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Lenovo Building Manufacturing Plant in North Carolina
An anonymous reader writes "One of the major themes of the ongoing presidential election in the United States has been the perceived need to bring product manufacturing back to the United States. A recent announcement from Lenovo is going to play to this point; the PC manufacturer said today that it's building a U.S. location in Whitsett, North Carolina. The new facility is small, with just over 100 people and is being built for a modest $2M, but Lenovo states that it's merely the beginning of a larger initiative."
It makes sense: their U.S. HQ is a stone's throw away in RTP.
Just a new line inside an existing facility. Still good news :)
K Man
Just don't put it near any military bases...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
WTF does RTP mean, in context with this story?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
..has our dollar really declined that much?
It is not so much the decline of the dollar, as the automation of manufacturing. As factories become more automated, the "labor" component of the cost goes down, and at some point is exceed by the transportation and inventory costs of off-shoring. At that point it becomes cost effective to "re-shore" the factory.
I have been inside factories in both China and the USA. Chinese factories bustle with people. American factories tend to be almost devoid of all lifeforms. Manufacturing is coming back to America, but manufacturing jobs are not.
American companies can not build here, but Chinese can. Just amazing how bad American leadership has become.
At this point, if the west really wants to acknowledge China's gov cold war and take it on, then we should start sending as many MBA's to China as humanly possible. Of course, the Chinese will probably realize it and simply put a bullet in each one of them and then charge the USA for it, while subsidizing and dumping the rest of the ammo on America's market.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Im pretty sure the Research Triangle has more to do with the fact that it is formed by the triangle of Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC St, which are strong tech/science/research schools. Plus there's the fact that the Triangle has been around since the 50s. This is what makes it attractive to businesses, especially reasearch and tech companies.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I'm typing this from a thinkpad x201, and have failed to see any issues. Design wise very little has changed on it since the owership changed.
Some people could consider it stagnation, but I consider it "don't fix what isn't broken"
It still has all the features nobody else is willing to do in a single package, like a quality nub, reading light, waterproof keyboard, etc.
The connectivity options are impressive, not only the usual wifi/ethernet/cellular but it even still comes with an in-built 56k modem.. on an i5 :)
This is a small plant, so really only suited for assembling from parts, not creating new parts. Think batches of desktops assembled to spec, in the tens or hundreds, not thousands. If laptops, probably limited to swapping out keyboards for a different layout, change the hard drive, add more memory, or perhaps other warranty replacements.
Beyond that, the strong points of thinkpads were quality build and eclectic design focused on getting things done, like non-glare high-resolution high-quality 4:3 screens. That's not something fixed by swapping out a few parts in a laptop.
Alright, a different keyboard is easily swapped in, provided you have better quality ones in sensible layouts--like the lack of windows keys that was a feature for the longest time, leaving ctrl and alt nicely accessible without looking. But if you have better keyboards available, or other higher quality parts, why not stick'em in right away?
So, in a word, no, this isn't likely to magically improve the thinkpad range. For that to happen, lenovo has to realise that just the brand name isn't enough; you have to differentiate yourself. Instead, they've moved to become more like the rest, not less. Thus lessening the brand name in the process.
But they also have a line of desktops. I expect this plant is about order configuration management close to delivery, probably mostly for small bulk orders, likely desktops and perhaps some laptops too.
Transportation is probably a factor, as well. For things like warranty work or build-to-order configs, the customer doesn't want to wait for the boat from China or pay for the plane from China.
Companies that sell nothing but prebuilds don't care as much; but if you do customization it isn't uncommon to have a 'slapping FRUs into boxes' plant somewhere in the US or northern Mexico that is supplied with more labor intensive parts from elsewhere.
The worst crowd who could possibly own a company. I'd say this is just a token gesture to lull us into a false sense of security that outsourcing to China has any long term benefits
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo Responding to claims that Lenovo is a state owned enterprise CEO Yang Yuanqing said: "Our company is a 100% market oriented company. Some people have said we are a state owned enterprise. It's 100% not true. In 1984 the Chinese Academy of Sciences only invested $25,000 in our company. The purpose of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to invest in this company was that they wanted to commercialize their research results. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is a pure research entity in China, owned by the government. From this point, you could say we're different from state-owned enterprises. Secondly, after this investment, this company is run totally by the founders and management team. The government has never been involved in our daily operation, in important decisions, strategic direction, nomination of the CEO and top executives and financial management. Everything is done by our management team
Well, Rock Creek (nearby town is Whitsett), where Lenovo is locating, has another tenant of note: Red Oak Brewery. Probably within scootering distance, too. A small family-owned Italian restaurant near there sells pizza by the slice. Only the slices come from pizzas over 3' in diameter.
My wife replaced her government issued laptop recently. She was free to get whatever laptop she wanted, as long as it was not made in China. So she ended up with a Dell assembled in Ireland with parts manufactured in China. I assume the NC facility will be mainly a federal government procurement facility to comply with the "not from China" policy.
Even if it's just for PR points, some domestic manufacturing employment is a good thing. The reason why isn't nice, it's not politically correct, but it's the facts:
Not everyone is intelligent enough for knowledge work.
In my opinion, if we continue the way we're going, we're going to spiral into a society with three classes -- business owners, knowledge workers and a huge swath of working poor. If everyone has to complete at least a masters' degree to secure a place in one of the top two classes, that completely ignores the other 75% of the IQ distribution.
Think about the way society was organized in the 50s through the 70s:
- Only the highly intelligent and/or well off went to college. They typically inherited a business, got a technical, science, engineering or other kind of knowledge job, or became academics. Each one of these outcomes guaranteed a stable job for life because that's what business ownership, academia or large corporate employment did back then. This is still the preferred path, minus the guarantees of course.
- For the high end of the medium-intelligence scale, there were plenty of paper-shuffling jobs in corporate environments. Remember that before computers, automation and email, large corporations had to employ thousands of file clerks, secretaries and layers of management that just routed paper reports around. Because US companies were doing so well, and things couldn't be outsourced and automated, a huge upper middle class thrived.
- For the low end of the medium-intelligence scale, there were millions of factory jobs. They were all simple, stand on a line for 8 hours and perform a single task or set of tasks. Because of unionization and a lack of global competition, even those jobs were stable and paid reasonable living wages. This was the bulk of the middle class, and I grew up in a Rust Belt city in the early 80s so I got to watch it all unravel live.
- The screwups, dropouts or just plain dumb people wound up doing menial labor. But even at that end of the scale, there was less downward pressure on those wages, so they were able to scrape by for the most part.
The problem is, in 2012, you can locate a factory anywhere, employ thousands of people for a fraction of the price that 100 would cost you, and pump out products just as quickly as before. All the secretaries and paper routers lost their jobs in the late 80s/early 90s automation and downsizing waves. So now, where do all those people who used to have solid incomes go? They either end up permanently unemployed, or go work menial jobs for just above minimum wage, no security and no benefits. So you have a huge class of working poor, working at Wal-Mart, as a home health care aide, or something else.
It's a really tough problem that might have a very bad ending in the next 40 years or so -- we need to find something for everyone to do and someone to employ them. Conservatives love to tout entrepreneurship as our savior, but do they really think a factory guy whose job was bolting the same two parts together for the last 20 years is going to be a successful business owner? Thinking like that will mean you have a class of bankrupt working poor instead of just working poor as all their little ventures fail.
So yes, I hope manufacturing comes back. And I hope it can be something that someone can build an entire career on, not just a string of $10/hr temp jobs.
From what I have heard there is a consensus that Thinkpads used to be much better back in the days. Before they got branded/involved with Lenovo.
Maybe they are going to be better built now?
If you ask me this is bullshit.
My last "IBM" thinkpad (T41) died from the infamous ATI BGA packing defect after only two years of use.
Before this CFL tube on my "IBM" thinkpad ??? blew after about the same time.
Current "lenovo" T400 with LED backlight and switchable graphics has been with me for more than 4 years now including origional 4-cell (small) battery still providing >1.5hr. This machine is used every day with no problem of any kind.
Case is solid, keyboard is great and internal magnesium frame in "lenovo" T400 is more substantial than "IBM" T41.
While Lenovo also makes cheap crap you can still get real thinkpads if your willing to pay the slight premium or pick up an older model and save $$$.
As always YMMV, antidotical evidence cuts both ways and is best ignored outright. The assertion there is a consensus that lenovo is worse than IBM is bullshit in my not so polite opinion.
I love it. IBM sells Lenovo to china. China decides to come back to the states and build here and people scream. Yet most of the screamers drive a toyota or nissan or volkswagen and have no qualms about supporting these foreign companies. Because... they have factories in the US? Or do they really believe they're US companies?
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
The difference, of course, being that Lenovo isn't getting any tax incentives.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/10/03/2387334/lenovo-to-manufacture-computers.html
It's mindboggling where that point is though.
Whenever I see things like a $30 bench with heavy cast iron ends - made in china. How does it not cost that much just to ship the thing...
Why are Chinese iron frying pans cheaper than ours? Not a whole lot of labour involved really, but an awful lot of weight for shipping.
Then there's other things - I notice a lot of canned corn, for example, is made in Thailand. Canned fruit from South Africa, and more and more Chinese fruit and veg.
How the fuck is it possible to be cheaper than corn grown and packed in Iowa..? Totally mindboggling.