Must be the industry's week to dump....

[bbussey]

I think in the next 5 years what ever advantage you have going to china may dry up.  I know some folks are looking for Vietnam and other less developed countries to do production, but the down time and the cost to bring a new mfg on line is costly.  With the advent of Micro Work these days I think it would be possible to almost do what Priesler and a few other German companies did to make in country assembly and decorating cost effective.  I know a few of them set up networks of housewives in the local community and had their asembly and painting work done at a fair price.  With the Micro Work networks going up it's possible have some of the hand work done locally.  We do some of that here and it works great...everyone wins.  I know your tooling cannot be moved out of China, but there are options for doing the rest of the production here.  Heck, give the amount of discourse on Railwire, you could probably hire the lot to do assembly...they seem to have plenty of time on their hands 

We'll be announcing some "Made in America" items in the next few months, some of them collaborative efforts of which you are well aware.

But until American workers are willing to put little grab irons on roofwalks and glue the roofwalks to the body (rather than have non-prototypical tabs and clips to hold them in place), production of highly-detailed mass-market RTR items isn't moving back to the States.

[sizemore]

Funny!

Joe
MTL

Joe,
It bugs me that MT is given such a bad-rep. I like MT cars and dont nit-pick 'em, I wish to model a railroad not individual cars. Just keep doing what you do, I appreciate it.

The S.

[sizemore]

I said on the A-Board and I'llsay it here. B**** and complain all you want about MTL, but you can count on product every month at a pretty stable price. The ones that work with China........................................?........................................?. Except for Atlas and IMR have some consistency but the rest................................................?.......................................?

I wasn't complaining about MTL. My point is that MTL is made in America, reasonably priced but people don't appreciate those facts; they deliver month to month and produce reasonably correct models.

To produce something 100% fidelity to prototype and the level of detail expected you have to look elsewhere where labor is cheap to produce the detail and fidelity expected by the ever encroaching rivet counting standard.

The S.

[bbussey]

I think in the next 5 years what ever advantage you have going to china may dry up...

Forgot to address this point.

The huge cost advantage gap may close, but I don't see it getting to the point where it will be cheaper to cut the tooling and manufacture the product in the States anytime soon.  Certainly not before I retire.  And even if the aggregate cost of manufacturing in China and the States evens out, the level of detail and the quality of manufacture remain an issue, as the tooling detail and finishing quality of the Chinese-made products are superior.  For example - there is no way anytime soon that an American-made model as sophisticated and well-finished as the recently-released WOT Piggy Packer would have an MSRP under $100.  So on the trainset-type quality models, perhaps.  But on the high-end quality models, not in this decade.

[ljudice]

Bryan, we expect some 52 foot gons from you before you start talking about retiring!

[MVW]

Joe,
It bugs me that MT is given such a bad-rep. I like MT cars and dont nit-pick 'em, I wish to model a railroad not individual cars. Just keep doing what you do, I appreciate it.

The S.

What he said.

Jim

[JSL]

  Where are my green Procors

[MrKLUKE]

.

[JoeD]

I know we can do as well or better on detail...cost to hand assemble would be prohibitive at the moment, but we have the skills in this country to match anything coming out of China...Japan...that's another story possibly.   What we lack is the slavish labor they have in China to assemble... One of the things I learned early on with my dealings with product development in China is that once you consider the delays, the constant changes and tweeking that goes on, the time to communicate and get things in each other's hands plus the overhead, overages and the 5%  (I probably have 50-k in Maxon motors at SDK that were part of the overages demanded up front that I will never see) scrap requirements on delivered subcontracted goods, shipping, delays in shipping and quarintines, sending stuff back cause it doesn't work creating two and three month delays on getting product you can sell ... That heafty profit starts to erode.    I did a lot of this kind of work when I was in the Toy Business and with Disney, and other than pocket goods and high end electronics, you could make a case for some on shore production.  We did it a number of times and frankly the extra buck it cost us to do it here was nothing compared to the savings in time and personal resources.  It was daunting....everything. 

My point with the advent of micro employment is that the costly part of the finishing process...assembly could be moved here once you had some sort of reliable base to part things out to.  I think we can make anything work here on shore, we just need to change the way we do this stuff I guess.  I've never been a fan of sending our work off shore, but economics of the time dictated the course we took.   Now, we are looking at what the two year delay caused by SDK sand bagging us on our SD-40's cost us in projected sales, coupled with loosing yet another year looking for a new factory when they tossed us out...I know what the sales for that item over three years would have netted us...You don't make that up with an extra box car every month...

As too tooling costs, I checked into some of the Proto Manufacturing companies that specialize in doing low production runs in steel tooling here in the states.  Frankly the cost was pretty reasonable...and given all the crap you have to crawl through to work off shore...it looked pretty good actually.  Your right, we may never have the ability to do assembly at the rates you get in China...but I keep looking for ways to get the heck out of there anyway.

Joe

Forgot to address this point.

The huge cost advantage gap may close, but I don't see it getting to the point where it will be cheaper to cut the tooling and manufacture the product in the States anytime soon.  Certainly not before I retire.  And even if the aggregate cost of manufacturing in China and the States evens out, the level of detail and the quality of manufacture remain an issue, as the tooling detail and finishing quality of the Chinese-made products are superior.  For example - there is no way anytime soon that an American-made model as sophisticated and well-finished as the recently-released WOT Piggy Packer would have an MSRP under $100.  So on the trainset-type quality models, perhaps.  But on the high-end quality models, not in this decade.

[bbussey]

I think China can do anything Japan can do as far as tooling is concerned.  They've had no trouble tooling anything I give them, and I haven't encountered any delays that were different from delays I encountered on work done in the States.  I've had better adherence to schedule on my products manufactured in China than I did prior on my products manufactured in the States, and the finishing quality is better as well.  I have no doubt that the same level of quality is possible in the States, but I haven't seen it achieved on a consistent basis.

I'll admit that I don't have to deal with the issues regarding motive power models.  But I've had OEM components with origins from various locations around the planet be delivered to my main contractor, including multiple suppliers in China, and I've never had a problem.  My coupler box screws for both the XIH and X58 for example were custom made in China to my specs for far less than anywhere else on the planet (I sourced a number of places in the States and elsewhere), and manufactured on schedule and delivered to my main contractor without incident.  Yes, the costs are climbing, which affects MSRP.  But even if I could find a contractor in the States that could consistently produce product at the level I've established, there's no way the cost would be less.

It would be great to have everything done here in the States.  But I've had a domestic contractor drop my business with no advanced notice which forced me to scramble, so the SDK scenario is not unique to foreign contractors.  It happens here as well.  Ironically, it led me to China where the product was manufactured for less cost and had better quality than what I was getting here in the States. 

[SkipGear]

I think the problem lies in SDK/Kader more than anything. It looks like they have decided to take care of their home brands (Bachmann, Farish, Williams, etc) and stop working for others, although I believe Lionel still contracts with them and their catalog this year is pretty well stocked with very nice new products that mirror a lot of recent HO and N releases.. (B&O EM-1, C&O H4, Berkshire, PS-1 boxes, PS2 covered hopper, offset 2 bays, etc. etc. ) You have to wonder if the R&D was shared between lines.

Atlas appears to have their problems solved at the moment. Their price points seem to be coming down instead of climbing since finally getting a new supplier lined up. The down time with track is going to be the only drawback as they move tooling away from SDK/Kader. It obviously can be done, just not working with the old guard. New sources must be looked at for these companies to compete.

[packers#1]

As I've said before - when iPhones and iPads are caught in this mess, watch out!

Delays just mean more time and money for track and layout construction!

Then the world of every 30-something and twenty-something will end...except those who go DROID  or heck, maybe they're caught up in it too

[wm3798]

Gee, the Taliban and all those other clowns should stop kicking sand in each others faces and learn how to assemble boxcars!

I bet Burmah (or Myanmar, or whatever it is this week) will be in the scopes of manufacturers, too.  Yay capitalism!  Chase that cheap labor!!

Lee

[Blazeman]

JTT has trees assembled in Vietnam

[Alwyn Cutmore]

Hey Joe,

Go get them tiger. I sure congratulate MTL for their tenacity in manufacturing in the US. I also ask the modeller what they want for their buck. Not much better out there than the MTL heavyweight coaches.

Well done.

Regards

Al