Manufacturing in the US

[dutch508]

Mary in S. Carolina (1,345 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216460519

Manufacturing in the US
Last edited Wed Mar 9, 2022, 10:29 AM - Edit history (1)

There are plenty of empty buildings,. I should have said we have plenty of room and technology so why can't we start manufacturing phones, etc on a small scale via crowd funding (investor owned)? Why are we always relying on Corporate America to transfer their manufacturing operations from a foreign country? Why can't we be Corporate America, start small and build from there.

Yes, I get the "competitive edge" of cheap labor. However, it appears those benefitting from the cheap labor are the Oligarchs not "we the people".

 

Bernardo de La Paz (40,924 posts)

1. Anyone who asks "can we start manufacturing phones, etc on a small scale via crowd funding"


... has no idea of the scale of manufacturing that is required to make sophisticated high tech products, and the integrated supply chains involved. I'm not an expert of any kind in that area, but I know it is not from a lack of buildings that it is not being done.

Sure, a crowd funded startup could make a phone three times as heavy as an iPhone and with much less reliability and with no integration into the Apple network / app store. And a price tag twice as high. Sure, within a few years a smart small company could get all of those negatives substantially reduced ... by using supply chains largely rooted in other places, like Apple does.

In any case there are lots of competitors, sophisticated industrial giants, producing phones.

There's a lot more to making phones than repurposing empty buildings. Buildings are the least of worries for smart phone manufacturers.

Mary in S. Carolina (1,345 posts)

4. Another Defeatist

We are America, making a phone is not brain surgery.

 

dumbcat (2,013 posts)

15. Do you know how to do either?

They are building a couple of new electronics manufacturing plants near Austin. It takes years and billions of $$$$. One of the biggest problems is bringing in water for the manufacturing plant for the fabrication processes from a hundred miles away. And dealing with the toxic chemical waste from semiconductor manufacturing. Are your "crowd funders" ready to deal with those issues for their re=purposed buildings.

The sentiment is admirable, but reality is real (and expensive.)

Bernardo de La Paz (40,924 posts)

21. Brain surgery takes a team of 10 & back staff of 10 for recovery.


Making smart phones takes team of hundreds before even one phone is built.

You are right. It's not brain surgery.

DetroitLegalBeagle (1,050 posts)

2. A factory can't just start cranking out high tech devices like phones overnight

It would take years to setup and doing it small scale would not be remotely profitable. No profit means no one is going to do it. The manufacturing processes for stuff like that is very complex and takes years to spin up from scratch.

Mary in S. Carolina (1,345 posts)

5. Another Defeatist

This is America, making a phone is not brain surgery.

I think this DUmpmonkie would give Stalin a run for his money on the cray-cray...

Amishman (4,353 posts)

26. its actually much harder than brain surgery

semiconductor manufacturing requires more complex facilities, ultra specialized equipment, and even rarer skill sets.

There are good reasons it takes years and billions of dollars to set up a new chip manufacturing facility.

If you are simply talking assembly of finished phones from components manufactured elsewhere, then you would run into a different set of challenges. One is availability of components, another is economies of scale, and the last is competition/cost. An 'assembly' type manufacturing facility would need subsidies to prop it up in perpetuity.

Not saying these are insurmountable, but manufacturing today is far different and more specialized than it was even 20 years ago.

Star Member 48656c6c6f20 (6,844 posts)

10. No. Today we look at problems and say

That's too hard. We used to say, let's get this going. The spirit is dead. It's safer to say, we can't do it.

Star Member MiHale (6,405 posts)

74. Hmm...empty buildings...let's see what we can do...

Manufacturing phones, why? There are more than enough phone manufacturers. Insanely expensive to start, supply line problems with chips, etc., you heard all the arguments.

I my experience as an entrepreneur 2 companies that ran for over 20 years each and profitable throughout, this is when you start working to explore other options. More intelligent entrepreneurs than I am have told me this is when you also employ the K.I.S.S. principle, keep it simple stupid.

You’re starting the endeavor…what are your strengths, your weaknesses, your knowledge of your product. How are you going to market your product? You know about the empty buildings would any need to be retrofitted for your company to run efficiently? What is the size of your intended market? Do you need employees, how many? Would they need special training for your product?

About 4 years ago a group of my fellow business owners and I were discussing those very questions. We were thinking of starting a vertical farming operation. Most of the buildings we were considering were tall commercial buildings with plenty of windows. It would be a hydroponic based farm so contaminated water was a concern. I’m not going to get all into it but the idea did not come to fruition.

So in ending there are other products you can bring to market…it just takes a little hard work on your part to figure out your desires.

 

Star Member MiHale (6,405 posts)

79. I'm in the process of my next endeavor...

RETIREMENT . Discovering the joys of Cannabis and vegetable gardening. Snowshoe hiking in winter regular hiking and kayaking spring, summer, fall, rediscovering the happiness I find while cooking and generally keeping my dear sweet wife happy and smiling.

Work is highly overrated.

 

Star Member hunter (34,744 posts)

27. Why should I care where stuff is made?

Mostly I care about HOW stuff is made.

Is the work dangerous? Are the workers treated well? Do they get paid a comfortable living wage? How much damage is done to the natural environment? Etc.

We are all one people sharing one planet.

I judge nations by the general health and happiness of their people.

If I was Emperor of the Earth I'd pay people to experiment with lifestyles that have very small environmental footprints and I'd judge the success of those experiments in terms of happiness, not any sort of "productivity" beyond what it takes to live a comfortable life.

Maybe we'd discover that cell phones don't really make people happy and we wouldn't have to manufacture so many of them, especially the sort that only last a few years.

Things like cars and cell phones do not make me happy. I don't have any influence over those industries. I bought a new car once back in the 'eighties. It's not likely I'll ever do that again. I'm a pretty good mechanic so I can afford to drive $1,000 cars. I still use a flip phone. It's my third. The first two were made obsolete by the cell phone companies as they upgraded from 2G to 3G to 4G LTE. As a consumer I didn't have much choice in the matter. This is the flip phone we've got, take it or leave it.

Economic productivity as we now define it isn't any sort of productivity at all. It is, in fact, a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the natural environment and our own human spirit.

The sorts of manufacturing that matter most to me are things like indoor plumbing, safe tap water, reliable electricity supplies, sewage treatment plants, birth control, and healthy food. Every 21st century human deserves those. Nations that can't provide those services to all are broken, usually because their political ideologies and religions are crap.

 

Star Member MineralMan (142,233 posts)

34. An empty building is not a manufacturing facility.

If you started today to set up a facility to manufacture phones or other technological products, you would still be working on setting it up a year from now, or even longer. To manufacture phones or laptops or anything of the sort, you need specialized equipment that is not available off the shelf from anyone.

Manufacturing is not a matter of setting up some work tables and getting started next week.

Mary in S. Carolina (1,345 posts)

38. You win MineralMan

We should not manufacture phones in America because it is too hard. I should have said we have plenty of room and technology to make our own phones. I will correct my original post to take out 'empty buildings'.

 

Star Member Johnny2X2X (12,591 posts)

54. We shouldn't want to manufacture phones in the US

Economies of scale have delivered high tech devices for relatively cheap prices to enrich the lives of Americans. We should not have an economy that strives to bring manufacturing back, we should strive to develop an educated work force that can meet the demands of a high tech service driven market.

The answer isn't bringing back cheap labor industries, the answer is giving American workers the skills they need to thrive in the current and future environment. So we've got engineering firms developing apps to run on these phones, working on networks to make these phones run better, and researching new technology to go into these phones. That's where our workers need to be, and we've only been telling people that for darned near 50 years.

The days of placing a part of a board 8 hours a day in the US are gone, as they should be.

 

Star Member exboyfil (16,394 posts)

59. What about those who are on the left half of the bell curve

He takes a lot of smarts and determination to become an engineer. I have watched many even dedicated individuals wash out during the process (then went on to get business degrees).

I admit we are not pipelining enough US citizens into STEM fields, but not everyone is suited for it either.

Star Member Johnny2X2X (12,591 posts)

62. There will always be low skilled jobs

But we aren't coming close to meeting the market's demand for engineers and technical workers. Our schools are failing us, there aren't enough of the types of skilled workers our economy needs coming out of our schools. Let's start meeting this demand, it will grow the economy for low shilled workers too.

US firms are farming out engineering work to India and Mexico, not because they want cheap labor, but because there simply isn't the manpower to do the engineering work here in the US.

We can start by making college more affordable. But we also have to invest in primary and secondary education programs that push kids into math and science. There are millions of kids out there with the aptitude to become engineers that just aren't being given the chance.

I was a child of the 70s and 80s, all I ever heard was that to live a middle class lifestyle in the future I would need a degree. Over and over again it was drilled into my head. And low and behold, here we are in 2022 and you mostly need a good degree to live the middle class lifestyle our parents did.

[SVPete]

That thread is jaw-droppingly amazing. Mary in S. Carolina is insanely clue-free, multiple DU-folk are trying to help her see it, and she doubles and triples and ... dectuples down until she finally Plays the Gender card, and not successfully.

She claims to be a "rich" successful "entrepreneur", yet she exposes herself as a liar by minimizing the intricacy and difficulty of what she proposes. I doubt she could manage to set up a factory to "simply" fabricate the controlled-impedance multilayer printed circuit boards for a cell phone. Not do the layout, not manufacture the completed printed wiring assemblies, just produce the printed circuit boards.

Bernardo de La Paz "gets it" for the most part, but it probably takes thousands or tens of thousands to design the processor, create the OS, design the chipset to support the processor, lay out the PCB(s), do the mechanical design, and choose components from resistors to small to see without a magnifier through the display. Mary in S. Carolina is so insanely clue-free that she probably thinks an iPhone ## or Galaxy ## is only a little more complex than a 1970s wall or desk phone.

[SVPete]

Using Huxley's hierarchy, Mary in S. Carolina proves herself be be a Zeta, at the highest, and maybe an Eta or Theta.

[Zathras]

So can we change the name of Democratic Underground to Epsilon Underground?

[Dblhaul]

DUmies are the stupidest of people.

[BamaMoose]

She doubled down with a new thread:

Mary in S. Carolina (1,364 posts)

How many entrepreneurs out

there that think we can bring phone manufacturing back to the US, even starting on a small scale. I would like to hear from only entrepreneurs. 

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216461088

And got schooled yet again on how starting a technologically challenging manufacturing process wasn't a quick and simple thing.  But she again kept talking about how rich and successful and smart she was and if you disagreed you were a jealous misogynist.  Didn't go well for her:

About Mary in S. Carolina

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Last post: Wed Mar 9, 2022, 10:13 PM

Got banned for being an obnoxious, ignorant asshole.  I hope, the day I get banned from I here, I choose a better hill to die on.

[67 Rover]

Why do I get the feeling Mary in S. Carolina would have difficulty setting up a manufacturing facility just putting heads on Barbie dolls ?

How about you learn to code Mary. 

[DefiantSix]

So can we change the name of Democratic Underground to Epsilon Underground?

Difficult, since getting menial labor out of any DUmmy - the smarterest of all of us, doncha know  - is nigh on impossible.

[Old n Grumpy]

It CAN be done!! Here is the dummy first model.


And the soon to be announced  new and improved version.


 

[Old n Grumpy]

The dummies don't even consider the red tape involved  for permitting and the problems finding a qualified work force.

[USA4ME]

BamaMoose

Got banned for being an obnoxious, ignorant asshole.  I hope, the day I get banned from I here, I choose a better hill to die on.

The primitives are all rich, successful, smart, and good looking.

Until we look up their real life profile and see their pictures, then it becomes obvious they’re none of those.

.

[SVPete]

I've been in Apple's multi-building Infinite Loop campus (on De Anza Blvd.) and while I've not been in their newer "Spaceship" HQ campus, I remember the multitude of HP buildings it replaced. The City of Cupertino is nicknamed "Appletino" because of the amazing number of industrial buildings in Cupertino occupied by various pieces of Apple operations. Creating and building iPhones would take vastly more than one empty industrial building. I'm no Deciduous Fruit Computer Company fanboy, just illustrating the magnitude of Mary in S. Carolina's Clue-Free ignorance.

[jukin]

Yes, I get the "competitive edge" of cheap labor. However, it appears those benefitting from the cheap labor are the Oligarchs not "we the people".

It ain't cheap labor or taxes so much as THE OVERBURDEN OF BUREAUCRATIC REGULATIONS AND THEIR ASSOCIATED COST.

[DefiantSix]

I'm no Deciduous Fruit Computer Company fanboy, just illustrating the magnitude of Mary in S. Carolina's Clue-Free ignorance.

S/h/it's a DUmp Monkey (or at least she WAS, until she opened her soup cooler and disturbed the rest of the freeloaders). By default, not one of that mass of imbeciles could get a clue if they were to strip themselves nekkid, smear themselves from head to toe in clue musk and do the clue mating dance in the midst of a secluded mountain meadow full of horny clues at the peak of clue mating season.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

When does Mary open her first factory?