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 bull****.

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.

--
WB
..........


"axolotl" wrote in message
...

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...=2012303050059

I thought it might be of interest to some. Please don't use it as a
springboard to schoolyard political insults.

Kevin Gallimore