there's always mexico.

 

that might have been true 30 years ago, but today that's just flat wrong. the iphone and ipad are just two of tons of high quality products made in china.

 

They make them to the standards and specifications requested by their customers.

 

There's a notion going around that Mainland Chinese workers are great at following blueprints or specifications when making a product. Hence, why Apple products are relatively of strong quality (even if these are China-made).

However, when a Mainland Chinese wants to build or develop products on their own, it's usually of crap quality (i.e. most Mainland China car brands like Chery or Coolbear or JAC are included

At the moment, only very few Mainland Chinese products and brands (as in home-grown or locally-owned) are world-class or have the potential to be world-class. Brands like Haier, Midea or Lenovo come into mind.

The rest are ****

 

What can happen in a totalitarian state when the threat of punishment is injected into the production process can be truly amazing.

At the close of WWII, the Soviet Union had interned three B-29 bombers that had to land in Siberia after a mission over Japan. While the crews were imprisoned for several months, they were eventually returned to the US, but the aircraft never came back. Stalin wanted the American technology for a long-range bomber, and he determined to hold on to the B-29's. Russian engineers were astounded at the level of technology this bomber represented, and would have some difficulty copying the design.

The Soviets disassembled one, copying every component with amazing accuracy, down to the smallest detail. One of the other B-29's was used to evaluate the flight characteristics of the finished aircraft, and when the Russian model TU-4 (NATO designation, "Bull") finally was deployed, it was found to suffer from all of the same maladies that affected the B-29 - overheating engines, iffy pressurization, poor defenses. The Russian engineers even went so far as to copy the bullet holes the B-29's had picked up over Tokyo on earlier missions, patching them with aluminum scraps riveted in place. In the event of a failure, NOBODY was going to be stood in front of a firing squad for not copying the original exactly.

In a similar story, a client some years back took some oilfield machinery to Baku for a large trade show, but the large drawworks weighing a few tons was dropped while it was being hoisted from the ship to the pier. While the product was wrecked internally, it still looked good, so with a little body and fender work it went to the show floor.

After the show closed a week later the machine "got lost" in customs and spent about 18 months in Baku being reverse engineered. They fixed some of the obvious damage, but one thing got by the engineers. It seems that the spool that takes up the drilling line (much like a fishing reel) was bent slightly in the wreck, causing it to run out of true when rotated at speed. Whether this slipped by the people charged with copying the design, or no one had the nerve to "change" a major design feature is unknown, but about two years later a Romanian company was selling an identical product (in a different color paint scheme). Yup, every one of them when rotated at speed delivered a resounding whump, whump, whump. It seems all of the products incorporated that bent shaft. The Russian engineers certainly knew better, but failure to make an exact copy as ordered would have those responsible chopping firewood in Siberia . . . at best.

Like the TU-4, a totalitarian regime doesn't brook original thinking, when they say copy it, they MEAN it.

 

You only say this cause Acura is a Buick American made Japanese badged brand. And well quality has never been near #1 or considered among the best. There is a difference, otherwise surely Lexus, the highest quality auto brand ever created which sales mostly in the states would have built a plant here by now.

Also check the news, the Japanese government has stepped in multiple times to try to help the yen to no avail. Toyota has been very vocal that something needs to be done or Japanese companies are in serious danger of having to produce elsewhere which is contrary to their philosophy.

William Demming's teaching can't help when you are dealing with such a strong yen. Quite frankly Japan never recovered from the Real Estate bust of the 1990s.



Agreed. Every country has its high quality products and low quality products. You can't just make a blanket statement about a country's quality.

 

No question japanese built lexus are high quality, but of course half of u.s lexus sales (rx) are made in canada!

 

Right Canada...and all 450hs are made in Japan (A few members have visited the plant and raved about it). I firmly believe the Canadian plant is fantastic and has the awards to prove so. That said, its obvious Lexus is not building vehicles here for whatever reasons.

Read this link from yesterday about NIssan quality issues...70% are North American based in regards to suppliers

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/02/01/n...lem-suppliers/

 

Doesn't matter to me whether it's Canada, U.S. or Mexico. So if Lexus can do it in Canada, no reason it can't do it anywhere. Plus, let's not forgot they build a zillion Camrys in Kentucky.

Anyway, Japan's demographics and endless bad govt meddling in their financial system and lack of real reform have likely sealed their fate. Besides the demographics though, we're in the same boat, but the U.S. is much more likely to make big changes.

 

A Lexus is no Camry. It's built to a minimum of twice the quality control of a Toyota.

To add to Japans issues they also have kids not as enthused into the car culture as in the past. Cars have lost the coolness factor

 

a lot of news you heard may not be as accurate as you thought because of conflict of interest.
China have a very good reputation of making consistent product, and they produce far better quality product than any other country (at the moment) for a given price. as a matter of fact, China has the ability to produce and prototype something lighting fast, way faster than U.S. (actually it is not even comparable in anyway)

only 6.54 dollar of labor cost goes into the making of each 600 dollar iPhone, and i think no one is here to argue the labor quality of iPhone is pretty much flawless. the sad news is a lot of company only spend few cents on labor cost, and guess what, you get "crap" quality product for the "crap" price you pay. unfortunately China because the country to blame when this happen yet on one bother to ask how much is the company is spending.