In the World of Big Stuff, the US Still Rules

westlake writes "From Peoria, the WSJ a look at the giant trucks manufactured by Komatsu and Caterpillar. 'In certain areas — notably aircraft, industrial engines, excavators and railway and mining equipment — the U.S. exports far more than it imports. These industries produce relatively small numbers of very expensive goods, requiring specialized technology and labor. Their competitive advantage rests partly on expertise built by U.S. companies in making durable, high-tech weaponry and other equipment for the military — frequently applicable to other products.' It may surprise you to learn that Komatsu doesn't employee a single industrial robot. The quality of workmanship simply isn't there where it is needed."

Comments

surely, you're joking

[ThorGod]

Look, we're still in the days of "It's best if it says Made in USA" on it. I've witnessed it, anecdotally *all the way*, first-hand. I've got two thermal temperature probes. One clearly says "Made in the USA" on it and works like a DREAM. Even has a ton of memory and sensor options. Then there's the cheapo version I got for way less, DOESN'T say "Made in the USA" on it - and it's CRAP. Sure, the non-US version works...after you let the LCD "warm up" for 2 minutes! There's also no such thing as memory on it nor sensor options...You get what you pay for and to get merch from the US still requires you pay top dollar.

Don't confuse cheap for quality. Plenty of things are better made, here, in the US. You just have to not be a cheapo.

Re:surely, you're joking

[Anonymous Coward]

For the rest of the world 'Made in the USA' means 'Heavy, will break down, and none of your tools will fit'.

May sound harsh, but that is my experience of industrial equipment and the feelings of those who work with it.

Re:surely, you're joking

[pz]

Same thing happened with Made in Japan: decades ago, you were better off saving your pennies for good old American stuff because the Japanese equivalents were horrible. Nissan's first imports to the US (when they were known as Datsun) were a joke. So were Honda's. But now, the Japanese imported goods are top-notch and deserving of hard-earned respect. Korean goods followed the same path. Taiwanese, to a certain extent, although they don't seem to have fully realized their potential, yet. Chinese goods are just starting to get better as they, as a country, learn manufacturing. Given that they have vast resources to throw at the problem, I fully expect Made in China to, within a decade or so, mean something is quality goods, and we'll be looking to Made in Viet Nam, Made in Thailand, Made in North Korea, or Made in Kazahkstan with derision.

Re:surely, you're joking

[Buminatrain]

Yeah I'm gonna have to disagree with this. I tend to think your friend is just more fond of his profit margins with Chinese goods. I have a "fallback" job with a construction company and mainly do plumbing when working there. In general we use Chinese materials but on government/military jobs we have to use US materials. I'll tell you now the difference is night and day in terms of quality, on top of prevailing wage it's a joy working these jobs just due to how much better the quality of the US stuff is.

Re:surely, you're joking

[Aranykai]

Mine doesn't either. For instance, instead of a 1 inch box end wrench, I have a 25.4mm box end wrench.

Re:Except Komatsu is a Japanese company.

[Desler]

Neither the submission nor the article says otherwise. This doesn't change the fact that the products being referred to are manufactured in a US-base plant.

Re:Except Komatsu is a Japanese company.

[Sperbels]

But how Japanese could it be if it has no robots?

Thank Goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank goodness there's no possible way for this thread to degenerate into a hodgepodge of anecdotes disguised as fact. I'm certain the Slashdot audience will rise above the low hanging fruit.

Re:Thank Goodness

[iONiUM]

I don't know, my friend read this Slashdot story once that had no anecdotes in it at all. So, it does happen.

Re:Super Value Goods

[mrbcs]

I worked as a welder-fitter at Komatsu Dresser in Cambridge Ontario a number of years ago. The "quality" issue is a red herring.

Robots haven't been invented that can fit a gusset plate made of 3/4" steel that doesn't quite fit right because a guy hand made it in a 500 ton press brake. The plates would have to be clamped, heated and hammered with a 10lb sledge hammer to fit properly.

We had about 20 - 35 ton trucks on the assembly line at any given time. There is simply no cost effective way to make a robot do the tasks that these guys were doing.

Re:Super Value Goods

[mrbcs]

They could have used a press and die set up. That would cost upwards of 100 grand. Since they only made 20 units at a time, it's just not cost effective.... and you still don't need a robot.

Re:Komatsu?

[donscarletti]

Caterpiller armoured bulldozers are probably the most visible element of IDF retaliatory demolitions. When your product is being used to knock down the homes of civilians to flush out insurgents in the community then you shouldn't be dumbfounded when your PR takes a slide.

Lower volume is the real issue

[Grayhand]

It's impractical to build robots to make equipment that is made in the hundred of units and individual parts weighs in the tons. Humans are more flexible so it's easier for humans to do short runs and American workers have a fairly long history of doing this work. For China it's workers are one generation off the farm and it's one thing to slap two halves of an iPad together but a very different issue aligning 5 ton metal castings. Ultra heavy equipment is just shy of being one offs so it requires a much higher skill set which the US still excels at. This is nothing new. I remember reading decades ago about Russian Subs couldn't match the US for quiet operation because we had the only mills that could make the propellers for quiet running. The largest metal castings we did were for the turrets for WW II battle ships and even the US can't reproduce those now.

not big, important

[slashmydots]

If you pay half for construction equipment and it breaks within a month, that throws off the expensive estimate just a bit. Any cheap-manufacturing country does not offer sufficient quality for business use of quarter million dollar machinery. They make cheap, hastily designed stuff out of inferior materials to undercut everyone because that's what they do. They can't make a perfect machine because then they'd need a vast engineering infrastructure and high purity metal manufacturing and all that. That's primarily the US and not a whole lot more.

Re:not big, important

[drinkypoo]

The only reason the US has an advantage in building these big machines is because they needed these big machines when there wasn't anybody else building them yet

That's just not true. The reason the US has an advantage in building these big machines is that we're good at building these big machines. We have the best of everything; the best raw materials, for example. And the biggest corporations which can spend the most money.

If China would suddenly need machines twice the size as the US builds, they'd soon be leaders in building big machines.

There is no such thing as machines twice the size as the US builds, because if someone wants a bigger machine, we'll build it. And China buys its heavy equipment from other countries, but now isn't buying any to speak of, because their building boom has gone bust and they have entire cities lying empty because their economic model does not permit the citizenry to have sufficient wealth to be able to inhabit them, and yet their government is not actually communist, and will therefore not simply place people into those cities based on merit.

Yes, most of China's economy revolves around cheap labour and low costs, that doesn't mean they don't have any highly skilled engineers or the ability to create top quality.

It's not that they don't have any highly skilled engineers, but they don't have the ability to create top quality because that is not their goal. The goal is always to maximize profit. This does not set them apart, of course, from most "American" companies, but if you take a look I think you'll find that the so-called American companies that don't give a shit about quality are having their shit made in China. They might as well be a Chinese company with an American sign. As well, if you consider the history of Chinese manufacturing, there is actually no evidence they have ever had great engineers. When they rip off a design they copy it so faithfully that it contains the original flaws, even obvious ones. This has been obvious for as long as industrial goods have been coming out of China. They might be technically capable of producing the highest quality product, but they appear to be culturally uninterested in doing so.

good quality is good strategy

[manu0601]

There are two ways of being competitive. The first one is to lower all costs, (and especially labor costs) and make a weak product cheaper than competitors. The second one is to make better products with high price.

The cut-all-costs approach has a problem: there is always someone in a poor country ready to work for lower wage. Being competitive this way means making workers poorer and poorer. And there are environmental issues: costs can be cut by wreaking the environment in countries where there is no regulation to protect it. And since the ecosystem is global, environmental issue created in poor countries will bite back rich countries later.

Cutting all costs to be competitive leads to social and environmental destruction. I am glad there are still some success stories of good products with high price. Of course I do not take for granted that the high-price product is driving up wages and environment preservation, but at least it is not incompatible with it.

Insignificant on economy

[dutchwhizzman]

The USA has resorted to buy everything imported, since their consumers would rather whine about quality than pay for it. The thousands of billions spent on clothing, electronics, food, cars and building materials to name a few industries don't weigh up to the few that come in by exporting planes or mining equipment and such.

Also, quite a lot of these products are assembled from imported materials or half-products, the owners or shareholders are often foreign so apart from providing actual manufacturing and producing jobs to the USA, a lot of the profit is often not staying in the USA.

The Netherlands used to have a very prosperous ship building industry. That died out, competition from lower wage countries with good sea access made the cheaper, worse quality ships still a good investment. Then the competitors got better at building ships with the experience they gained and even the high quality ships could be purchased from lower wage countries. By now, these countries have lost most of their ship building industry to the far east, where they build ships in assembly lines by the dozens per year, on dozens of assembly lines. Imagine an iPhone 5 manual assembly line, building 1000 yards and larger ships. Now imagine 20 of those lines in a shipyard. This is reality now. If mining excavators, planes trains or any other product named in this list ever gets produced in numbers big enough to warrant mass production sites, cheap labour countries will start producing. We may laugh at India or China's plans to produce their own aerospace or commercial flight equipment, but in 10 years, Boeing and Airbus will most likely be buying 90% of their parts prefabricated from those very countries and in 20 years, they will probably be reduced to a manufacturing and assembly location for them.