Are the brand-names manufactured to a higher spec?
Even though you are right - everyone should demand safe generics, because there is no healthcare in any country without them - your words will get lost in the mire of the mind of the libertarian Hacker News 22 year old, who takes no non-stimulant medicines, telling you nobody is forcing you to do this or that, that you should just die.
When a brand name drug goes off patent, everybody (including competitors and generics manufacturers) already has a pretty good idea of both 1) the commercial market for generics, and 2) the components of the drug.
What isn't shared are trade secrets disclosing manufacturing processes, as well as the inactive ingredients+formulation of the drug. Competitors & generics OEMs are left to guess and use best judgment when they create competitors to the original, and sometimes they make bad decisions.
Actual manufacturing quality should be equally high, but the resulting drug may not end up being exactly the same as the branded version, even if the differences have nothing to do with the active ingredient.
edit not to mention the processes can be wildly different too as those are not part of the initial disclosure to get patent protections.
In every example I've come across, branded medicines (at least for the big companies) are made in the manufacturers own factories.
Pfizer, Novartis, Merck, etc all have their own factories in Europe and North America.