A Tiny Screw Shows Why iPhones Won't Be 'Assembled in USA' (nytimes.com) 499
An anonymous reader shares a report: Despite a trade war between the United States and China and past admonishments from President Trump "to start building their damn computers and things in this country," Apple is unlikely to bring its manufacturing closer to home. A tiny screw illustrates why. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.]
In 2012, Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, went on prime-time television to announce that Apple would make a Mac computer in the United States. It would be the first Apple product in years to be manufactured by American workers, and the top-of-the-line Mac Pro would come with an unusual inscription: "Assembled in USA." But when Apple began making the $3,000 computer in Austin, Tex., it struggled to find enough screws, according to three people who worked on the project and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.
In China, Apple relied on factories that can produce vast quantities of custom screws on short notice. In Texas, where they say everything is bigger, it turned out the screw suppliers were not. Tests of new versions of the computer were hamstrung because a 20-employee machine shop that Apple's manufacturing contractor was relying on could produce at most 1,000 screws a day. The screw shortage was one of several problems that postponed sales of the computer for months, the people who worked on the project said. By the time the computer was ready for mass production, Apple had ordered screws from China.
In 2012, Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, went on prime-time television to announce that Apple would make a Mac computer in the United States. It would be the first Apple product in years to be manufactured by American workers, and the top-of-the-line Mac Pro would come with an unusual inscription: "Assembled in USA." But when Apple began making the $3,000 computer in Austin, Tex., it struggled to find enough screws, according to three people who worked on the project and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.
In China, Apple relied on factories that can produce vast quantities of custom screws on short notice. In Texas, where they say everything is bigger, it turned out the screw suppliers were not. Tests of new versions of the computer were hamstrung because a 20-employee machine shop that Apple's manufacturing contractor was relying on could produce at most 1,000 screws a day. The screw shortage was one of several problems that postponed sales of the computer for months, the people who worked on the project said. By the time the computer was ready for mass production, Apple had ordered screws from China.
no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 hou (Score:5, Insightful)
no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 hours a week + must live on site.
Re: no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the screw factory is fully automated C&C... Otherwise you can't produce tens of thousands of screws a day. Even with Chinese work efficiency.
Re: no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:5, Funny)
For want of a computer the contract was lost.
For want of a contract the worker was lost.
For want of a worker the taxes was lost.
For want of the taxes the infrastructure was lost.
For want of the infrastructure the country was lost.
And all for the want of a miniature screw.
Re: no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:5, Funny)
"C&C"
Oh like a music factory?
Re:no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not, labor costs are rarely the biggest factor.
The issue is with a global supply chain is there are some things that some countries can just do better then what others can for a wide range of reasons.
Now China has an infrastructure that is better designed at making screws then there is at the US. Getting the right form of metal, to the places that can manufacture them, who have enough customers to make such verity profitable to mass produce. So this screw is made for US based Apple, and also Korea based Samsung, and LG...
For a company to manufacture such screws in America, they will need to find a place where there is a workforce ready to do such work, setup machinery and get a customer base for their products. American Manufacturing is good at making Big Things, Small things Asia seems to be better equip for.
As we moved away from Industrial Economy to Technology. The demand for small item manufacturing came into play.
America Did Not Outsource Manufacturing (Score:5, Informative)
America Outsourced:
Pollution
Low wages
Poor working conditions
Dangerous working conditions
Pollution
Government Subsidies.
Re:America Did Not Outsource Manufacturing (Score:4, Interesting)
We absolutely did outsource manufacturing.
And in 15 years, China will be outsourcing all those things to Africa.
Re:America Did Not Outsource Manufacturing (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the American manufacturing sector is doing just fine, better than it ever was. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/t... [forbes.com] . But the nature of manufacturing has changed over the years and involves fewer jobs before. And the things that are manufactured tend to not be consumer goods but big ticket items. For example agricultural equipment is still made in the US and exported all over the world. China imports this equipment. There are cottage industries in the US making all sorts of goods (with a lot of Chinese components). All told, American industry is quite healthy despite what some folk say loudly.
As was said earlier, labor is not really a part of the equation when it comes to overseas outsourcing. It's the supply chain that draws companies to China. For example this company making pinball machines in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Attempts to start a trade war with china do nothing to help American industry. In fact it hurts it by cutting off the supply chain we need to make cool things here at home.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not, labor costs are rarely the biggest factor.
It always surprises me how many people have a hard time grasping this simple fact. It is especially true when we are talking about something like a screw that is produced in batches that reach - at least - into the range of 100s of pieces per hour. Nobody is spending a significant amount of time per unit on this; not in design, not in manufacturing, not in QC. It is all automated. Often these end up being produced overseas not because the cost savings is significant but because the buyers didn't bother looking for a supplier in this country and potential manufacturers in this country didn't know there was a demand for this particular component. In the case of this particular screw, regulations are not a huge impact either (in comparison to say screws for medical, military, or space applications).
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They're the same people who don't understand that increasing the minimum wage of someone making 100 hamburgers an hour by $1 won't increase the cost of each hamburger by $1.
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Careful, you're dangerously close to suggesting that other countries might be legitimately better at some things than the States, and that the USA isn't the best country evarrrr in all possible measures.
The wages argument really comes with this ugly inference that the *only* reason other countries can do things is because they are poorer.
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Or because screws will be hard to find, device makers will switch to glue, and will create products of lower quality and less competitive to their foreign counterparts.
If you are not selling to the rest of the world, selling to one customer is very risky, especially Apple. There are many cases of big companies getting seriously burned with making custom components for Apple.
The biggest problem with the economy isn't business needing more money, but more customers. Even if Apple is willing to spend 10x for t
Re: no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:5, Insightful)
You're ignorant comments at the end hid an insightful post in the beginning.
For decades our economy (and environment) benefited from moving entire sectors of the manufacturing industry overseas. The USA has remained a manufacturing giant overall (in 2005 China was 20% of global manufacturing while USA was 18%) but this article illustrates the USA lost key capabilities in many sectors of manufacturing. This is not necessarily a bad thing since we gain significantly from our partnership with developing countries, but it is certainly a concern we should address.
About 10 years ago, as the economy was recovering from the financial crisis, manufacturing jobs starting "reshoring" back to the US. We went from 11.4 million manufacturing jobs in 2010 to 12.4 million jobs in 2016, and is now at about 12.8 million. The trend line for the past 8 years is pretty constant except for a bad year in 2016.
Unfortunately now we have a President who cares more about his talking points than actual progress. Creating artificial reasons to reshore manufacturing (like the trade war) instead of real market-based reasons only damages our economy overall while other developed economies take advantage of our foolishness. Being economically inefficient on purpose is not a great strategy.
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I saw something on Chinese automotive factories. The price of labour is actually pretty high as all the workers have to be highly trained robot technicians. Seems lots of their factories are very modern.
Re:no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:5, Interesting)
This is correct. Americans commonly have a mental picture of illiterate workers toiling on dirt floors making "cheap Chinese goods". That is not modern Chinese manufacturing and the preconception is one of our big blind spots.
Here's an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This company makes beautiful multi-color silk-screened multi-layer through-hole plated PCBs for cheaper than I can buy bare copper plate board to etch them myself.
When I want to go to production I can have the boards shipped directly to an assembler there and I get finished machine assembled, soldered, and tested boards for less than the cost of shipping everything here and assembling it myself.
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Re:no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:5, Insightful)
This is incorrect. I've ordered 500 boards from them in a single run before. The shipping costs more because its too heavy for e-packet delivery, but I wanted it via DHL for faster service anyway.
I've yet to find a US based fab shop that can ship an unmasked single layer board for the price of a nice board from JLC.
That's not the only gap. When I'm working on a piece of kit at 2:00 a.m. I don't want to have to call for a quote, email a gerber file, and wait for a salesperson. This is 2019. Online quoting and ordering should be a thing.
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That's not the only gap. When I'm working on a piece of kit at 2:00 a.m. I don't want to have to call for a quote, email a gerber file, and wait for a salesperson. This is 2019. Online quoting and ordering should be a thing.
So much this.
American manufacturing can and should be just as automated as Chinese manufacturing. But for some reason American manufacturers feel obliged to maintain these parasitic, slow, inefficient, error prone, redundant, and worst and most importantly expensive sales monkeys in the middle of a process that practically never benefits from their presence. The number of times that the sales droid knows his own company's products well enough to offer a correction to a possible mistaken order is so slim t
Re:no one in the usa will work for $2.15/hr 60-80 (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know that the employees of the various foxconn factories are required to live on site
They are not. Some factories still have dormitories, but most workers don't live in them, and those that do usually transition to outside housing when they can afford to.
many of those factories are in the middle of bumfuck nowhere
Foxconn's biggest factories are in Shenzhen [wikipedia.org], an enormous metropolis of 20 million people and one of the fastest growing cities in the world.
Re (Score:5, Funny)
The article never showed the actual screw, I was hoping I'd see a screw...
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The fact that the owner of the factory was running them over by hand in 1000-piece batches tells me they weren't planning their supply chain very well. Probably a late change to the design that needed to be produced with zero lead time. I'm sure they had them on a plane from China ASAP.
Re:Re (Score:5, Insightful)
The Expected Result (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Expected Result (Score:5, Interesting)
+1.
The best and brightest would have to be completely foolish to go into manufacturing in the USA today. Similarly since most remaining manufacturing left behind is of niche nature, don't expect that the supply chain will all be here waiting for your order to show up.
Apple in particular is a VERY demanding customer, and will pull shit like expecting tens of thousands of sample chips built to their oddball specification, for free, just to be considered for an eventual slot in their designs. Their vendors have to go WAAAAY out on a limb by pre-purchasing materials and equipment on the hope that they win. Fail to compete? Bankruptcy. Fail to win? Bankruptcy.
One of the more obvious ones was the sapphire manufacturer that tooled up to be a phone glass supplier, and was driven out of business when they only got a fraction of the expected business. Many more cases of critically wounded companies abound without the same headlines.
So I have no sympathy for Apple in particular when they don't have manufacturers lining up to produce some artisinal screw on demand.
Re:The Expected Result (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the more obvious ones was the sapphire manufacturer that tooled up to be a phone glass supplier, and was driven out of business when they only got a fraction of the expected business.
While I don't disagree with your overarching point, the way you describe it is not what happened. That sapphire manufacturer bankrupted itself by overpromising and underdelivering on a contract that they bet the company on. Simple as that. Apple not only upheld its end of the agreement with that manufacturer, it went above and beyond what was contractually required. It was only after months of missed deadlines and delays that Apple finally refused to fund the failed initiative any further, which ended up being a lose-lose for everyone involved, since the manufacturer went bankrupt and Apple only got back a small fraction of what they put in.
More or less, Apple wanted sapphires that could be used for iPhone displays, presumably for the following year's iPhone. They went to the manufacturer and offered to front the manufacturer a large sum of money (for the capital expense involved with buying furnaces and other equipment) if the manufacturer agreed to ramp up production according to a rather aggressive timetable, with additional funding coming in stages as the manufacturer hit various milestones. Pretty standard stuff. As a nice bonus, there was the promise of a massive purchase order if the manufacturer succeeded in fully ramping up.
After the manufacturer failed to produce just one sapphire boule to spec by the original deadline, Apple could have pulled out, but they didn't. Instead, the timetable was renegotiated and Apple agreed to fund the next stage of development. The manufacturer eventually produced a boule to spec, but then they couldn't hit the yield levels they had promised with the revised timetable. Once again, Apple could have pulled out, but they didn't. They negotiated a revised-revised timetable and funded the next stage of development, though there was apparently a rather stern warning this time (the manufacturer is quoted in bankruptcy court proceedings as claiming that an Apple exec told them it was "time to put on your big boy pants"). After the manufacturer failed to meet yield milestones according to the revised-revised timetable, Apple refused to fund it any further. There was no hope that production could ramp up in time for their uses, so they put the final nail in the coffin.
At that point, the manufacturer was sunk. They had bet the company on receiving the purchase order so that they could repay the money that Apple had fronted them. Without the purchase order, they had no hope of repaying Apple, so the company went bankrupt and Apple ended up being the owner of a large building (which they turned into a data center) and a lot of sapphire furnaces that they didn't have a clue how to use. Again, it was a lose-lose for everyone involved, despite Apple going above and beyond what they had originally agreed to do. If the original timetable was too aggressive, the manufacturer could have simply said "no" and the whole situation could have been avoided, but instead they bet the company on something that they couldn't deliver.
While Apple is a very demanding customer, and they do indeed make insane demands, the only ones obligated to accede to insane demands are the ones who agreed to fulfill those insane demands. No one is forcing companies to get into bed with Apple, and if yours is the only one in the world with the know-how to do what's being asked, you shouldn't agree to terms that you can't keep, and you certainly shouldn't bet the company on it. That's just bad business.
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FTA: “In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” he said. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”
But we have an ass-ton of college graduates. That's what matters...
Re:Re (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, there's the problem. If they wanted to receive screws, they were supposed to buy them from RX, not TX.
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I'm thinking the same thing. If Apple hasn't mastered supply chain qualifications, JIT, and the recipe of doing business in North America, then they should've had backup suppliers from China to fill the gap. 1000pc FedEx is expensive from Shenzen, sure, but you don't see other organizations opening up for business without being able to produce their product from a supply chain that's both ready but also able.
I'm pretty shocked that they would respond in this media piece in the way that they did. Pretty juni
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If you read between the lines, Apple threw their assembler (Flextronics) under the bus and Flextronics has refused to comment on the story.
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It speaks to the perceived servility of hungry people in the stories I've read. It also speaks to this being a political move to placate accusations of balance of trade deficits, US labor problems, placating Chinese relationships, and much more.
For better or worse, Apple (at least to me) ends up looking both stupid and not in control of their supply chain, while placating politicos in the US. They're not usually this stupid, although the perceived hubris is par.
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As the article states, Apple kept changing the specifications on the screw on short notice, so they wanted a local manufacturer to avoid delays from shipping and long-distance-communication failures.
And apple have how much money? If they really wanted they could set up the entire supply chain on their own and then outsource capacity to other manufacturers in the US that need 15,000 2.765mm torx penta secu screws or whatever with zero lead time. Wouldn't that be a turn up for the books.
Re:Re (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, there's a chicken-and-egg thing going on here. I'm sure that back when electronic devices were made in the U.S.A., there were plenty of local custom screw manufacturers to support them - or else companies made do without custom screws. Now that the entire supply chain has moved offshore, it's going to be hard to move any of it back.
But maybe if Apple really wanted to have a "Made in the U.S.A." model, they might have reconsidered using some crazy custom screw in the first place. Sure, in mobile handsets, where every nanometer counts in squeezing stuff in, maybe a custom screw really matters. But on a desktop computer? Really? I'm guessing that even in the good old days when Apple built all of its stuff in the US, they didn't have a practical option to use custom parts for such trivial functions as are performed by a screw. It's a screw, folks. The only reason to customize it is to prevent access to whatever it's holding together without a special tool built for that screw. Make do, Apple. If you really want to build in the US, build what today's supply chain can support. And grow the supply chain - just like you did in China, where there were no custom screw factories either back in the day...
You don't have crazy man Steve Jobs to answer to any more, so you don't need to "keep changing the specs on short notice" to please him. Get your priorities straight and, if you decided that building in the US is the right thing, figure out what you need to do to make it happen.
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While all you say definitely has merit, Apple charges a premium for desktops that are optimized in various ways that are dependent on the precise form factor, in a way other electronics companies do not bother.
That Apple found the American manufacturer harder to work with, given their demanding style, is perfectly believable.
I am skeptical how very meaningful this lesson is for anyone who is not building a superoptimized premium phone/mobile device or who is not Apple doing what Apple does. As there is exp
Impossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
If only it was possible to engineer a product using readily available parts instead of custom items specifically designed to stifle repairs and create vendor lock-in. ...if only it was possible...
Re:Impossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not stop there on the excuse train. They could still import the screws and manufacture in the US.
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Let's not stop there on the excuse train. They could still import the screws and manufacture in the US.
Assemble not manufacture.
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20 years ago I'd have said no, unions suck. But then I joined the workforce, and learned the score. Generally yes, I would support unions the majority of the time. I am not blind to their faults, but I have absolutely no trust or respect for corporate management at any level, and I am management. The difference is that I can simply quit and get a new job at the snap of my fingers. Not everyone can do that, for them, unions are a must.
Re:Impossible! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Impossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Impossible! (Score:4, Interesting)
If we are to bring back manufacturing to the US, we have to start somewhere. Companies who have large volume and specialty requirements probably won't be the first ones leading this, there are way too many dependencies to make this happen. We need some smaller companies with more mainstream needs to lead the way.
Re:Impossible! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no reason we cannot have both nurses and factory workers. Everyone needs to eat, give the available hands another opportunity to earn money and help them succeed in society. We cannot be a complete nation without our blue-collar brothers and sisters, and it is morally wrong to want that.
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That sounds ike something I'd really like to own... unfortunately, I haven't worn a wristwatch in a decade...
Re:Impossible! (Score:5, Informative)
Can I put you in touch with Fastnal? [fastenal.com] Cause our company uses those tiny ass-as-shit screws that are used in cellphones and laptops in our products. They have no problems getting them to either import or doing batch runs of 2000 units, we use one of their local branch offices and have yet to see a delay or missed shipment.
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I got an idea, why not use one of the already custom made screws you have instead of creating a new custom-made screw? ooo, i have an idea. With new modern CNC machines you can simply have a serialized system where each screw needs its own bit, and the repair techs have to 3d print a new driver bit for each individual screw when it comes time to work on them!
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All those custom screws are pointless anyway. Within a few months, screwdriver manufacturers start adding your custom design to their range, and your custom screw is now as accessible as all the previous attempts. All it does is create an annoyance as people have to update their screwdriver sets.
Why is that really an issue (Score:2)
Soooo if you don't have enough screws produced locally, you just order more from China... exactly what Apple did.
That kind of basic part seems like it should be easy enough to predict need of ahead of time, and cheap enough that pre-ordering a rough amount of material you might need would not cost much.
I still don't see any real barrier to assembling some things here, and over time trying to ramp up local production to levels required.
The alternate link states "if the NYT report is accurate, it's unlikely t
Supply chains are difficult (Score:5, Informative)
Soooo if you don't have enough screws produced locally, you just order more from China... exactly what Apple did.
When you have to do that often then it makes more sense to just assemble the product in China rather than blowing up your supply chain and incurring huge freight and logistics costs and hassles.
That kind of basic part seems like it should be easy enough to predict need of ahead of time, and cheap enough that pre-ordering a rough amount of material you might need would not cost much.
It's just an example of the sorts of difficulties that happen when you try to manufacture something physically far away from the bulk the supply chain. It's not just one component for one product - the screw is just an understandable example of the bigger problem. There are hundreds to thousands of components in the bill of materials for a typical computer and new products are being made all the time. These components are very often not made in the US because they have a high labor content so US firms aren't cost competitive on those parts. My day job is general manager of a small electronics assembly company. I deal with this every day. I don't think you even begin appreciate the problems with ordering stuff from halfway around the world for manufacturing.
It seems like lessons learned will mean that Apple will have been more careful about what they can produce locally vs. what they still need to order from China in order to assemble computers in the U.S. I'm pretty sure that is still a big goal for them.
Ordering from China isn't nearly as easy as you make it sound. I do this for a living. First off you immediately incur a 6-14 weeks of additional lead time (no they aren't going to ship it by airplane except in emergency - that costs a fortune) because it takes that long to make the product and send it on a boat across the ocean. So you end up stocking a lot of unnecessary inventory to guard against supply chain disruptions. Second, you have to have people working closely with your supplier in the foreign country or else you get serious quality and delivery problems. This adds a lot of cost and hassle. Yes there are plenty of Chinese suppliers who would think nothing of screwing even mighty Apple and Apple knows this. Third, you are grossly underestimating the advantage of having your engineers and supply chain people close to the suppliers. Problems happen and fixing them from half a world away is never easy. Fourth, when you cannot get components locally you incur a lot of currency risk [wikipedia.org]. Fifth, a big part of the reason China produces so much of the world's electronics is because nearly the entire supply chain is nearby. This reduces costs tremendously.
I could keep going. If it were economically practical to assemble electronics in the US (even ignoring the labor price disparity), companies would be doing it. US companies would love to be able to buy their stuff locally but it's just not economic. I've bid on jobs where the target sale price was less than my cost of materials because the supply chain in China for electronics is that advantageous. Getting the supply chain back to this side of the pond will take decades to happen.
Re:Supply chains are difficult (Score:4, Insightful)
Revitalizing a manufacturing sector isn't trivial, one company, even Apple, can't do it overnight.
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When you have to do that often then it makes more sense to just assemble the product in China rather than blowing up your supply chain and incurring huge freight and logistics costs and hassles.
It costs less than $2,000 to import a 40-foot shipping container. When I ran the math in 2015, it was $1,300, making the shipping cost of a pair of men's cotton trousers from China to the dock at the US six cents.
You know how we make clothes in China? Well, those clothes are made of cotton grown in Egypt or the United States, shipped to Indonesia for processing and spinning, shipped to the United States again for weaving, shipped to India for dying, shipped to China for manufacture into clothing, and th
Apple already assembles some things in US (Score:3)
Apple already has many, many people working closely with China as far as suppliers of everything goes. They already have a shipping pipeline so I seriously doubt for Apple it's going to take 6-14 weeks to get parts... I'm sure they would of course have some buffer of supplies, but Apple can more than afford to build up a base of supply on hand.
The real surprise to me is that Apple ever ran into this problem to begin with, as one thing they know how to deal with really well is supply chain issues. That's w
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I used to be involved in PCB manufacture when younger, but don't let my actual experience slow your sarcastic roll Captain McSnarky!
Based on what experience exactly do you think I am wrong? Oh, none whatsoever? Yeah, thought so.
How the hell can you fund a company... (Score:2, Insightful)
...with 20 employees on 1000 screws a day? Wouldn't that bring in like maybe $10 total daily?
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I would guess these are not rolled screws. Precision custom screws like this can easily cost > $1 each. One set that we make costs $10 for a screw that is about .250" long
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...with 20 employees on 1000 screws a day? Wouldn't that bring in like maybe $10 total daily?
These are iScrews.
I wonder if the imported screws have tariffs slapped on them. That would be hilariously ironic.
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Special screw... (Score:2)
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Couldn't they have just ordered the custom screws air-shipped from a Chinese factory or redesigned the thing to use a more ordinary screw? I wonder what's so special about that particular screw. Is it a "tamper proof head" like Apple's 5-point "Torx" security screws to keep mere plebs from opening the hardware?
I think the whole point here was to make the things as completely in the US as possible and it turned out that US industry cannot even handle large volume screw production. Additionally Trump's useless steel tariffs aren't helping any entrepreneurially minded US'ians trying to fix this market gap to compete with the Chinese since I don't think screw manufacturing is a high margin business and tariffs are not helpful in that respect
"US'ians"? (Score:2)
I think the accepted term is "Americans".
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and it turned out that US industry cannot even handle large volume screw production.
The problem is not large volume screw production... its large volume custom screw production with very short notice given.
Don't expect to go to a factory with a custom product design and expect to have a huge volume of them manufactured for reasonable cost without any lead time.
It takes setup time and money to build out a certain amount of production capacity.
It's not about the specific screw (Score:4, Informative)
Couldn't they have just ordered the custom screws air-shipped from a Chinese factory or redesigned the thing to use a more ordinary screw?
Possibly but then they are adding cost to the product. You are missing the point. It isn't just ordering some specific screws. The screws are just an example of the broader problem. There are literally thousands of components with the same problems because the supply chain for them in the US has withered and it takes a long time to build it back up even when it is even possible. For high labor content work it's just not economic to make the stuff in a high wage country like the US. I do this for a living so I know. The problem is that the supply chain in China already has all this stuff figured out and engineers can easily get what they need locally over there.
Believe me if it were easy and economic to build this stuff in the US, companies would be doing it. NOBODY who does this stuff for a living (and I do) wants to deal with ordering components from halfway around the world if they don't have to.
I wonder what's so special about that particular screw. Is it a "tamper proof head" like Apple's 5-point "Torx" security screws to keep mere plebs from opening the hardware?
Don't fixate on the screw. The screw is just an example of a problem they will face over and over again. The point is that the supply chain just isn't robust for electronics manufacturing in the US like it is in China. Fixing this problem will not be easy or quick.
It's a chicken and egg problem (Score:3)
China didn't start out with multiple vendors to provide the hardware. They grew it over time.
Manufacturing in the US is sustainable and it doesn't have be for slave wages either. It takes automation and time to ramp up suppliers. But, this can't happen over night. Apple knows that. And those screws? They can get the material from China overnight. The connections are still there. Apple just doesn't know them because they lost connection with their own supply chain.
I've made "not Apples" here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apples can be made here just fine. If they give up on their image mandates and want to just infiltrate the market they're perfectly capable. People who recognize my user name recognize me as being highly critical of Apple. What few know is that my first electronics industry job back in 1996 was related to Apple. I manufactured Mac Clones. Legal, lawful ones under contract from Motorola. They weren't far different from normal PCs of the era, they were little beige boxes with standard PC components, they had an electronically ejected floppy drive instead of the standard mechanical push button of the era, and everything was SCSI instead of IDE, but I must say there was an appeal to using off the shelf components. I lost my job when Steve Jobs got his job back, killing clones was one of the first things he did.
If Apple was having trouble getting a particular screw in the computer world then it wasn't a normal screw.
Indeed their reliance on tri-wings and other "don't you dare fix this yourself!" products instead of normal, mass produced, easy to get screws is half their problem.
What this article leaves out is the United States used to be like China is now when it comes to manufacturing. Our politicians sold us out. We've been financially punished through specific taxes and targeted labor practices from that are designed to keep us from succeeding in the manufacturing world. Most of this was done in the George H.W. Bush era, but it wasn't exclusive to him. Every president between Reagan and Trump, and I'm not so sure about Reagan in his second term, has sold the United States to foreign interest. The reason we aren't setup to do what Apple is bitching we can't do was government sabotage of our own industry.
#1 Use normal fucking screws
#2 Stop allowing our politicians to sell us out - flush the toilet occasionally and replace the contents up on the hill
#3 Educate yourself about what's going on
Re: (Score:3)
No the ones that sold you out are the manufacturers that want to make as much money as possible and the consumers that want to buy products as cheap as possible even if made by slave labor. And don't forget the voters.
Reap what you sow.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not blaming foreigners for wanting to make a buck. I'm blaming the ones we've elected to serve us for putting policies in place to ensure that U.S. based companies cannot compete on a fair market. I don't even really believe in protectionism. It makes sense from a logistical perspective to buy something locally instead of from over seas, but there's reasons to buy internationally as well. We don't buy Swiss and French cheeses because they're cheaper. I buy German screw drivers because they're bette
how about using standard screws? (Score:2)
Re:how about using standard screws? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit (Score:3)
The answer then is to go to the machine shop and ask what it will take them to increase their output 2x, 3x,4x, etc and supply the loans neccessary to make it happen.
This is how every German, Chinese, Japanese, and we'll pretty much every other foreign business works with its domestic suppliers .
It seems Apple just was looking for an excuse.
Doubly so, GE and several car manufacture have plants in Texas where they have the pull to get whatever screws they need. Those factories just aren't in hip and cool Austin.
Maybe if tech companies could lose their hard one for that boring college town, they'd be able to realize the benefits of domestic manufacturing.
Re: (Score:3)
You refe
Maybe invest in US factories? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe if the US doesn't have enough capacity, Apple could take some of the billions of dollars in cash, and ... invest it in US factories? I'm pretty sure if they invested that money in the US, then they'd be employing more US workers, who could... afford to buy an Apple device. I know it's cliche to suggest that investing in your home country actually benefits the country and your own company, but it's true.
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It's great to support the local guy but there's only so much capacity.
Dual source it. Give 1000 pieces/day to the small shop and have another source that will sell you 30,000 at a time to use as safety stock. We're talking tiny screws. The 30k safety stock is almost no inventory $$ and takes up no storage space.
Self inflicted wound.
Crazy low production (Score:2)
They chose a really really bad shop, not using the proper equipment for screws. Any good screw machine (swiss machine) should be able to produce screws like crazy, cycle times should be in seconds. Single pass on the main spindle, parting cut then finish machining on secondary spindle. You should be able to run i'd guess 10 screws a minute unless it was something super crazy on one machine, 24-hours a day would be 14k screws / day on a single machine. Granted this would be done on a $150K+ machine, mig
Apple. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would posit only that this shows that Apple are terrible at sourcing products, especially bespoke non-standard products of their own design.
This tells you several things about: a) the practicality of their designs, b) their deliberate awkwardness to manufacture, c) their patent portfolio, d) their ability to "think outside the box".
So you couldn't buy a custom-made screw. And you didn't know that in time for production. And that stymied however-many-million-dollars of product from going into production.
And we're not talking some aircraft-grade, ultra-thin, super-duper-magical screw. But a screw to hold, say, a motherboard to a case, or a case together (but their Mac cases didn't have screws, did they?). You couldn't have just bought a bunch of M3/M4/M5 screws and drilled appropriate holes?
This says everything you need to know about Apple, not what Texas can or can't produce. They'd rather create weird shit that serves no purpose that can't be fulfilled with a 1/10th of a cent screw that you can pick up anywhere, and pass that cost down to you, blaming American manufacturing when they own inability to design, source, plan and manufacture a simple fixing shows them up.
Austin is not the place (Score:3)
Every day here more industrial and garage type spaces get turned into crossfit gyms and breweries. (not that I'm particularly against either, just a point blank example of what is thriving here).
Side story. Years ago I spotted an awesome vintage garage for sale/rent. I thought it might have been my chance to have a shop of my own. I talked with the owner. He essentially told me "You don't want to do that". The combination of high taxes and environmental restrictions were essentially why he shut it down in the first place. He flat out told me he was hoping for a trendy tenant. Bar/restaraunt/what have you.
A plant is not an ecosystem (Score:5, Insightful)
Manufacturing requires an ecosystem of other manufacturers for mutual support. A single widget machine is not technology; the manufacturing capacity and knowledge along with perpetuation of same _is_ technology.
Back in the day when off shoring started, the argument was the grunt labor is going overseas, but all the knowledge work is staying here. Obviously stupid on the face, but people fell for it. Manufacturing problems are solved on the plant floor as they occur. Nobody waits for the 'knowledge' to show up from 12 time zones away.
Heck, even the anecdote in the summary made the natural assumption that the place to get the screw was China, not Pennsylvania, or some other not Texas based US source--because that is where the mature ecosystem now thrives.
Congratulations, America, you got what you paid for.
Apple, you have the chance to among the first 'on-shorers' to stick with it to reap long term benefits, like your predecessors did 200 some odd quarters ago when they went the other way.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Interesting)
A 20 man shop producing 1,000 screws a day?
Figure an average hourly wage of $20/hr that's $400 in labor per hour over an 8 hour shift that's $3200 cost in labor per day. At least. I'm skipping land leases, building lease/rent, material cost, etc.
If you're kicking out 1000 screws and it takes you $3200 in labor that's $3.20 cents per screw.
I"m either missing something, the article is full of crap, or this place was kicking out 8" long bolts made out of some really hardened steel with excellent QA looking for defects... and then Apple tried getting them to make tiny tiny screws?
Nope, nothing makes sense.
We're missing a bunch! (Score:3)
A 20 man shop producing 1,000 screws a day?
Figure an average hourly wage of $20/hr that's $400 in labor per hour over an 8 hour shift that's $3200 cost in labor per day. At least. I'm skipping land leases, building lease/rent, material cost, etc.
If you're kicking out 1000 screws and it takes you $3200 in labor that's $3.20 cents per screw.
I"m either missing something, the article is full of crap, or this place was kicking out 8" long bolts made out of some really hardened steel with excellent QA looking for defects... and then Apple tried getting them to make tiny tiny screws?
Nope, nothing makes sense.
My thoughts exactly. A single screw-making line ought to pump out 1,000 screws an hour- or more- and they should have several of these machines! Apple chose a shop that wasn't up to the task, and the shop took a job from apple that they weren't competent to execute.
It's called the big picture. (Score:3)
It's not about Apple making products in the US. The point is for the supply chain to develop to support it, which in the end creates far more jobs than a single Apple plant that does final assembly.
It's called "Supply Chain Logistics" (Score:4, Funny)
It doesn't matter WHERE you build stuff, you have unique supply chain logistics to work out.
What do you bet that if Apple has a need for screws in Austin and is willing to pay enough, some bright business person will set up a screw manufacturing business that's closer and sell what Apple needs? That's what supply and demand will do in a free market system. This means that IF you can pull manufacturing back into the USA, you will also pull the parts supply chain back to the USA as a secondary effect.
So I see Apple's trouble with it's supply chain being a good thing. There are a lot of places in the USA where they used to make screws, but now don't as this moved off shore. Now there is a chance of puling those jobs back, shortening the logistics supply chain, lowering transportation costs and making inventory management less difficult. In the mean time, Apple just needs to manage their supply chain a bit better so they don't run out of parts.
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This means that IF you can pull manufacturing back into the USA, you will also pull the parts supply chain back to the USA as a secondary effect.
So I see Apple's trouble with it's supply chain being a good thing. There are a lot of places in the USA where they used to make screws, but now don't as this moved off shore.
They won't. This will be the reason they cite for keeping everything offshore. Like companies that lay off all the American employees, then claim they need H1-B's because they don't have enough locals.
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They used to make things like screws in and around Rockford IL. There are a pile of unemployed folks with experience as machinists just sitting there waiting for work and I'll bet there are empty factory buildings just ready to go back into production too. IL may not be your state of choice for such an operation, but Madison WI is very close to Rockford and is generally open for business if you want to leave the tax pit of IL.
So I believe they will, assuming that the total price for such US made parts is
Supply Chain (Score:3)
This is about supply chain. Standard for any business. Apple knows their supply chain requirements. They know what steps need to be taken in order for the supply chain to work in the US. The fact that Apple did not take those steps - and worse that NYT did not grill Apple about - shows a complete management failure on Apple's part.
As mysidia pointed out:
"The problem is not large volume screw production... its large volume custom screw production with very short notice given.
Don't expect to go to a factory with a custom product design and expect to have a huge volume of them manufactured for reasonable cost without any lead time."
This is easily fixed and a non-story.
People need to RTFA (Score:3)
So, this tiny screw problems is this:
"20-employee machine shop that Apple’s manufacturing contractor was relying on could produce at most 1,000 screws a day."
That sounds like a sourcing problem if a shop you try to go through can't produce more than 1K screws a day. That shop should have been producing a hundred times that per day. For 20 people that is 50 screws per day. For an eight hour work day that means, per employee, each screw took close to 10 minutes to make. Were they hand crafting these things?! At half the staff, figuring not everyone is actually producing screws, that is still 5 minutes per screw.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:$3,000 laptop (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac Pro was not a laptop.
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The Mac Pro is not a laptop.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The Mac Pro will not be a laptop.
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Seriously, who spends $3,000 on a laptop anymore?
Seriously, who spends $300,000 on a car anymore? [guideautoweb.com]
... and the Mac Pro is a desktop computer.
Answer: Those who can afford it and to whom it makes sense to do so.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:$3,000 laptop (Score:5, Insightful)
While a half dozen people have already pointed out the Mac Pro is not a laptop, no one mentioned there are still reasons to buy a $3k laptop. Laptops which act more like mobile workstations than a laptop often have very powerful processors, large high resolution screens, lots of RAM, large SSD hard drives, powerful video cards, and large batteries. I use a similar machine at work (closer to $2k because I don't need a good video card), and while my company could save $500 or more by getting me a desktop having a mobile work computer provides a lot of freedom. I can bring my computer to meetings, work from home (compliance requires I use a work machine at home), and work while on work trips.
When you have employees costing the company $100k-$200k per year, a 1% productivity enhancement from a better machine can pay for a $1k more expensive laptop in under a year.
Just because most people can do their jobs on 13" ultra slim laptops, doesn't mean everyone can.
Re:$3,000 laptop (Score:4, Interesting)
Add to this that cheap laptops are often unmaintainable pieces of shit...
I work with a non-profit, and while we don't buy $3k laptops, we will only buy "Business Grade" laptops for our operations. They last longer, are easier to maintain, and are consistent making the job of our IT department that much easier. Basically for each generation of laptop I have in circulation, I have one software build for them (including drivers etc...). Instead of costing $500 per unit, they cost us $1500 or so, but over the 4 or 5 year lifespan of the laptop, it's worth it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
there are still reasons to buy a $3k laptop
Not really.
I recently had one of our users ask for a Macbook that, with the specs they were requesting, was over $3000.
I then quoted her a Dell Precision Mobile that had better specs, including a more-powerful video card. It also had room for additional hard-drives (or replacement of the existing standard M.2 NVMe drive), removable/expandable RAM, a higher-resolution 4K display ("Retina" isn't 4K) and all the ports she'd need so no dongle-hell. Oh, and she could get an OEM docking station for $140.
She could
Re:$3,000 laptop (Score:4, Insightful)
My laptop is a Lenovo running Windows, and it is over $2k. Macbooks are pretty expensive, but they also use top quality parts throughout. The same goes for other flagship machines such as Surface Pro/Book laptops and the Thinkpad P52 (what I have). I am having trouble finding configurations for a 17" 4k Dell with H series processors and all the other bells and whistles, but I bet it would be over $2k as well.
The Mac tax on laptops is not that high. Comparable Windows laptops are almost as much, as long as you are really looking at comparable machines. I still built my own desktop though since you can easily save $1-2k on a top of the line build. I can't build my own laptop though.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, then there's OS that could be considered too?
OSX vs Win10?
And, this was awhile back, I think I saw some tests using Adobe Premier on OSX (iMac Pro) vs Win10 (windows PS equivalent hardware), and I believe they had much faster throughput on the Mac, seems there was some threading limiting factor
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Much of your criticism is spot on, but how does a Mac not "play well" with corporate networks? They talk the same IP everything else does, they support 802.1x authentication, etc. There's even built-in support for Active Directory authentication and Kerberos, though it could use some work (or just complete replacement with the free Centrify agent).
Seriously, the rest of what you said is hard to argue with, but this particular point isn't true in my experience, and I've been working with Macs on enterprise
Re:$3,000 laptop (Score:5, Insightful)
Same goes for coders that think they need mobile laptops when in reality they can either share an RDS session host or have their own VMs
Completely missing the OP's point. Back when my last company hired developers, we paid them between $500-1000 each and every day that they worked. If spending an extra $1000 on a laptop, or a really good monitor, got us an extra 10 minutes of work a day, it more than paid for itself. Hiring a replacement employee costs tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity alone - if an extra $1000 on a laptop keeps them around for a few more months because you've created a nicer work environment it pays for itself again.
Being penny-wise and pound-foolish on the main interface between a developer and the company is common, but that doesn't make it sensible.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
have little teensy hands, being children. That's the secret sauce. That, along with paying them dirt wages and forcing them into shoddy dorms. #Chinapitalism.
China may have been late to the party taking steps to ban child labour; but in truth, although some companies may still use child labour it is illegal in China and highly punishable. There are other countries that are far worse offenders than China.
You can blame China for a lot of things they do wrong; but they do punish people for using child labour... now.
Re: Apple doesn't WANT to make stuff in the U.S. (Score:4, Insightful)
China logistic is far better then USA because all the factories are already there. This is a well known issue. USA factories can't afford to keep mfg capabilities on reserve, ie not producing stuff, so things you orders have a much longer delivery time since they have to be scheduled. It's also not easy for a us factory to ramp up or down their labor force as needed which also as to the issues. In comparison, in China, all the materials are there already and there are so many factories that is fairly easily to get orders out quickly. You could argue that they could order parts from China which many do in advance and assemble in the us but that's us assembled, not made. Most companies don't bother since there not enough advantage.
Apple wasn't marketing these Macs as "Made in America" any way. They were just labeling them as "Assembled in America" so ordering the screws from China and screwing them into cases in Texas wouldn't have affected the labeling at all.