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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

I was wondering how the manufacturers address the potential culture conflicts. Obama's documentary American Factory revealed two notable contentions. One is that American workers think that the management is too tough on them while the management think that the workers are too unreasonable. The other is that Chinese workers are 30% (or 2X?) more efficient than American workers. I have no judgement on the first contention, but the second worries me. American labors were known to be the best in the world many years ago, and a strong argument against offshoring manufacturing was that Chinese workers were much worse than Americans. Yet the tide has turned.

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I don't really follow what you're trying to say with your last sentence and I'd be skeptical of a claim that Chinese workers are 30% more efficient, but Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and others have maintained US manufacturing facilities for decades and seem to be doing just fine with any potential culture conflicts.

The 30% number you cite could be true but perhaps in order for Chinese (or any other country) manufacturing to be economical perhaps it needs to be 60%. Mexico is actually important here.

Toyota has manufacturing facilities in at least 16 countries, so they probably have this figured out. US import duties make it especially lucrative for manufacturers to have US facilities, which lines up with Toyota having 10 other facilities in the US, plus some in Canada and Mexico.

Still, in my eyes that only makes it more intriguing how they bridge the cultural differences, since whatever they are doing seems to be working.

> claim that Chinese workers are 30% more efficient

I was just quoting what the documentary said. There was so much contention between the management and the workers in the American glass factory featured in the documentary. In the end, the management hosted a competition between the American workers and the Chinese workers. Chinese workers won with a big margin.

Yep. It's a great documentary that I enjoyed watching, but I think we need stronger evidence here. Documentaries are not necessarily factual, and they often times have an angle despite the idea that they're just producing factual content/stories.

Showing that the Chinese workers won by a big margin doesn't prove anything. It definitely doesn't prove anything outside of that specific scenario.

> The other is that Chinese workers are 30% (or 2X?) more efficient than American workers.

What metrics is this based on?

The "two countries with very different labor laws" metric, I imagine.

> American labors were known to be the best in the world many years ago

I'm pretty sure every country says that about themselves. It's more a statement of national pride than of fact.

I doubt that will be a problem here. Their Kentucky plant is huge, it's been around for decades and it makes lots of high quality cars including the Camry. Toyota goes to a lot of effort to teach the workers their production system and culture.

Forcing people to eat off the Dollar menu has consequences

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