Why Hardware Development Takes Longer in the West Than in China (Video)

This was originally going to be a second video about the Popup Factory Demo we talked about last Wednesday. But this section of Tim's lengthy interview with people from the Popup Factory seemed like it would be of broader interest to Slashdot people -- and your coworkers, bosses, and friends who may be involved in device production or prototyping. There are some hard words here, because David Cranor is talking about problems that go way beyond the usual perceived Chinese advantages such as low labor costs and a lack of environmental regulations.

Comments

tl dr

[netsavior]

It takes longer in the west because you have to pay your workers, pay attention to environmental impact, and provide for at least minimal worker safety. Yeah, but I am sure co-location is a huge win, way bigger than free-ish labor, and no accountability.

Re:tl dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention China doesn't "develop" anything. It just reverse engineers it.

Re:tl dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget thorough engineering and testing.

My experience is that when developing HW in the US, the engineering goes though a thorough process of review to ensure compliance with safety, emissions, lifecycle, product environment use, component tolerance stack, etc. Then lots and lots of testing.

My experience in working with Shenzhen ODM's is a product that is little more than a working prototype put into production.

Re:tl dr

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the environmental differences affect the colocation argument. You can't build a neoprene factory (to use the video's example) in Boston or San Francisco; you have to go hide them in the hills. You can't locate your engineering firm in the hills; the hip workers all need to be fixie-riding distance from downtown.

Re:tl dr

[tnk1]

That is starting to change.

China has been very canny about how they do things. Their deals generally are done in such a way as to make sure their own people get not only licenses to build products, but also that their own people are trained how to make them, and the factories are built in China.

Yes, they're playing copycat and have been for decades, but they're also amassing actual experience which they are starting to use to build some new things.

This is where we will see if China can move forward while maintaining its particular brand of not-Communism and top-down rule by a Party elite. If someone else is giving you the plans and training you can build anything. If you have to be creative and think outside of the box, that could cause issues for a country where the centre wants to maintain control.

The Chinese, like any other humans, have the capability to succeed and be creative and not just be copycats. The only reason they would not be would be due to either their government or culture, or both. If they can do all of that in spite of those things, then you may find Western democracy might be given a run for its money on its own turf.

Re:tl dr

[epyT-R]

Also, quality takes time.

Re:tl dr

[Darinbob]

It is shorter in China because all the designs coming from there are utter crap. It's all about saving money, cutting corners, shortening design time, ignoring problems and hoping they go away, etc. Not talking about factories here, but the actual designs.

Re:tl dr

[Darinbob]

There's not much control from the center in practice. The local party bosses tend to be given completely free reign, until there's a scandal or someone dies. Laws are broken left and right. It's top-down rule in name only, except before any internationally visible event.

Re:tl dr

[TheGratefulNet]

and, you have to WANT to be around for the long-run. we used to do that in the west and that concept is foreign (so to speak) in china. its a 'sell and run' attitude. who cares if the thing catches fire. that guy will not be coming back to buy more no matter what. I'll be in a different business and I'll continue to sell dangerous crap, then change names again and keep going. no care for welfare of others who use their stuff.

I'm not saying the west is perfect, but there IS some notion of your brand name and how you value it and try to keep it so that others will come back and buy more, again and again. repeat business from a good reputation is key, here, in the west. the eastern sellers really do not give 2 shits about what we think of them. you can't shame them into doing a good job and you can't sue them, either.

but one thing we both do share. we now force customers to do q/a work since there is no margin left in electronics anymore. disk drives, etc - those have high flaw counts now compared to 10 years ago. you used to be able to buy a drive and have a good confidence it would work. now, if you buy a drive you must hammer on it for 30 days to be sure its worth using. so, our quality has dropped, from american named companies that sell chinese low-cost goods. that does not mean profits are low! the ceo's are making the most money in world history! but they keep it all and claim poverty and pay their workers peanuts.

until china starts to care more about its sellers and its reputation, we will continue to have a 'sell and run' style commerce situation with them. they sell, they run and we're stuck holding substandard and often dangerous goods. we've given up trying to do lower end manufacturing here, so we now have no choice were we get our goods. we sold ourselves out and now if we want goods, there's only 1 place to get them. how stupid was THAT?

Re:tl dr

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, things are different https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Re:tl dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell and run is now the method used by Volkswagen and their air pollution software since 2008. This happens to be the biggest car seller in the world. Do not put the Chinese down, they are copying the deceitful business practices of our biggest global multinational corporations. Volkswagen is certainly not alone. The same consultants that are advising Volkswagen are also advising all the other top multinational corporations.

Expect lots more similar revelations in the near future.

Re:tl dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Co-location? Really, funny that now that we have all this technology it takes so long. Back in the 60's it was not a problem.

As for IM, who doesn't use IM? Text, skype, ICQ (well not as much as i used to, IRC, etc... The tech is there, just they need to use it, heck I was using all of these over 10 years ago.

There may be advantages to working in china that are not monetary, but I'm fairly sure that it's not these.

Because

[sexconker]

Because the west isn't concerned about whatever the business does, the west is concerned about the business of being a business.

Everything from politics to marketing to "corporate culture" are all ancillary bullshit that has nothing to do with getting anything done, yet this bullshit mires every single western business. If you want to make and sell Product Z, but marketing is saying you can't do that because it will cannibalize Product Y or doesn't mesh with the new branding, or HR says you need to wait to get a more "diverse" pool of people working on it, or the PHBs are stifling it because they want the middle manager involved to fail so they can kick their ass out on the curb you're not going to get shit done.

Re:Because

[drooling-dog]

For the most part, corporate executives are schooled in business, not engineering. They know planning, reorganizing, finance, merging and acquiring, and (maybe) marketing. Their path to success is through doing those things. Initiatives that originate among the engineers have a long wait to see the light of day -if they ever do - because they first have to be championed by one of the aforementioned executives. That's why innovation in larger companies is done by acquiring products and technology from the outside, and usually not by developing ideas from within. The silver lining is that it creates opportunity for smaller companies that are more focused on their customers' needs and the technologies for satisfying them.

Re:Because

[turbidostato]

Quite an interesting insight.

No surprise the Slashdot crowd doesn't moderate it insigthful.

Re:Because

[RandCraw]

I hate to admit what you say seems to be true at all big corporations. At the giant pharma where I work I've seen less and less S/W innovation take place internally in the past decade. This has had two big side effects: 1) all our best computing have left, and 2) so has all the interesting work.

There's no longer any interest or even tolerance among managment for novelty or invention in-house (AKA risk). Skill development focuses on the project management side only; no tech. All IT has to be done externally, from data mining to software dev to app integration to sys admin. Nothing is done in-house anymore except invitation of external S/W vendors and external integrators and support, then monitoring their progress until the system is installed. A year-end accomplishment is check-boxed and all worker bees hum with one voice, "Booyah".

Ten years ago computing was different. May IT RIP.

Re:Because

[mvdw]

Reply to remove my incorrect modding.

no duh

[FranTaylor]

If you're in Shenzen you can take a walk and pick up all the components you need for your prototype project in the morning and assemble them in the afternoon.

Here in the US we have to order the components from china and it takes weeks to months.

Re:no duh

[MountainLogic]

If you're in Shenzhen you can take a walk and pick up all the components you need for your prototype project in the morning and assemble them in the afternoon.

The poster is more right on than the off hand language might suggest. Working with Chinese vendors has taught me that they are business people first and engineers second. Just the opposite of most US start-ups. Several times I have been chatting with a Taiwanese/mainland vendors, when I incidentally mention a design/manufacturing/supply problem only to have them say that they have a [brother|cousin|friend|associate] who can sell me a solution. While I've often found that these referrals were off the mark or just a ploy to get a commission they have taught me that in China folks do build and maintain relationships. In the US there is a whole industry of head hunters just to get resumes to HR departments because far too many US engineers fail to build those networks to keep themselves employed. Conversely, there are places where China fails miserable. Theses weak points include design innovation, marketing, prototyping and importing (importing into China - good luck getting parts/tools quickly through customs and into China). A number of times I've seen Chinese contract manufacturers ask US customers to supply partial or full prototype parts for pilot production runs because they lack the infrastructure to work in short runs nearly as fast as a US company can have made in the US. Shenzhen and Taiwan are indeed unique manufacturing clusters much as San Jose is for development and Detroit used to be for automotive. The US need to nurture and regrow our manufacturing base to remake our manufacturing clusters.

Re:no duh

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also store highly volatile chemicals together with no regards to safety and pretend to be surprised when it makes a big assed crater.

All these logistic problems, all these safety norms in the west weren't added over night, but over the course of hundreds of years, since the industrial revolution. Ignore them at your peril. Oh, wait ...

Re:no duh

[Darinbob]

Can get parts over night, if they're common enough parts.

Also, if you go from prototype to finished product in an afternoon, then something is seriously screwed up with the design review and product review.

Re:no duh

[MacTO]

You only have to live in various cities to see the impact of this. I've lived in cities where you could literally go to a neighbourhood store and have access to a decent supply of components. I have also lived in cities where you would have to go across town to get something as simple as a resistor. I'll let you guess which places had thriving environments for everything from amateur to professional hardware development, and which ones had a bunch of people talking out of their assess about what they were going to develop.

Of course China seems to take this a step further. The best Canadian cities that I've been in may provide the resources for product development or small scale production for industrial applications, but they won't get you much further.

Re:no duh

[TheGratefulNet]

here in silicon valley, we have some pretty good used surplus stores that we can run to, grab some old/quality parts and get our projects built. not high qty but for one-off POC's its great.

I've been going to halted (hsc electronics) for over 20 yrs now and I don't know what I'd do if they went out of business. sometimes I just walk the aisles in that store to get ideas. or to find some part that can be used for another project in a creative way.

china may have tons of crap-parts stores; but we have surplus stores from the days when parts lasted decades, not just months. old 'made in USA' transistors and caps and resistors and chips. stuff that you knew was not made 'to a price' but was meant to be reliable. that kind of stuff can be found here and very little of that can be found overseas in asia.

and, of course, mouser and digikey are here in the US and they are 2 of the most respected and trusted parts sources in the world. I can get next-day or 2nd-day shipments from them for reasonable rates. all their parts are real, genuine, trustable. no fake electrolytics here! and so, even though we can't stroll down china's or japan's or korea's electronics-alley areas, what we have in the US (in the bay area, at least) is, in some ways, better. we also have a great used equipment market here and since its not cost efficient to buy $10k agilent scopes and meters, we can find 5 or 10 yr (or hell, even 30 yr) old brand name test and measurement gear and it will often be enough to get the job done, plus it will continue working for many more years. the test gear from china is all throw-away. its unfixable, for the most part, and the company will abandon it in a year or two, tops. there's no staying power with china test gear; even they consider it a throw-away. and I'm sorry, you can't properly do development when your test gear has a lifetime that is in months and not years.

Re:no duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I can get anything I want overnighted. The real issue is that we have pesky little issues like UL and FCC. So, you know, our stuff is unlikely to burn down your house or fuck up all your neighbors TV's.

Re:no duh

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US there is a whole industry of head hunters just to get resumes to HR departments because far too many US engineers fail to build those networks to keep themselves employed.

To me it seems the problem would be the very HR departments? Why do you need to bypass HR to get a job - it's fucking insane.

Re:no duh

[Aighearach]

If you're in Shenzen you can take a walk and pick up all the components you need for your prototype project in the morning and assemble them in the afternoon.

Here in the US we have to order the components from china and it takes weeks to months.

Close, I mean, I order the parts from Texas, where the wholesaler keeps them in a warehouse and manages the "from China" part of that process. So if I don't want to increase shipping costs, it is a 4-5 shipping days wait for parts. It encourages a more design-intensive process. If there were better local parts markets, I could be more prototype-intensive.

Re:no duh

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be true for manufacturing, but is completely wrong for prototype work. If you need electronic parts, you call up a vendor and they overnight samples. You need an aluminum housing, you go to the machine shop across town. Same story for plastics. Same story for circuit boards. Frankly, if you are making heavy use of expedited services, there is something wrong with your engineering process.

Re:no duh

[FryingLizard]

Alternatively, you just acquire yourself a decent collection of parts (from china via ebay) and there's practically no delay when building a proof of concept device. For well under a hundred bucks you can get sets of _every_ standard resistor and capacitor in 04-, 06-, 08- and thru-hole. Basically the components are so cheap you can have at least two* of everything you might reasonably need. Sure, there's often some specific chip or other you need, so digikey works great for that.

* Pro tip - never EVER buy one of something unless it's seriously expensive. Two is the bare minimum if you value your time and sanity (when debugging you have spares so you can swap-and-test parts, or if you simply fat-finger your board and blow something up).

Nowadays I find when I take on a project (I do hw+sw dev) literally the first thing I do is spend a couple of hours and a couple of hundred bucks (tops) on ebay buying a fairly wide variety of components/modules that are candidates for what I think I'll need. They trickle through my mailbox over the next couple of weeks and any surplus just goes to enhance my stash of components. The dollar cost of unused parts is negligible, and it's great for when I get crazy ideas for Burning Man projects :-)

The answer

[Anonymous Coward]

In the West, hardware is designed - it's a creative process.

China just copies what's done in the West.

Re:The answer

[FranTaylor]

China just copies what's done in the West.

They didn't copy the part where they massively reduced their manufacturing costs, they figured that part out on their own.

Re: The answer

[morenog.jorge]

Actually they did if u do researcher u can see china send ppl to Mexico and copy the way we manufacture ofc they change some things to adapt it to their own needs but they did copy that from highly manufacturing competitive places like Juarez in Mexico

Re: The answer

[morenog.jorge]

Actually if u do research u can find that they copy that too and we let them sigh.... In the 90s china started to send ppl to highly competitive manufacturing places in Mexico like Juarez. They learned how we did that and took it back to their own country

Re:The answer

[Darinbob]

But that was not an engineering problem that was solved. That was a manufacturing and management problem.

This isn't a post.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know nobody RTFAs, but there's not even a TFA to ignore here.

Re:This isn't a post.

[tepples]

The featured article is behind the "Show Transcript" link.

Re:This isn't a post.

[Anonymous Coward]

That link didn't exist yet when I posted my complaint.

Only an idiot exports their manufacturing base

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a thriving ecosystem of all the companies needed to make something is critical. This is why only the most short sighted of idiots would allow their manufacturing base to large be exported. Once gone, it's hard to re-create. This is why "on shoring" is easier said than done.

Re: Only an idiot exports their manufacturing base

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank corporate America for that one. Note we're going to invade Cuba for cheap labor.

Re: Only an idiot exports their manufacturing base

[Anonymous Coward]

no, the government wanted to make use of the massive ambassador's residence that FDR built so various officials don't have to fly so far to go to a cushy tropical location.

Faster? BECAUSE THEY DON'T RUCKING TEST IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I write a popular(at the moment, probably going to be buggered) OBD app.

My chief complaints against the app are when chinese OBD adapers fuck up.

So from someone who has to deal with this crap, yes, they're quick, they're cheap, and you can get a reliable one, but that last part is a lottery :-(

(and of course people blame the app not the adpater when it works on a VW, but not a Ford (due to different signalling methods using different parts of the PCB).

China is great, it really is, but the culture is a bit cutthroat in terms of hardware. The people are good, but aren't inhibited by trying to get infront. If only they would think of the quality they'd be fucking sorted.

Re:Faster? BECAUSE THEY DON'T RUCKING TEST IT!

[FranTaylor]

due to different signalling methods using different parts of the PCB

blaming the chinese for bugs in your own code is pretty childish

Funny I was intrigued by WeChat

[Timmy D Programmer]

So I googled WeChat, as it sounds like a great tool... and it tops today's headlines about malware in it: http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...

Re:Funny I was intrigued by WeChat

[Anonymous Coward]

BBM has all that stuff and it's MUCH better.

Re:Funny I was intrigued by WeChat

[CrashNBrn]

On its official WeChat blog, Tencent said the security issue affected an older version of its app - WeChat 6.2.5 - and that newer versions were not affected.

It added that an initial investigation showed that no data theft or leakage of user information had occurred.

Re: Funny I was intrigued by WeChat

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and trump has a wall to sell Mexico

Slashvertisement

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a long advert for WeeChat rather than anything else.

weak trademark / patent / copyright laws there

[Anonymous Coward]

weak trademark / patent / copyright laws there.

In china it's easy to pay some one off and don't have to deal with trademarks / patents / copyrights / etc.

Re:weak trademark / patent / copyright laws there

[Anonymous Coward]

Also weak quality.
Just about every item I ever purchased that didn't last long had a "made in China" tag.
Build it fast, make it cheap but it's still just garbage.

Re:Faster? BECAUSE THEY DON'T RUCKING TEST IT!

[g0tai]

Not bugs - if their adapters start sending random crap over CANBUS, what can I do?

If their adapter dont work ok J1850-PWM (what fords use for the diagnostic bus) what can I do? people instinctively blame the app, rate it bad or (in the best case where I can reply) send an email.

The hardware they copy is buggy, it's well known (ok you may have to search a bit for 'clone ELM237 buggy J1850' etc, but you'll get there if you dig)

The software has been made to work with the buggy adapters, but there's only so much you can do. If you send '0100' and the adpater goes '0102' to the ECU, wtf can I do?! :)

Re: Only an idiot exports their manufacturing bas

[morenog.jorge]

maybe this time u will succeed unlike Bay of pigs xD invasion sponsored by the CIA

Slaves

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Why Hardware Development Takes Longer in the West Than in China

Slaves. Lock someone with a top-1% mind in a shop and tell them their family will starve unless they churn out usable designs 100 hours a week and they will easily outcompete 1000 "makers" dinking around with LEDs and breadboards at a little "faire."

Colocation exists in the west too

[Anonymous Coward]

The article makes it appear that colocation is exclusive to China -- It's not.

China's cheap labor and lack of environmental regulations attracted a lot of manufacturers to their country. This gives them a huge advantage in the consumer electronics market since each piece of the supply chain are in close proximity to each other. The lack of regulations in China also allows them to reach the manufacturing scale to meet consumer demand.

Colocation exists in the US and have for quite some time. Toyota introduced it to the US in the late 70's and called it "Just In Time Manufacturing". By the end of the 1980's most large manufacturers adopted a form of JITM (sometimes called On Demand Inventory). There are industrial parks (large and small) located throughout the US as well as research parks. Silicon Valley used to be (and some will argue that it still is) the place to R&D a high tech idea and prepare it for large scale deployment or manufacturing.

This is article is a propaganda piece.

Colocation

[gringer]

Why does this video spend 5 minutes saying fluff, when it could have been explained in a single word, "colocation". In fact, this was used in the first 20 seconds.

Re:Colocation

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you would have missed the WeChat ad.

...and that's not the end of the problem...

[roman_mir]

I say if you lose your manufacturing you lose your education and the economy.

But the reason why the manufacturing was lost in the first place is the government manipulating the money supply, interest rates, business and labour and creating a giant welfare/military state.

China manufactures, thus is has the real economy. USA prints money, borrows, taxes and has no real economy.

A month ago or so, China decoupled from the US dollar, the idiots see it as something China is doing to 'devalue' its currency. The reality is that once the dollar bubble pops, the Chinese will not be forced to maintain the artificial peg an Yuan will skyrocket compared to the USD.

This was a long road, the Chinese gained when the Americans defaulted on the gold dollar back in 1971. Chinese gained when the Americans were spending more and more on unsustainable military and welfare state. Chinese put up with USA was maintaining its artificial 0% interest peg for a while, but Chinese don't want to put up with this any longer, they want an actually strong currency, currency that is not forced to inflate every time the Fed starts yet another round of QE (and QE4 is coming).

The value of money and the economy and manufacturing and education and standard of living are very much linked into one system and they cannot be artificially manipulated forever.

Re:...and that's not the end of the problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amongst all your redundant links you forgot to include a link to your Lord and Savior preaching The One True Message. He would be disappointed in you, roman.

Re:Faster? BECAUSE THEY DON'T RUCKING TEST IT!

[drinkypoo]

Ugh, I have one of those ELM327 mini adapters, it is wholly worthless. It has never managed to talk to anything I've ever connected to. I have a USB to serial ELM327 as well, which has talked to everything I've ever connected it to, but it's impractical for many purposes.

Any suggestions on bluetooth OBD-II dongles? I need CAN and K-Line and I want Ford, Chevy, and VW to work.

Chinese do not procrastinate like Americans do

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327741&

Advantage China

[Anonymous Coward]

No pesky royalties or IP conflicts.

Three weeks to ship something?

[darthsilun]

Ever heard of FedEx?

Using IM? Fire the dinosaurs that won't use modern communication methods. I'm 55 and I use IM, twitter, etc. Some of my 30-something and 40-something colleagues don't though. They're really annoying.

Or the colleague who sits two cubes over and only uses IM to ask me questions. If my IM window is covered up it might take me 15 minutes to see it and respond. Or he could turn around and ask me and get the answer immediately.

Without pliancy, those couldn't exist.

[sethstorm]

The only reason China survives is through the pliancy of its labor.

It shows, to China's detriment.

[sethstorm]

In the case of the US, one ends up with a well-designed product.
In the case of China, one ends up with a mish-mash of parts.

The latter might be "quicker", but it also breaks quicker.