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How Motherboards Are Made
mikemuch writes "Reporter Mark Hachman recently took a tour of a motherboard manufacturing facility operated by Gigabyte in Taiwan, and has posted a complete slideshow of the process. He was surprised by how much still had to be done by hand, but the company is still able to produce 1.5 million motherboards a month."
Sad truth is, unlike car assembly lines (which he mentions), it's cheaper to use trained humans to assemble low-value products like these, especially in a market based almost entirely on price (for consumer items at least).
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
That about sums up the reporters knowledge of the process - why they didn't send someone with an ounce of insight into the process escapes me!
/rant over
"I don't know what this machine does, maybe it makes the boards" - it's the damn screen printer that pastes the solder onto the board, and the woman isn't "removing the edges" she's stuck in a tiny booth all day removing flux from the through hole components.
I can think of heaps of peole, myself included, who would have loved a trip like this, and could have made a detailed write up that made sense, and did justice to the hard work and conditions those people work in.
The last picture is possibly the best... "Nutrition Carrier egg yolk pie"?!? That sounds simultaneously disgusting and wonderful.
To me this is no surprise whatsoever. I think what would surprise people even more is that a lot of companies in Japan, Europe and the United States still use manual labor. The problem seems to be that when someone mentions manual labor done in Asia people automatically assume people are being exploited. I agree it's a serious issue in China. However, this hasn't been the case in Taiwan for decades now. There are numerous laws in Taiwan protecting workers and they are enforced.
And in my experience they are very industrious workers. I've heard surveys quotes that Americans are among the most productive works in the World. They work hard, but honestly, I don't believe it. Either other nations don't bother doing adequate surveys or American companies inflate productivity. I did also hear another survey that said American workers were complainers, the French and British are worse. I believe that too. Taiwanese are much like the Japanese. There's a job to be done, they get in there and do it. And they do it quickly. They have an excellent work ethic, and take any job they do seriously. It's why you can walk into a Starbucks or McDonalds in Taiwan and the place is spotless and service excellent.
It also helps that managers at technology companies there tend to have engineering backgrounds. Unlike American companies where we get stuck with business and marketing idiots making important decisions. I can't count the times I've had to deal with guys here who don't know what they're talking about and end up making fools of themselves in meetings. Even worse, they don't care to learn because they think it's all beneath them. So they end up managing based on emotion, almost like children.
Not that there aren't problems there. I think Taiwanese in general are underpaid. And there's this ideal there too many people have that once you're in management you basically get to screw around all day. Some managers, especially in office environments, can get verbally abusive with employees. It's the sort of thing that no way in hell would ever fly in the US.
Anyway, I had the opportunity while working there to visit a few companies, and I got to see some cool stuff. Like I said, it's mostly manual labor. I was disappointed when I first saw that; I was hoping to see these giant robotic arms swinging around, going about their business. But it's not the case. It would just be too expensive to purchase and then set up this equipment. And then having to retool for other products would be another hassle.
I also did some work for a company that sold and installed semi-conductor manufacturing equipment. That was one business where companies didn't want employees directly handling the product. So business was good for this company.
Taiwan has two of the largest contract semi-conductor foundries in the world. Now that was impressive. The company I visited a few years ago had just recently completed this new facility in southern Taiwan. This was when companies were first starting to move over to 300mm wafers. So they installed this transport in the ceiling to transport these wafers around from machine to machine. The wafers are carried in this case which is something like 1.5ft all around. It has handles so it could be carried. And people did used to carry them around. But given that a case full of at least 10 wafers can be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars they decided they didn't want to risk having people drop these. Hence the transport system. In fact, the facility had relatively few people there, most were responsible for ensuring everything was running properly or setting up new equipment. All in all, it was impressive.
Why shouldn't I find it acceptable? Out of a sense of guilt for being born into a different class of society? Where is the rationality in feeling guilt for the workings of random chance? Is it fair that I make more in an hour than a Bengali textile worker does in a month? No, but that's just the nature of the world. There is no point in pretending that the world can be some sort of utopian place where the efforts of all are rewarded on the same level. By sheer bad luck, many people in the world will get a very bad lot in life. The only things that can be done is to maximize the quality of life of these people within the scope of what is realistic. And in that context there is no reason to feel guilty for buying shoes made by someone making $25 a month, because the brutal reality is that the alternative for her would've been working just as hard on a small village farm, just to feed herself.
And the real issue is way beyond the short-term comparison between a low-paying job and even lower-paying farm work. Industrialization, as painful as it is, is the only way to move a country like Bangladesh forward. Urbanization, commerce, industry, serve not only immediate monetary needs, but change the fundamental nature of society, modernizing it, disabusing people of backwards notions, integrating people within the larger world in which we live. Fifty years ago, most Bengalis were working hard for low pay in village farms. Now, many are working hard for low pay in industry, but belong to unions and can get to a hospital in an emergency and maybe send their children to school. Fifty years hence, who knows?*
*) Fifty-years hence Bangladesh will probably still be exceedingly poor, but for reasons completely unrelated to economics. The government is fantastically corrupt, and eating into a large portion of whatever progress industry and commerce have been bringing to the country.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...