Newspaper article about a machine tool manufacturer moving back from China

decades, with twenty-two of those years as president of Charmilles Technologies Corporation, now GF AgieCharmilles. During his tenure at Charmilles Technologies Corporation, Harry transformed the company from 6th in its industry to 1st in eight years. A long-time supporter of workforce development and U.S. manufacturing, Moser was named in 2010 to the Industry Week Manufacturing Hall of Fame, and has held leadership positions with the NTMA, National Institute for Metalworking Skills' Board and the Swiss Machine Tool Society. Harry's broad knowledge and experience in the areas of manufacturing economics, international trade and workforce development uniquely equip him to lead the reshoring effort in the U.S."

Harry is a great guy and an ideal candidate for this role. I haven't seen him for 20 years, and I haven't talked to him for around 10, but I used to know him pretty well.

four decades, with twenty-two of those years as president of Charmilles = Technologies Corporation, now GF AgieCharmilles. During his tenure at = Charmilles Technologies Corporation, Harry transformed the company from =

He's my newest hero and I'd be perfectly happy if there were a lot more = like him.

And a whole lot less of the sports figures, hollywood celebrities and so = forth that so many seem to instead hold in such high esteem these days. =20

Interesting! Two manual mills in the picture, not sure what other machinery they have.

Jon

I happen to believe that the writing is on the wall, and it should be crystal clear by now.. but I also believe that almost no one learns anything.

Any product that needs to be built right, can't/shouldn't/won't be built in China.

I read recently that thousands of manufacturing plants in China had closed recently (don't know what their products were).

China can be Wham-marts supplier of throw-away goods, but companies interested in growth, not just today's profit margins, will need to have their products made elsewhere. I don't have anything against the Chinese workers, I suspect that they just want to earn a decent wage and provide for their families like most other workers.

China produces products to tonnage quotas, not to any acceptable quality standards.. they know how to cut corners that most of us can't even imagine.

A complete manufacturing facility was built in China decades ago by investors to produce Jeeps IIRC, and after much frustration, the project was just abandoned, having never produced even one vehicle.

I recently became interested in guitars again, and have been reading experiences of fans of Epiphone guitars needing to return new models for numerous types of obvious defects. The one buyer returned 6 defective new models because they were all faulty right out of the box.. obviously results of no testing being performed at the manufacturing facility. Epiphone has built it's own manufacturing facilities in China, and the quality of a legendary product name is spiraling downward out of control. Each of their products are labeled with a statement similar to: Inspected and set up in the U.S.A., and yet the US dealers are fairly regularly receiving defective products.

One can essentially buy a fake Gibson copy of better quality than that of a genuine Epiphone. Epiphone has a network of independent privately owned dealers marketing the Epiphone products, but the dealers are increasingly acting as return agents of defective products, sacrificing profits and overhead expenses on inferior products that buyers won't own. Many of the returned products aren't the cheapest models, but instead, the much more expensive premium products.

Big company execs can apparently only see dollar signs in profit margins, without recognizing that customer loyalty is what pays for it all. In general, execs whine about having to be, or being forced to be competitive in the marketplace, and that cutting costs will benefit the consumers, but it's basically all bullshit.

Some companies manage to have quality products produced in China, but that doesn't mean that they don't also suffer losses from high failure rates.. but I suspect that it's more likely that they just perform more thorough quality control and/or testing before the products get to the end users.. a second level of manufacturing that can't be entrusted to the producers of the products.

You are deluding yourself. There is a continuum of quality, and sometimes top of the line with finer tolerances isn't needed and isn't cost effective. China is going to keep manufacturing a lot of things, and the quality is only going to get better over time.

A couple of decades later it was the South Koreans. Their stuff was called junk. Today, LG appliances, Samsung electronics, Hyundai cars and several other products are world beaters.

If you think China is not going to continue to grow and improve at manufacturing, you are delusional and probably a menace to the safety of your family and colleagues.

Chinese manufacturing will improve in quality, but it seems like it is happening more slowly than Japan or Korea due an ingrained culture of corruption from years of communism. Quality certs are routinely faked. The only way to get real quality is to have a good personal relationship so that the consequences of fraud become personal. Even then any crook in the supply chain can screw things up. It requires a major effort on the part of the customer to insure quality, but it can be done. Despite the issues of worker exploitation, the iPad/iPhone production line seems to produce pretty good quality.

Another advantage to manufacturing in the US is something that most executives (who are mostly trained in juggling/counting money) do not appreciate. That is the synergy that happens between engineering and manufacturing. Each learns from the other. Without good interaction, engineering might not ever know what did not work so well the first time. They will not know what processes are easy or hard for manufacting. Manufacturing might take a very long time to solve problems that engineering could resolve very quickly, or manufacturing might solve it in a way that is detrimental to the product in some way.

You are a delusional fool.

They must have quite a bit more if they hired 35 people for the shop. Subtract 5 admins, 5 salesmongrels, and 5 grunts, and you have as many as 20 machinists working there. ;)

One Atta Boy to KOMO for bringing work back home. Kudos, PMC!

-- Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. -- Robert J. Sawyer

They're right down the shore from me. Nice people. The machining operation is small ("about 15% of total staff"), CNC and some manual machines, the rest being assemblers, engineers, and technicians.

Uh-huh - nice non-rebuttal, dummy.

You could provide some facts and rational for your statement.

Dan

World leading in sales volume perhaps--for the most part, still junk.

F*ck off, jack ass.

Obviously, you know very little about Chinese culture.

When and if outside firms begin an exodus away from China, the more likely result will be a significant overall decline in Chinese manufacturing prowess.

that so many seem to Jon

And you could start jumping up and down and flapping your arms while clucking like a chicken.

Sorry, that's bullshit. LG and Samsung absolutely are world quality leaders in their markets. Hyundai is better than any American brand car (I'm not talking about the Japanese cars engineered in Japan and built in America), and they're close to the Japanese.

Your disdain for Chinese goods is largely based on chauvinism and racism, the same as the disdain once felt for Japanese goods.

And you do? HA HA HA HA HA!

It's not going to happen.

Ha ha ha ha ha! Your concession of impotence and stupidity is noted.

Yup. What I tell people that think China -can't- produce quality, is they are only the third nation to put a man in space. Even though they've been able to learn heaps from the USA and USSR on how to do it, it still demands an exceptionally high degree of manufacturing and quality control. Too many things to go wrong to pull that off with a bit of 'Right Stuff' bravado.

They are making dirt cheap stuff because people are buying it...

Jon

Nope, my disdain is based on my own personal experience using crappy = Chinese goods and it's validated every time I go to the city dump and = have a look at the kinds of items that are ending up in our overflowing = landfills.

Neener neener neener......

Well, I happen to be a US manufacturer who has three distributers in = China and they probably account for more sales volume than all of Europe = combined. =20

Missed the original article did you ?

--It's happening....right now, in fact....