undefined | Better HN

0 pointsiamflimflam11y ago0 comments

One way to think about manufacturing something is to see where the line is between assembly and manufacturing.

With electronics you might get your PCBs manufactured and assembled by someone else (it’s a specialised job that needs expensive equipment).

But you can do the design locally with skilled engineers.

With enclosures and plastic parts you need injection moulding setups - again a specialised thing to do. So you might also choose to outsource that.

But you have local people who do the CAD and mould design.

What you’ll end up doing is the assembly side of things - so someone else will be doing the actual hard manufacturing of parts and you’ll be plugging things together and packaging things up.

As soon as you realise that then it’s quickly obvious that should be done where all the component parts are being manufactured.

So, you end up just doing the R&D part.

But eventually you realise that your manufacturing partners understand and know a lot more than your local people.

So, you end up outsourcing everything to China…

0 comments

pc2g4d1y ago

The last steps I still can't fathom. When everything is outsourced to China, it is inevitable that you, now a mere middleman, will be cut out.

So by maximizing profit at each step along the path, the company destroys itself. Which ultimately sends profit to zero.

So... there's a break in logic somewhere. A link in the chain where responsibility isn't taken.

iamflimflam1OP1y ago

It’s hubris and arrogance to be honest.

For a long time the belief was that places like China could do the dirty manufacturing work, but they would never be able to do the advanced work.

Then it was they could do the advanced work, but the deep R&D was impossible for them.

It’s been a constantly moving goal post of - ok, so maybe they can do this now, but they can’t do this higher end bit - we’ll keep that.

At the moment it feels like the last hold out is the sales and marketing. Getting the product into the hands of the consumer.

But that is also under attack - sites like AliExpress, Temu and others are the first attempts at getting direct to consumer. They aren’t quite there yet, there isn’t the trust that people have in existing incumbents. But it’s only a matter of time before they crack it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse