Posted by Jim Andrada on September 16, 2003 at 12:26:25:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Worse than a St Pete???? posted by C(G) on September 16, 2003 at 10:25:27:
And a lot of stuff (not tubas yet I'm afraid) is of superlative quality.
My client set up a manufacturing operation there to make mechanisms for computer tape drives and the current quality is comparable if not better than what it was when the line was in Japan and vastly better than what we could get in the US or Mexico or Eastern Europe.
But this kind of quality doesn't come cheap, even in China. The management cost (ie support engineers from Japan on assignment, etc) is about equal to the total (fully loaded) assembly cost at the Chinese factory.
The way we get to this kind of quality is to regiment things to the fullest - almost like choreographing a ballet and timing every move a person makes and optimizing exactly where each tool is placed and being anally strict about calibrating and re-calibrating every tool several times a day and training and operator certificaion and re-certification on every operation they qualify for.
And training trianing and training to deal with the high turnover rates because a lot of the line operators come into the Shenzen area with the intention of working a year or two, making some money, then going home to get married and buy a farm or business with the money they made. They are (with a few exceptions) not in it for the long haul. And we're working with only the best qualified companies - we research them thoroughly before signing up with them
And if volune drops, it all turns into a mess anyhow because the better operators who are hungry for overtime pay start drifting away and there are relatively few who can learn more than one or two assembly processes so keeping quality up becomes a real chore.
The keys that we've found are volume, repeatability, organization, optimization. (And the up front costs of getting the lines up and runiing and quality up to snuff are pretty hard to justify)
Does this seem to fit with the German "every man an artisan" school of tuba building, cottage industry (not in the bad sense - just realizing that there are a lot of skilled workmen in Germany who subcontract specialized assemblies in small workshops)structure? I don't think so.
Does it fit with the way Yamaha does student line/intermediate instruments? Probably getting closer, although one of the great things about manufacturing in Japan is the flexibility and education levels of the line operators which makes such "judgement calls" as remain practical. So far, to move a Japanese line to China still requires elimination of the need for judgement.
So what would I expect re tubas? The relatively low volume (even compared to trumpets. flutes etc) will probably cause production of really nice tubas to lag some of the other instruments. Then I think they WILL get their act together and start turning out very nice consistent perfectly usable low end and intermediate instruments - great for school systems.
But I think, for a lot of structural reasons, the makers of the high end pro instruments have little to fear in the next 10 or 20 years. I think we'll still be buying Alexes and Willsons etc for a long time to come, but at some point I would expect even the well known makers will be sourcing their intermediate level instruments in China. There would have to more than a 30% to 40% rise in the Chinese currency to stop this from happening.