It's likely that the chargers that were tested and the chargers that actually ended up shipping are quite different inside.
This seems to be a constant battle when going the Chinese route. You have to cut open a few from every shipment and check to see if inferior components have been subbed in since last time.
At a place I worked a few years ago we had to individually retest every single unit of our products. This involved opening up packaging and repacking and reshrinkwrapping afterwards. In between unpacking and repacking there was testing and finding about 1/3 of them always had problems. Some boards could be fixed by diagnosing to the component level, replacing components and even resoldering incorrectly wired interboard connects. This work was done by asian immigrants of uncertain immigration status. This rework quadrupled the cost of the products but somehow it was still cheaper than just manufacturing locally to begin with, something like the exact same product was costing $20 per unit from asia, but $200 per unit to build in the US. Apparently the big cost difference was due to the effect of environmental laws regarding not being able to dump toxic waste in a river in the US.
This type of testing sounds like a huge pain, but makes a big difference for customer satisfaction to the point where a company can differentiate themselves by doing it.
A company called Yongnuo makes some fantastic speedlights (photographic flashes), which are inexpensive alternatives to the fully-automatic Canon/Nikon standards for strobist photogs. Think $40 instead of $400.
The trade-off is that many of them arrive defective, they are known for not having good QA. There are sellers on ebay who make it a point to test every one before shipping. Guess who I chose to buy mine from? Not a bad way to make a profit and stand out on an otherwise low-margin item.
Yes, if the customers are doing hardware testing it's a disaster for satisfaction, and you also have the cost of repair and shipping and recalls. It's very interesting trade off wise. When I worked in the semiconductor industry, there was a fail rate of something like 35% of chips cut from the wafer. Depending on the complexity and size of the chip relative to the wafer, that rate could go up to 90%, or down to 10%. This is because of things outside of human ability to control, microscopic defects in the substrate for example, or a single dust particle that got into the clean room. These were tested on the full sized wafer and marked with dots and then after cutting the ones with dots are tossed out. Needless to say, it is utterly crucial that significant parts of the chip design must be solely for the purpose of being able to completely test functionality on-chip. This results then in 100% functioning of things that went out the door. I've never even seen a CPU that went to a customer that had a known defect at that stage, so the step of tossing away a large number is just part of manufacturing. However in the case of manufacturing boards overseas, it is definitely possible to increase field significantly. The units were just as testable over there as they are here in the US, without the trouble of unpacking and repacking the retail boxes. But for whatever reason reform of the foreign manufacturing plant simply was not happening and not something they were interested in, and management apparently felt that the trade offs involved made sense, including all the extra rework and testing.
One thought that has occurred to me though is that Apple is using much more poor quality manufacturing than they were years ago, and there is a high failure rate of Apple laptops. However, they have a warranty that covers fixing everything for 1 year and everyone sane knows to buy the extended 3 year since there's something like a 1 in 4 chance you'll need it. So Apple has figured that they save enough making it in China that they can absorb the cost of fixing 25% of the ones where the customer bought AppleCare. These repairs are usually replacing the whole motherboard with spares that they buy in vast quantities for each and every model. This is all done very intentionally for sound economic reasons and customer satisfaction is very high despite the failures.
Yes, that is basically correct, although the difference in cost wasn't all environmental obviously, there was also the advantage of using a labor pool with few rights compared to the US, poor health care, and other factors.
On top of unit costs there is cost to stock in store, cost of the store's profit, etc. Let me ask you this, would you be willing to pay $10,000 for a computer Made in USA? Is the computer you are working on right now Made in USA, or are some components from China?
That's the answer right there. We can pay $1000 for a Chinese made laptop or $10,000 for an entirely USA made one top to bottom. What market is there for the eco and labor friendly USA one, and what is the chance that a company selling these would stay in business for even 6 months? Is the chance greater than 0%?
I don't think a vendor could convince me they didn't merely mark up a $1000 slave labor computer. In Collapse, Diamond wrote about sham "sustainable forestry" certifications from that self-regulated industry; I can't believe that wouldn't happen here as well. Even with orders of magnitude more money involved, Wall St. couldn't find honest appraisers, so what chance do we have?
It wouldn't be self-regulated; there are already laws about declaration of origin on products. The "Made in China" stickers on devices aren't there because the manufacturer is giving the vendor a discount for advertising the Chinese origin. They're there because customs can seize and destroy mislabeled products.
Yep, I know. I wonder what would the global income equality be like if it cost the same to make a component in China as in the USA? Would it really be 10x the cost?
That's not (just) for making a buck.
You bring value to your customers.
In the current system if you are more environmental friendly than your competitors you will go out of business (the comments here talk about 10x the costs). I'm not saying this is ALWAYS true, but as a general rule. The system makes environmental consumer-based businesses non-sustainable.
The system causes such businesses to be unsustainable.
Now, what is 'The system'?
The easy (but probably wrong) answer would be how western import taxes don't have enough environmental/ethical component in them.
You are correct that the system is not what is best for the world, however we do not have tariff regulations that would temper the effects of exporting pollution and human misery, and corporate interests control legislation to this effect through lobbyists and bribes. Right now, if you work, the company you work for is destroying the environment. Even Greenpeace and PeTA use computer components made in China, and drive cars that use oil paid for with human misery in authoritarian and failed states. To have a job or a computer at all you become part of the system. There is the option of going completely off grid and being self sufficient in an Adobe house in Mexico, or a cabin in Alaska, but few choose this path.
Exactly, and then it flows down the rivers into the Pacific ocean and swirls around to the US or sinks and poisons the fish that are caught and sold to US. Hm.
(For those dislike any and all criticism of, well, China, a possible solution would be to require that trade partners implement and enforce similar levels of environmental regulations on manufacturing so that international trade is not just "exporting pollution". This is not simple though because China has a habit of fake-certifying things (for example much Chinese-grown "organic" food is organic in certification alone). So to work in reality and not theory, this would involve non-Chinese inspectors throughout the country with full access to inspect things, which would probably not be acceptable to Chinese State officials. In reality, things will continue as they have been going until the oceans can no longer support life, followed by massive extinctions of other animals such as humans and all other species whose ecochains have links relying on healthy ocean functioning to live.)
> a possible solution would be to require that trade partners implement and enforce similar levels of environmental regulations on manufacturing so that international trade is not just "exporting pollution".
I'd love that, but you do realize that it would stop 'outsourcing' pretty much dead in its tracks. (not a bad thing by itself).
This will also immediately be reflected in the sticker price of the goods.
As someone working on a hardware startup I feel like I can only create a competitive price by sourcing and assembling overseas, and yet it seems like once you do that every turn is fraught with peril and counterfeit.
It would be awesome to hear more advice or stories, if you have them.
As for me, counterfeit capacitors have no doubt shortened my life by a few years. Hardware is stinking hard. I have mad respect for anyone who sets foot in this domain. Here be dragons.
This is par for the course. I have friends who have had to manage manufacturing processes in China. You have to be very specific, to the point of utter paranoia, in the instructions that you provide. Wherever, and I mean absolutely wherever a corner can be cut, it will be cut at this level.
One friend had to get rubber household cleaning gloves made in China. He worked for a retailer and this would be for their store brand. If they specified something to be done, it would be done exactly the way they wanted. If something was unspecified, you could bet that the cheapest, shoddiest, most dangerous materials/processes would be used. For example, he never specified that the rubber used should actually be safe to be worn by humans. Prototypes came back with obscene levels of toxins in a glove that is meant to protect people from getting their hands dirty with household cleaning chemicals. There was just no common sense to fill in the blanks in the instructions here. Once they sorted out this issue, as another commenter mentioned, they would have to check each and every shipment because the manufacturer would try to sneak cheaper variants into the batches. Eventually my friend went and inspected the factory on a business trip only to find so many ethically questionable practices that he eventually decided to switch to another job.
If you choose to go the overseas route, I'd suggest that you find a consultant who has experience here. It will be well worth it. They'll be familiar with all the games that are played and will save you money.
As a westerner enjoying the luxuries of a western lifestyle, obviously I'd urge you to try to source/assemble locally. Cheap labour practices aside (i.e. I understand the argument that folks on that side of the world need work too and are willing to put up with cheap wages and long hours), a lot of the savings come from a complete disregard for the local environment. So these workers might benefit from the wages they earn, but they'll pay for it with their health. You probably wouldn't want heavy metals leeching into your community's drinking water, and you'd cease doing business with a factory doing so in your neck of the woods. But somehow folks seem to think it's acceptable if it's not in their backyard. That's an ethical question you'll have to answer for yourself.
All this said, quite frankly some of the manufacturing expertise simply no longer exists in North America. So your only choice is to get stuff done in China. I know a wealthy flag-waving patriotic ex-military businessman who confided in me as much about why he had to outsource overseas. He said it wasn't so much the cost but that the manufacturers overseas were simply better skilled. We like to think we've got superior technology/processes over here and that the only advantage of overseas manufacturing is the cheap price. But the more that manufacturing is done overseas, the less this will be true.
Great story! Hardware manufacturing in China sounds just like software development in India: if you give very precise specifications - so precise that you may as well have written the code yourself - they will usually be followed. However, if you don't say things like "the software should run without errors" you may well find it crashes on start-up.
"Eventually my friend went and inspected the factory on a business trip only to find so many ethically questionable practices that he eventually decided to switch to another job."
Why was that necessary? Has they tried to get them to switch to another source?
Not criticizing WM here, but as a hardware-oriented engineer, I'd love to hear a post-mortem on this issue. Perhaps it's as you say and the promised PSUs are different then the prototypes; but either way, as someone who has a myriad of different design requirements (including electrical safety) I'd love to hear where WM thinks things broke down.
EDIT: The particular reason I'd love to hear a post-mortem on this is because I work for a mega-corp that is supposed to have the process to prevent such a mistake. Although all of our hardware undergoes both design testing and factory acceptance testing, we still manage to miss our share of mistakes. I would love to hear what WM thinks they missed.
> This seems to be a constant battle when going the Chinese route.
is the savings really worth it? and how can one tell that they aren't getting scammed? seems like win-win for chinese companies to cut all possible corners. either they'll save a buck or they'll get caught and just have to get paid to make more.
Several from every shipment. Who knowshowmany is enough. They'll mix different qualities, too, however much they think they can get away with. Ofcourse, there are reputable companies. It's just a lot of work to find them.
This seems to be a constant battle when going the Chinese route. You have to cut open a few from every shipment and check to see if inferior components have been subbed in since last time.