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Comment by mkr-hn | Hacker News Reader

Manufacturing in the US has never been better. It's the number of people needed to manufacture stuff in the US that's been declining.

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Due to wage/cost inflation in China and the coming rise of the Yuan (along with the weakness of the dollar), the US is about to become the cheapest place for high end manufacturing in the world.

Plus IP and counterfeit/security issues, communications issues, and such. Provided I didn't need to be colocated with Chinese parts suppliers, and that my production process wasn't dirty enough to have major environmental issues in the US, the US seems like a top choice.

Modulo regulatory approval, of course. Most of my family works in various manufacturing industries (high end foundry, steel mills, etc.) and you're looking at years to get even the most basic permits through unless you are in one of the states that allow you to "purchase" fast-track approval. Companies end up buying the old, dead husks of manufacturing plants that went out of business not because they want any of the machines or people but because their permits are often still valid and in some cases transferable to your other locations.

Even if you wanted to expand to meet increasing demand, the opportunity will be gone before you can get approval to build out for it (even in relatively business-friendly states like IN). And the company-purchase strategy has to be taken carefully, both because business capital is hard to come by today and because manufacturing operates with margins so small that there's no room for error.

Further, you have the risk of OSHA shutting you down or penalizing you to unprofitability. As I understand it, safety regulations are much like traffic laws -- if a police officer wants to pull you over while you're driving, they can almost definitely find something to charge you with, even if it's just their interpretation -- and the same is true of your OSHA inspector.

Wages/productivity play a large portion of being a good place to do high end manufacturing, but are still a relatively small part of your ability to profitably grow and run a manufacturing business.

Yes. Basically the US can only afford to have so many stupid rules, because they are so productive.

The good news is that the U.S. is decades ahead of most countries in terms of automated manufacture. Probably only Japan and South Korea (maybe Germany too) can comfortably compare. The videos linked to in this same topic show a completely automated surface mount process to build the motherboard of a computer. Something that's still not regularly used in most countries because it's hard and expensive. Easier to just have low paid workers solder the stuff on by hand.

Well, that could be due a convergence between automation and labor-intensive manufacturing (which can't be automated easily) moving overseas to fine a cheaper work force.

Also, I think the parent post was referring to the fact that Steve Jobs is now CEO of Apple which IIRC does most of their manufacturing overseas (SE Asia). If SJ still believed that quote, then he would have been trying to 'bring it home' so to speak.

"Also, I think the parent post was referring to the fact that Steve Jobs is now CEO of Apple which IIRC does most of their manufacturing overseas (SE Asia)."

Does Apple have any manufacturing operations currently? I would be surprised if they did.

Plus, they subcontract their manufacturing to other companies, ASUS and Foxconn among others.

In Mr. Jobs's specific case, he doesn't seem to be convinced, since Apple manufactures virtually nothing in the United States.

If by manufacturing, you mean chemicals, pharmaceuticals, processed agricultural products, pulp&paper, and heavy industrial equipment. Electronics and consumer products manufacturing is dead in the US.

The quote didn't specify electronics and consumer products.

And last I checked Intel, Dell, HP et al still counted as electronics.

Dell and HP manufacture almost nothing in the US. Many/most of their products aren't even designed in-house. They contract with Asian design houses and slap their own bezel on the result.

You're right about Intel. They are one of the few significant electronics companies left in the US. But they aren't representative of the category.

There's tons of chip fabs and other similar electronics plants all over the U.S.

For example:

Texas Instruments - http://www2.prnewswire.com/mnr/ti/39147/

IBM - http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photo/34680.wss

Micron - http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4087224/Intel-Micron...

That was with fairly minimal searching. Austin, TX is almost lousy with them for example.

Yet both the iPad nor the iPhone were manufactured in China. Hence, I'm curious why Steve Jobs reversed an opinion he previously worked so hard to support, as evidenced by the article.

It might not have been his decision

Do you have a link where you read that? Not implying it's not true-- just want to know more and searches are coming up empty

http://blogs.forbes.com/timworstall/2011/06/17/what-decline-...

I'm assuming that you have relatively recent experience in order to make this kind of statement. If you are happy with the cost, quality, capability and flexibility of your US-based contract manufacturing solution, please name names as there are many people who would be interested.

I think you clicked the wrong reply link.

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