Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK
raspberrypi.org
raspberrypi.org
We priced our product for uk and china and china was infact more expensive because of the way they price plastics. Sometimes UK is best
China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency.
I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often more money than it would be to have them fab the whole thing in the first place.
I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world keeps paying China to make everything they will end up owning us all. On paper they probably already do.
[1]: [http://www.strangehorizons.com/2000/20001120/secret_number.s...]
That's too pessimistic. Broaden your horizon away from the British (and perhaps US) example. The German economy is doing fine for manufacturing, but they have no qualms about importing from China at all.
I was surprised to find out that Land Rover outsources the manufacturing of most of the exterior and interior trimming on the mainland, then ships everything for assembly to the UK, for example. The same is probably true for the electronics and most engine parts, as well.
Volvo (Sweden) does the exact same thing...
Are there similar moves underway in the US?
Cheap labour only helps if two years of labour is cheaper than a machine that can do the work. The machines get cheaper and labour gets more expensive. It obviously doesn't mean a lot of the low skilled jobs are ever going to return to the countries they have left, but at least it creates opportunity for an ecosystem of local suppliers and innovation.
It also helps that we're not in a price race to the bottom.
On the other side, there is the story of the man who tried to source all of his solar panel parts in the US. He's actually having difficulty doing this (supply chain issues).
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulstoffregen/teensy-30...
I think that sums up current European attitudes to manufacturing and capitalism all too well, sadly. Note how they eventually ended up with a Welsh factory... owned and run by Sony.
And what does a supposedly business-friendly government do? Worry about building houses. Sigh.
I'm not sure how using a Welsh factory shows how this government is anti capitalist or anti manufacturing - given that Wales is in the UK and it is the UK government I don't think it matters where it is in the country. The factory is probably based there as a result of the government incentives about a decade to fifteen years ago which were introduced to get large corporations to base operations in areas of Wales who had been relient on the mines and who, at that time, had spiralling unemployment.
Alos, The EU isn't anti manufacturing. Everyone is looking to the German model (high value manufacturing) as they are the only one bucking the downward trend and actually growing. The UK itself still has a very healthy manufacturing sector - I forget the exact figure but it makes up a double digit percentage of our GDP so it is not insignificant at all.
I agree more could be done to improve the position of manufacturing but to look at the Chinese model and say "hey, we should have all the back here" is not the answer. Electronics, chemicals and high end goods we should have but let china make the Barbie Dolls and cheap tat, that's not what we should be aspiring to.
The point about capitalism is that "Euro" capitalists don't want to face any risk, as this story proves: British money didn't want to back the Pi when it was unproven, and even now they could only find Japanese-American money.
I live in the North-West of England. I'm surrounded by modern (and mostly empty) high-rise developments built in the last 15 years, alternating with cheap new low-rise which have been rebuilt from scratch on the ashes of failed towns, and they're slowly decaying again, because the problem is that you can't maintain a nice house without a nice job, and construction jobs are not even for local people these days.
the sort of jobs that provide social mobility are in services (as we all know on HN), in high-quality manufacturing, and in the public sector; and it's clear this government has no idea how to help those sectors.
The reason for all those empty buildings is due to an old insurance policy (now illegal) that meant developers could build and insure against it being empty ... essentially the insurance company pays the rent if the building is empty and as such there is no incentive for the developer to actively let it out.
Setting up a line like this is expensive and unless you are willing to foot the bill for the factory setting up the line then it is understandable that most factories would decline the work if they thought the market opportunity was small of the business plan was weak.
Either way I think we both agree on this being a good thing but we don't know the context in which the work was previously declined
Kudos to the team for taking on such a difficult and worthwhile project and putting up with all of the issues. Even if the RPi in and of itself isn't successful, it's definitely brought these kinds of small, cheap simply computers to the forefront of many minds and that's a good thing.
I moderated a subreddit once upon a time with two Brits who lived about an hour apart. I mentioned to them that I had just attended a meeting with a company that was directly in between their towns, and said "I was just in your neighborhood". They vehemently denied that their neighborhood stretched for a half-hour journey. Meanwhile in America, our stomping grounds can sometimes cover a hundred miles in each direction.
Sorry for going off-topic >_> As an American I don't get a chance to talk to foreigners often.
http://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/facts/DICE/Labour-Market-...
To an american, a hundred years is a long time. To a brit, a hundred miles is a long way.
It's definitely true, like you say, and also its faux-profundity makes me laugh.
And you're right about the neighborhood; I'd probably not consider mine to stretch for more than 5 miles from where I live.
It's on topic enough for me!
http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-pricing-2...
Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are:
1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made more aware of this local resource.
2) TAX on a made product compared to the bits to assemble said product. From the current standing it is more cost effective to make products outside the UK as apposed to buying in those parts seperately and in bulk and making the product localy TAX wise, this is again another area the UK goverment has to address.
But the reality of bring some types of manufacturing back localy, even if driven by some of the lesser reasons makes sence.
This all said I would love for a Pi with more ram and also love a couple of network ports, make a lovely firewall unit then without messing with USB network adaptors. I'd also like USB3. So with that in mind maybe there is scope for a model C and D, idealy a model you can upgrade a little bit more in those respective area's. But if I had to pick anything overall it would be a little bit more ram. But there is nothing stopping me making my own board and modifications (skills pending), like most out there probably thinking about. Open Hardware schematics on github and group effort - anybody aware of any plans or projects along those lines?
This is, as I understand it, because there's no import duty on components that are part of information technology products such as computers[2] - but components which are not yet part of such a product are subject to import duty.
To fix this we don't need to raise a protectionist import duty for IT products - we can just drop the import duty on electronic components.
[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509 [2] http://www.charleswalker.org/import-duties
But at the very least the current situation is only accomodating with large plants like Sony's who are able to talk to goverments about TAX breaks and deals to actualy make a plant and the cost of import viable. This needs to be addressed as a whole and allow even medium sized companies to compete, so that even little people have some hope.
Sadly until enough people that people listern to speak up this situation will just stagnate on as it is. I'm full of hope this news item may eventualy put some momentum behind the needed changes and at the very least get them on the table in goverment so they start to look at the issues.
But to have a thriving and healthy society in a country, the variety is important so that people can pursue different interests and are not forced to migrate because there is no high-quality work in that area in that country.
Only way to do this is to protect the domestic market from foreign investment and give some time for high quality local players to grow. Then open for competition. But if a second world government does it, it is blamed for not allowing reforms and accused of denying progress to its citizens
So now another way is opening up.
So it is good for China too if such things happen. If a bunch of high quality companies open up in stuff that UK is traditionally known for (financial services?) then the balance will be stuck.
I hope financial institutions like IMF, World Bank take such things into count and come up with measures to increase variety in every country. It will make life a lot better for a lot of people.
"Last year, when nobody had heard of the Raspberry Pi, we had been unable to find a British manufacturer whose prices per unit (especially at a point where we were thinking of sales in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands you’re seeing now) would work for us, and who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us."
Who wouldn't take one project because they were afraid you wouldn't come back for more? Is business so hopping over there that people scoff at a $1M deal because you may not come back later for a $5M deal? Or, were you actually asking them to reserve production, but that you might cancel before it started?
(I do understand some of what it takes to setup and run a manufacturing line, I work with several EMSes both in the US and China and run a [smaller scale] electronics manufacturer.)
Edit: Before my comment is taken the wrong way, what I am wondering is if the UK has much capacity for mid-scale EMS/CEM, or if the industry there has been largely tailored towards the very big players. But, I'm pretty sure I misread the statement, namely that they meant that the only places willing to take the jobs were charging too much, rather than that no one wanted the job because it was too small.
The facility we use an hour from us runs about 600 PTH units (about 40 components/board) on one assembly line with 10 people in about 4 hours. I doubt one would always work them at that level. Lead-bending, wave soldering is all pretty much automated.
The bulk of an SMD process is done by pick-and-place, our stuff gets run on 10,000+ CPH machines. You need one person to load/de-load panels and switch out feeders - and one person can work multiple machines if everything is set up right. The machines in general are really good these days.
Printing and machining the PCBs takes some time, but this is a process that can flow continuously once you let a little backlog build up at each stage. Electrical testing can be slow at the back-end, as is polishing board edges, packaging, etc.
I could see it taking 30 people to do 10k a month, but the same 30 people possibly capable of 60k+ a month. It depends on where you load them in the process. The more SMD the more volume you can get up to the testing/packaging stage. rPi is mostly SMD, with some PTH - so they have to mix the processes, but its really hard to avoid...)
Notably, however, if you look at the Hackberry (which I like better, btw!) the vast majority of the connectors are SMD. I wonder if the rPI could see some labor savings (at higher BOM) by switching to them.
One thing we've been working on in-house is making big automated jigs to program and test entire panels of devices at once, before they're de-paneled. These are really expensive to make though (think $5k+ per jig) - but they save us thousands of hours of labor a year. We're moving to make machines that can do it without jigs now. Fun stuff =)
Not bad for a small, charitable business.
"A feature it shares with the BBC is that it is an all-British product; designed by Acorn, it is being built by ICL and Cleartone with custom-built chips by Ferranti."
From this article: http://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/cr-BBCMicro-CToday.ht...
This from The Reg has detail on production and the race to win the place as BBC computer partner - http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th....
This guy, who appears to be an authority, mentions the above and AB Electronics, see http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCMicros.html. He details info on the companies in the Acorn ecosystem, http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Companies.html, but appears to miss out the suppliers ...
http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_IndiaTakes... gives detail of the Indian manufacture by Semiconductor Complex Ltd [under license from the American Rockwell Corp] and Mexican production by Harry Mazal (a company). It notes that the ULA will continue to be made by Acorn themselves (presumably in the UK).
>In both China and India, the consumer markets are comparatively small, but, as the Indian deal shows, the educational and industrial sectors are massive. And both countries are crying out for western technology //
Talk about turn-around.
--
Edit:
http://yourcomputeronline.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bbcs-prot... mentions:
>Acorn will probably subcontract assembly to Cleartone in Abercarn; the Department of Industry’s £60,000 contribution meant that assembly would have to be in Britain. It will be marketed under licence from a box number, by mail-order. //
Looking back http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCAI2.html shows an Abercarn manufactured issue 2.