Chinese Manufacturing, Part 3: Superfactories Without Peer

Chinese Manufacturing, Part 3: Superfactories Without Peer:

Another aspect of Chinese manufacturing I've found difficult to reconcile is that they've made some seriously junky crap that I've purchased--and they also make the iPhone. The manufacturing quality and the fit & finish of that device is top-notch, and they are reportedly manufactured at breakneck speed in a facility with high quality control, much like a 21st-Century version of the Singer factory of the 19th and early 20th Century.

When the iMac first came out it was manufactured at an Apple-designed factory in California, but now nearly all of the company's production happens overseas. Why?

The answer is long, complicated, and eye-opening. In an exhaustively-researched feature in the New York Times entitled "How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work," reporters Chalres Duhigg and Keith Bradsher reveal some shocking capabilities of Chinese factories—in particular, the Foxconn City factory that's cranked out 200 million iPhones—that makes you understand why the U.S. and many other countries simply cannot compete. The quality control is in place, and the sheer manpower available, which can apparently be turned on and off like a tap, is unprecedented.

(more...)