Milwaukee = Ryobi?

[aemeijers]

It saddens me to read that. Dell got underbid on the last go-round at work, so I haven't seen any brand new Optiplexes in a couple of years.

aem sends...

[George]

But those are just the usual warm and fuzzy press releases from the past about the great stuff that is *going* to happen after they got the development grants/no taxes for 10 years exemptions. Did any of it actually happen?

My nephew (and associates) fly in lots of Dell computers from China every day. Every new Dell computer I have seen recently is marked "Made in China"

[Matt Barrow]

Exactly...the typical PR/Marketing "weasel words".

[dpb]

I don't know exactly how Dell is operating those facilities now as opposed to when they were opened--I suppose (although I doubt) they could be building individualized towers, etc., overseas and shipping them in, but it just doesn't sound logical. I was in TN when the Lebanon, TN (east of Nashville) opened and it certainly was an assembly/manufacturing facility then. That was roughly '99 time frame iirc. I just looked at the Economic Development Organization for the area and they still show 1500 employees at the Dell Lebanon, TN, facility, but could find nothing up-to-date on what they're actually doing. Would seem unlikely they would need 1500 people to unload and re-ship, however.

Dell web site is uninformative -- would have to read annual reports and do more research than I'm interested in doing to find out more detail. I can believe the laptop and some specialty business, but really have a hard time conceiving it could be cost-effective to fly in large quantities of the bulk type machines already assembled/ software loaded/etc....

But, I've been wrong before... :)

[Tim Smith]

Yes. They have a 500000 sq ft facility in Winston-Salem, of which they are using about 40% of the space, for 700 people to assembly computers. That was as of about two months ago:

Most likely your nephew is flying in parts for Dell. Much of Dell's parts come from Asia (disk drives, for example).

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Or maybe both. They may assemble a generic computer in China then customize it here. Lots of speculation, very little facts about this. Or they may assemble the high end here. Until we get a real Dell employee to say otherwise, we're all just guessing.

[dpb]

The one thing that is certain is that Dell continues to refine/modify its processes in response to very dynamic market forces, both on the consumption and production side. What they had in mind when the facilities were built 5 or more years ago is quite likely a light-year away from what their current procurement/production/distribution models are. And, what they may be 5 years down the road may bear little resemblence to today's...

[dpb]

The cost ratio would seem high although could believe the use/ longevity might be roughly correct. Of course, one could get the cost ratio to that point if comparing a K-Mart/Walmart-purchased homeowner tool to a tool purchased at the plumbing distributorship.

Every business owner/contractor/etc. has to work out what is the most cost-effective tool management program for their particular situation. I know those who use the same "throw-away" scheme and others who "buy best". In those instances, what is the difference primarily of the ones I'm thinking of is the types of crews they have-- the "cheap but cheery" guy uses hourlies while the "pricey but strong" guy has long-term employees. I hypothesize the labor and the personal proclivities of the individuals has as much or more to do w/ the longevity of the tool as the tool itself.

I simply compare how as an employer I have tools which I have owned/ used for in some cases 40 years that a particular hand has been able to destroy (or nearly so) in a half-hour before it was rescued. Otoh, others are also able to operate with impunity the same tool doing the same job.

[Chris Lewis]

According to dpb :

The point I was trying to make (perhaps not all that well) is that even if the same company makes Milwaulkee and Ryobi, it doesn't mean that the quality is the same. Regardless of plant location or even production line.

Eg: MTD owns about 5 different lawn/garden tractor brands. Cub Cadet is most definately not equivalent to "MTD branded" tractors.

Eg: Dewalt != B&D != Porter Cable != Delta. Yet, they're all B&D...

Nor should the location of the plants make any difference - the big three north american automakers dismissed japanese automakers for rather too long, and are still paying for it.

[dpb]

To me that goes w/o saying although I know that it isn't so for many. In essence then, we're agreeing but I surely didn't get that message from your previous posts--I certainly thought you were trying to make a case that Milwaukee wasn't producing anything in the US. So, if I misinterpreted, sorry, apparently I was also tilting at the wrong windmill... :)

BTW, the answer to the question of where the 18V hammer drills were _actually_ made is (surprising me) the Czech Republic. True for the old one and the very recently acquired one both...

[Chris Lewis]

I was trying to make the case that it's not clear how much they're manufacturing in the US, but it doesn't matter...

It happens to all of us ;-)

My father worked for a couple of years as a sales engineer for a heavy industry manufacturing group based in Czechoslovakia, _before_ the Soviet empire came apart, let alone before the Czech and Slovak republics parted ways. Rock crushers, pumps in the

100+ HP class etc (for mining industry etc). "Won't win beauty or engineering elegance prizes, but _tough_ and lasts forever".

Add a bit of engineering elegance and shift to retail, and you have Milwaulkee ;-)

[z]

Sometimes they're hybrids. I've bought some different brands of window air conditioners in the past few years; it's obvious that the mechanicals are all the same (probably LG), but the control panels are all different; the LG one has old fashioned knobs, another one is digital, another one is digital with a remote.

[z]

Well, you don't have to be too old to remember when 'made in Japan' was a synonym for piece of crap. That period went by pretty quickly, in retrospect.

[dpb]

Yes...in a former life I worked with a line of ash and elemental analyzers for online monitoring of coal. A fair amount of the heavy gear in the prep plants was of East European origin...

What surprised me was that one has become conditioned to offshore cheap manufacturing to mean SE Asia or, maybe, Mexico for those who jumped on the NAFTA bandwagon. That eastern bloc countries are for the most part also still in the cheap labor camp has pretty much fallen of the radar screen...

I thought it interesting that the decision had been made and the location selected obviously long before the takeover. My _really_ old red gear is, of course, labelled USA, but that's going back 50 years to most of it. I hadn't had any need for buying something I didn't already have for quite a long time and came to the high power battery drill _very_ late in the game so didn't have anything of intermediate age to try to compare with...

BTW, "Milwaukee" has only one (1) "L"... :)

[Chris Lewis]

Agreed. The shift is well on the way with Taiwan and Korea now, and it _will_ happen with China too. The end result being high wages and a certain amount of stagnation/regrouping as they meet or exceed where we are now (in wages, QoL, prices etc). Question is whether our economies will survive the phenomena with China, or instead, whether it's our turn next.

[z]

Of course our economies are going to get clobbered. The only thing keeping our salaries and benefits and way of life as high as they are is geographic isolation; the money is over here not over there, we are over here, therefore we have more money. Thanks to modern communications and transportation, that isolation is greatly reduced. Eventually things will stabilize, but we're not going to live long enough to see that period. In the meantime, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Like when the industrial revolution displaced agriculture, or when mechanization replaced hand labor.

[Chris Lewis]

The underlying issue on the "radar screen" front is the US bleedout on trade. The US had a $725.8 billion trade deficit in

2005 (>$200B with China alone, ~$70B with Canada). That's US dollars going over "there" (and some "here", to reference the other followup to my posting ;-) [Canada had a $55B total trade surplus in 2005. Last time the US had a trade surplus was in 1975.]

I wouldn't include the Czech Republic in the cheap labor camp. It's advantage comes from a long history of industrialization, good education, and relative stability (compared to many other eastern bloc countries). The standard of living there has been pretty comfortable for several decades, and wages are moderately high compared to other places in the eastern bloc.

The parts of Czechoslovakia that _didn't_ have as much of that went off on its own (relatively peacefully!).

With the Czech Republic, it's a shift of manufacturing with good education, infrastructure etc backing it up. Not _new_ manufacturing and all of the long-term education/infrastructure buildup that needs.

Yugoslavia had the same potential advantages, but the "going off on their own" bit was hardly peaceful and set them back decades. Tho there are sectors still doing well.

[Chris Lewis]

According to z :

Given that the US trade deficit in 2005 was $728B and is still increasing, you seem to be doing your best to move it over "there" :-(

It'll stabilize, but it'll be bumpy getting there, and I have my doubts whether you're going to be happy with the stabilized level.

[me]

so what do you sees as the ending?

what's is the inevitable and how do we as Americans "prepare" for it?

I see a lowering of the quality of life... but am puzzled as to how to prepare for the tsunami of change coming at us

[z]

I wouldn't bet too heavily on the middle class surviving. After all, it's a recent feature of human society, which for most of history, and over much of the globe today, has been more sharply divided into haves and havenots. Now we have the ability to do so, globally. As Friedman says with his "flat earth"; once upon a time, a poor person in the US or Europe was better off than a pretty well to do person in the third world. that's not true any longer.