attempting to help bring the worldwide median wage up.
You could just blame everyone that invests in any stocks because the companies they are investing in are trying to turn profits to increase the wealth of the shareholders.
AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:Blaming the consumer is a myopic view of the problem. People are responding to crap products, crap jobs, ridiculous inflation that has been masked for decades...... why? So the rich can get richer. Greed. It's that simple.
This is like blaming management for manual transmissions disappearing. Companies and their management are responding to the market.
Apexcarver said:In reply to trigun7469 :
I have seen a story repeated in the automotive aftermarket over and over. Stateside company designs and produces a part. They do a good job of it, they charge $x. Someone buys that part and sends it to a factory in China. They reverse engineer the part, often shoddily, and produce it out of cheaper materials, with cheaper processes, with less quality control, in bulk. They do this without out the R&D costs, just the reverse engineering costs. That someone who sent it off to China, they are often stateside, then can sell the part for $ (x*0.75) and still have as good of (or better) profit margin than the stateside company that designed the part. Because its cheaper, it starts outselling the stateside company by a large factor and the stateside company cannot compete and is lucky to stay in business, despite producing a much better part from a quality/durability perspective.
I've had that happen to me at least 3 times that I know of and each time it was an American company doing the copying and paying low wages to make the part with lesser quality
Ironically, it is all crap because the word on the street is that people will buy crap so crap is what gets made. So says the great Algorithm.
The entire world is now being run on feedback to an "Algorithm" of one sort or the other. Too bad for us, the only thing that the algorithm is programed to maximize is "Profit". Good bad or indifferent, the Algorithm is only concerned with what will motivate an individual to part with $$$.
As to cloning parts, no need to buy stuff and do all the pesky measuring and 3D modeling, just make a call and get the stuff delivered.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/independent-firm-helps-automakers-reverse-165800227.html A2Mac1, a France-based company with facilities in China, India, South Korea, Thailand, and Belleville, Michigan, offers a different solution: subscriptions to its static benchmarking services. Annually, A2Mac1 tears apart about 90 new vehicles, a quarter of which are disassembled at its U.S. location. Its employees weigh parts, measure dimensions and clearances with other components, and photograph it all. The company will conduct exclusive teardowns for a fee,
NOHOME said:
Too bad for us, the only thing that the algorithm is programed to maximize is "Profit". Good bad or indifferent, the Algorithm is only concerned with what will motivate an individual to part with $$$.
So, by the logic of your own post, what we need to do is convince consumers to buy high-quality products for a higher price instead of low-quality parts for a lower price. That will drive business (and by extension, revenue) toward the higher end of the range. The Algorithm will then determine that is where profit is to be found.
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
It isnt a single pillar problem you are chasing.
And thats just a few minutes thinking... its a really complex tapestry and focusing one a singular aspect of it is an easy trap to fall into. You aren't wrong, its just a very very complex system without a singular fix. (though we all would love to see it fixed)
Well, one thing is for sure after reading these posts:
The way things are now isn't making anybody happy (save possibly some accounting departments).
Duke said:NOHOME said:
Too bad for us, the only thing that the algorithm is programed to maximize is "Profit". Good bad or indifferent, the Algorithm is only concerned with what will motivate an individual to part with $$$.So, by the logic of your own post, what we need to do is convince consumers to buy high-quality products for a higher price instead of low-quality parts for a lower price. That will drive business (and by extension, revenue) toward the higher end of the range. The Algorithm will then determine that is where profit is to be found.
You are right, but ironically, since the algorithm has no concern for the human factor, and the result would be exactly y the same profit wise, why would it change direction. Brings up the question of if the Algorithm is leading or following?
What you advocate for is exactly what led Germany out of its post war economy to become the economic power-house of Europe. Germany became an economy of Small to Medium Corporations whose sole purpose Excellence; make the best of the one product that they made and cost be damned. Oddly enough, as a nation, they also tended to recompense their workers with generous terms of employment.
I can not vouch for how much of that economy survives today. I recall when a Mercedes with proper maintenance, could be the last car you ever needed to buy at age 50, not just the car you leased for 3 years before it falls apart.
Mr. Peabody said:Apexcarver said:In reply to trigun7469 :
I have seen a story repeated in the automotive aftermarket over and over. Stateside company designs and produces a part. They do a good job of it, they charge $x. Someone buys that part and sends it to a factory in China. They reverse engineer the part, often shoddily, and produce it out of cheaper materials, with cheaper processes, with less quality control, in bulk. They do this without out the R&D costs, just the reverse engineering costs. That someone who sent it off to China, they are often stateside, then can sell the part for $ (x*0.75) and still have as good of (or better) profit margin than the stateside company that designed the part. Because its cheaper, it starts outselling the stateside company by a large factor and the stateside company cannot compete and is lucky to stay in business, despite producing a much better part from a quality/durability perspective.
I've had that happen to me at least 3 times that I know of and each time it was an American company doing the copying and paying low wages to make the part with lesser quality
I'm sure. It is a MAJOR problem and contributor to the main topic of the thread.
The fun part is that it is on you to have the added expense to protect your IP (intellectual property), which means paying lawyers (to which I ascribe the adage, when lawyers get involved, the only people consistently getting rich are lawyers).
Meanwhile, the people doing the IP theft are often able to pull down their "shingle" (business) and put up a new shingle, perhaps shuffling the names on the company paperwork and do the same thing over and over. The places actually making the parts are most often in china and going after them is so notoriously difficult as to be impossible. Though, in many cases for smaller volume, I am sure its all happening stateside.
In reply to NOHOME :
All that is is outsourcing a function they were already doing to one extent or another. The company I worked for would benchmark our competitors' products all the time. We would get emails asking any employees who owned a particular model car to bring it in for a few days of analysis. I doubt the lab tore the seats apart , but you can learn a lot by simply removing them from the vehicle and having a good look. They were often used for the subjective stuff like comfort and fit and finish, too. There aren't many competitive advantages anymore, especially since the OEMs outsourced most of their parts manufacturing. The OEMs are just vehicle assemblers these days and will end up buying parts/systems from the same companies and designed by the same engineers. The individual components of the system may well be shared between a Ford ,Honda, Toyota and Chevrolet. I smile when someone suggests there's collusion on MSRPs between manufacturers when they're all utilizing the same suppliers anyway.
One of the things not mentioned is that China is built on sub-contracting:
As margins get thinner and thinner the company that reverse engineered a part will now sub-contract it out to a smaller company that is willing to do it cheaper. That sub contractor may sub-contract to an even smaller company. These companies have little to no quality control, it's more cost effective to produce a part with a higher failure rate than to slow down and make sure all of the parts meet spec. This has been going on for 30 years.
Intel is building a $20 billion computer chip facility in Ohio amid a global shortage So will America make it faster and better?
Tom1200 said:One of the things not mentioned is that China is built on sub-contracting:
As margins get thinner and thinner the company that reverse engineered a part will now sub-contract it out to a smaller company that is willing to do it cheaper. That sub contractor may sub-contract to an even smaller company. These companies have little to no quality control, it's more cost effective to produce a part with a higher failure rate than to slow down and make sure all of the parts meet spec. This has been going on for 30 years.
And now to our commercial aircraft.
In reply to VolvoHeretic :
The pandemic is a perfect example; slopply lab protocals cuased this mess. Will we get that "low bid" isn't as cost effective as it seems...................only time will tell.
trigun7469 said:Intel is building a $20 billion computer chip facility in Ohio amid a global shortage So will America make it faster and better?
Mayhaps. China has failed but perhaps for unique reasons that do not apply to the USA.
Because they are made in "foundries" and because we speak of "cutting edge" technology, I have always thought of microchips as edged weapons.
What scares me about the whole microchip world is that industry has managed to make an incredibly sharp sword with only a miniscule portion of the population having any idea how we got there. The infrastructure requirements for a foundry are unique to the point where there are not many places geographically where you can build a foundry. If there is so much as a chip to the blade of that sword, it will shatter. Today's microchips are potentially the future "Valerian Steel" for generations to come.
trigun7469 said:Intel is building a $20 billion computer chip facility in Ohio amid a global shortage So will America make it faster and better?
This doesn't make me feel better.
Although I suspect I'm an edge case. My experience with anything "made in America" requiring more electronics than a battery is that it will cost considerably more and last a considerably shorter period of time.
NOHOME said:Duke said:NOHOME said:
Too bad for us, the only thing that the algorithm is programed to maximize is "Profit". Good bad or indifferent, the Algorithm is only concerned with what will motivate an individual to part with $$$.So, by the logic of your own post, what we need to do is convince consumers to buy high-quality products for a higher price instead of low-quality parts for a lower price. That will drive business (and by extension, revenue) toward the higher end of the range. The Algorithm will then determine that is where profit is to be found.
You are right, but ironically, since the algorithm has no concern for the human factor, and the result would be exactly y the same profit wise, why would it change direction. Brings up the question of if the Algorithm is leading or following?
It doesn't matter if the algorithm is leading or following. You stated that The Algorithm is programmed to maximize profits. If consumers drive revenue by insisting on buying better/$$$ products and the market for worse/$ products dries up or even takes a significant hit, The Algorithm will adapt to maximize profit by, to coin a phrase, following the money. The result would not be "exactly the same either way" because consumer spending choices would move in the public's allegedly-desired direction.
I submit that they already have moved in the majority of the public's desired direction. They just were not aware of the consequences of that desire, and now some part of that public are not happy with the results, but are unwilling to recognize their part in why it came to be.
I do not think that the consumer is 100% to blame - as stated above, it is an issue with many factors - but I do think that simply blaming it entirely on that old favorite demon Capitalist Greed is... not accurate, to be polite about it.
NOHOME said:Ironically, it is all crap because the word on the street is that people will buy crap so crap is what gets made. So says the great Algorithm.
The entire world is now being run on feedback to an "Algorithm" of one sort or the other. Too bad for us, the only thing that the algorithm is programed to maximize is "Profit". Good bad or indifferent, the Algorithm is only concerned with what will motivate an individual to part with $$$.
As to cloning parts, no need to buy stuff and do all the pesky measuring and 3D modeling, just make a call and get the stuff delivered.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/independent-firm-helps-automakers-reverse-165800227.html A2Mac1, a France-based company with facilities in China, India, South Korea, Thailand, and Belleville, Michigan, offers a different solution: subscriptions to its static benchmarking services. Annually, A2Mac1 tears apart about 90 new vehicles, a quarter of which are disassembled at its U.S. location. Its employees weigh parts, measure dimensions and clearances with other components, and photograph it all. The company will conduct exclusive teardowns for a fee,
Actually, I'm pretty sure SEMA offers this same service to their members. Heck, you can get great 3D models of GM parts from GM if you can justify the need. I could knock off an LS3 engine perfectly if I had a few machine tools and a foundry.
Hands up if you buy your car parts at Rock Auto and your tools at Harbor Freight...
Keith Tanner said:Hands up if you buy your car parts at Rock Auto and your tools and Harbor Freight...
No reason to get straight up NASTY about it 
Keith Tanner said:Hands up if you buy your car parts at Rock Auto...
Guilty as charged.
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