"J. R. Carroll" wrote in message
om...



"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"J. R. Carroll" wrote in message
om...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"J. R. Carroll" wrote in message
. com...

"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
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If Detroit or Windsor can't stay busy or if GM files it won't be
because
they couldn't get the answer right. It will be because they kept
asking
the
wrong damned question.

And are you talking about a solution for 10% of the market, or are you
claiming you have a general question and a general solution for it?

It isn't a claim Ed, it is a proven philosophy and business model. It will
work wherever you choose to run it if the infrastructure is in place.

Proven for what percentage of the economy? Are you suggesting this is a
general model that will sustain our economy as a whole? If so, how would you
apply it to, say, the manufacturing of shirts? What philosophy and business
model will let you make shirts at a price/quality tradeoff that competes
with rural China or Bangladesh? Child labor could help, I suppose...


Because we can always make a positive anecdote of the virtues of 10%, if
we
neglect the fact that an economy is all 100%, and that the consequences
of
what happens to the other 90% eventually catches up with all of us.

Sooner or later, you have to answer the question of how you compete with
80
cents/hour wages, when technology and business expertise can be packaged
into shipping containers and sent to Bangalore or Shanghai just as
easily
as
to Cleveland, and that clever ideas, hard work, and insight are
distributed
quite evenly around the world.

Focusing on wages is exactly the wrong thing to do. I paid the tool room
guys a five dollar premium to the market, provided excellent medical
benefits, paid time off, and contributed the legal maximum to our 401K for
every employee at the time that was 4 to 1.
You are closer to the mark with the clever ideas part however and I agree
that no one group has a lock on that.

Your $5 premium probably was around 20% of 40% of your costs: as a round
approximation, perhaps 8% of your cost of production, based on
tooling-industry rules of thumb.

When you're up against 80 cents/hour, how do you account for the 96%
disadvantage? Do you think that improved efficiencies in general (not just
yours, but those of the economy as a whole) can cover 96% differences? Any
model that I know of, that points in that possible direction, is based on
getting rid of all of those people you employ and adopting the values and
standards of the Third World.

And then business in general winds up hoist on its own petard.


If you think that GM is tanking because of their labor contracts or
pension
obligations you are just plain wrong. They suck hind tit because their
business model if for ****.

So you're saying they can absorb $1,500/car just by having a better business
model than Toyota or Hyundai? And then, after gaining a $1,500/car advantage
over them simply through smarter organization, that they can maintain that
advantage in a viciously competitive global market?

These are all fine assertions, John, but I'd like to see the specifics.
Frankly, I don't believe you can "business-model" your way to success when
you have the kind of legacy overhead that GM has. That is, unless your
business model is based on moving all of your manufacturing offshore and
abandoning your legacy entitlements to the federal government.

--
Ed Huntress