Oliver is not Oliver
#27
China does not have the ability to build quality items.  We like to tell ourselves that so we feel better about buying Asian made items.
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#28
Soon this will be basement material.
Smirk
As of this time I am not teaching vets to turn. Also please do not send any items to me without prior notification.  Thank You Everyone.

It is always the right time, to do the right thing.
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#29
(05-28-2019, 03:10 PM)daddo Wrote: China actually has the ability to make top notch stuff. I just wonder why so little of it is sold here?

Certainly they do, but there goes the price advantage.
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#30
(05-31-2019, 05:35 PM)kurt18947 Wrote: Certainly they do, but there goes the price advantage.

I work for a company that has a sister plant in China.  My last employer also had a plant in China.  I have been there a number of times.  The entire manufacturing culture is geared toward making things cheaper.  That is not through better engineering, it is through cutting corners and using inferior material.  Building to specification means nothing.  The PPAP sample comes through as designed.  Shortly after production starts, the component suppliers start substituting.  It is a cultural thing.  Our own plant will not follow the written quality procedure if they can save money.
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#31
(06-04-2019, 10:33 PM)aquaticjim Wrote: I work for a company that has a sister plant in China.  My last employer also had a plant in China.  I have been there a number of times.  The entire manufacturing culture is geared toward making things cheaper.  That is not through better engineering, it is through cutting corners and using inferior material.  Building to specification means nothing.  The PPAP sample comes through as designed.  Shortly after production starts, the component suppliers start substituting.  It is a cultural thing.  Our own plant will not follow the written quality procedure if they can save money.

I work for a large global tech company, and substitution for spec'd materials is a constant supply chain issue for China-sourced components.  We hire third party (offshore from China) QC consultants that sample production lots, and in the beginning of a vendor relationship we routinely reject quite large shipments (which are a loss for the supplier) until the supplier "gets" it that they cannot start willy-nilly substituting materials or processes we spec for the component.  Our contracts recover the costs of the QC consultant's production audits and we have liquidated damages clauses applicable to rejected shipments as well, so it gets very painful for the supplier.  If you don't include such clauses, you leave yourself open to these types of shenanigans.  It is also an added cost to doing business in China.  We also have a dual-source policy and try to never rely on one supplier, so we play them off each other on both quality and price.

I think the cultural aspect is that the supplier's lower level production line managers are under so much pressure from their management for efficiencies that they make changes in materials and processes to increase profit, not understanding that we are paying attention.  

That being said, it is absolutely possible to get quality goods out of China, but you simply cannot trust the supplier.  It's the way of the world in China, truth and trust are very rare commodities there.  A telling story.... several years ago Huawei essentially reverse engineered some telecom network routers made by Cisco, and started selling them cheaper, and the product documentation (very important, if not critical, for configuration and operation) they shipped with the gear was a verbatim copy of the Cisco documentation, right down to the typos in the text!  Ren Zhengfei, the head of Huawei, when confronted by Cisco with this in a face to face meeting, said this was simply "coincidence."  Cisco sued Huawei and recovered damages.  So, so much for "trust."
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#32
Sadly we have went to China and Taiwan for most woodworking equipment. Powermatic and Jet seem to do a pretty good job with Quality control. But the cast iron is no where near the quality of good American made iron. Not to mention the motors aren't even close to Baldor or leeson in terms of rated power and longevity. Most of the imported cast iron is very porous and brittle. They do not age the cast iron like they used to here. Now we're dealing with tariffs, and that's dipping into any savings we had.
Now where is that chisel
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