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Originally Posted by jcommin
The same goes for automotive. Toyota comes out with the Toyota System soon to be copied by others. Back in the 80s, changing dies on a transfer press took a week, the Japanese did it in a day. We took a day to change one die in a single stroke small press but by continuous improvement, we cut that down to an hour.
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I agree with 99% of what's been said here, but I don't see how this increase in efficiency is a bad thing. American cars were dinosaurs right out of the factory until the mid-70s, then they were pure junk for a decade or so. It took competition from Japan to light a fire under US automakers. Now we assemble great cars. I think a lot, if not most, of the parts come from overseas, but the part we
do contribute is now first rate.
When I was in high school in the late '60s I worked at a hardware store that sold appliances. We unpacked refrigerators and cleaned them up before delivering them. I would find trash, candy bar wrappers, and one time a half eaten sandwich behind the vegetable drawers. That did not instill confidence that the 'fridge was assembled properly. I haven't seen anything like that in any of the Japanese/Chinese/Korean products I buy in decades.
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We blamed unions for high labor cost and moved things to the southern states to reduce labor. That trend continues to this day, Taiwan, Mexico China, India, etc. There isn't a machine tool made in the USA anymore, no stamping presses either (most of the American ones are foreign owned). The list is endless.
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That's an example of skirting around a problem instead of fixing it. US manufacturers should have focused on the needs of employees as well as of the demands of stockholders. The extreme emphasis on "stockholder value" has been a disaster. The adversarial relationship between labor and management has been a problem in the West since the industrial age began. Maybe in the East they saw the disastrous results of the continuous fight between labor and management and took a different attitude toward their workers, I don't know, but I do know their workers are making money and buying products while our work force is being laid off and turning to drugs.