Made in uk vs made in china

[pete_mcfarlane]

Could manufacturing be done in the UK, but with labour recruited from elsewhere in the EU, with a lower wage?

 

cheers

Surely the problems with production in China are in part down to the use of semi-skilled migrant workers, who are paid as little as possible and so have no real incentive to do a good job or stay. Setting up a factory in the UK along the same lines wouldn't make much sense.

[mswjr]

Im a toolmaker ,still working in engineering and with plastic mould tools,1 example the last company i worked for starting taking on eastern euro workers on who would work very hard,but were not skilled and were payed alot lower,result more profits in the short term,job quality went down,and when they had training ,they left to get better money ,only a few skilled people remaining the company moved to i think mexico,another down side for people like myself is i can not get a job as easy as i used to as these e u workers are doing the same job for less,and its not going to get better.

[robmcg]

On Railroad, it is not just Hornby trying to straddle two worlds as many of the American suppliers (inc. Athearn, Bowser, Proto, Atlas) also have different model series aimed at different price points and detail levels. Where the American producers are a step ahead I think is that for the most part the models are designed and tooled as either a high end super detailed model or a basic no frills model. The budget versions are generally tooled to a high standard with good basic shape, good mechanism and a level of detail which is actually pretty good but with a lot less fine separately applied details and trick features such as etched brass grills etc. And modelers can take these and super detail them into some stunning models, it seems to work very well in the US market. My concern with Hornby is that by using a common basic model it risks compromising the high end version, however I'm enough of a realist to appreciate the commercial attractions of using a common set of tooling to aim for both markets. We'll see but I am hoping Hornby pull it off and they do seem to be getting a better feel for what compromises are acceptable and where they need to retain mode separate detail.

 

I find the above to be very well-put, and share the hope that Hornby will find enough production capacity to fulfil demand and maintain good quality. 

 

For instance, the Duke of Gloucester model appears to have missed out on any version with very fine detail, or such basic qualities as two-piece coupling rods and separate handrails on deflectors, but when assembled well seems to run quite well.  Hornby need the cash too but there are none in the shops and retailers of all types have no idea when new stock will arrive, I suspect Roger Canham doesn't know either.

 

As others have mentioned in various threads UK buyers are very miserly and price-driven, and some Euro buyers are rather more nationalistic and loyal to their 'own'. Whether this is more about branding than reality I do not know, but in any event the style of selling which offers basic and super-detail options, both using the same tooling, makes perfect sense to me. 

[robmcg]

Im a toolmaker ,still working in engineering and with plastic mould tools,1 example the last company i worked for starting taking on eastern euro workers on who would work very hard,but were not skilled and were payed alot lower,result more profits in the short term,job quality went down,and when they had training ,they left to get better money ,only a few skilled people remaining the company moved to i think mexico,another down side for people like myself is i can not get a job as easy as i used to as these e u workers are doing the same job for less,and its not going to get better.

 

When you say that the eastern euro workers once trained left to get better money, who was paying that? Is this in the UK or Europe?  Does this mean that short-run model railway stuff doesn't pay what it should in what might be termed the 1st World economies?  I don't quite understand moving to Mexico in the context of east European workers either, as Mexico is supplying the US market in competition with China, quite successfully too, I understand.

[Nimbus]

As others have mentioned in various threads UK buyers are very miserly and price-driven, and some Euro buyers are rather more nationalistic and loyal to their 'own'. 

 

Well, speaking as a UK resident really struggling to earn a crust, it tends to work downwards from our government, and the employers/buyers of our skills.

 

The Nim.

[Horsetan]

Well, speaking as a UK resident really struggling to earn a crust, it tends to work downwards from our government, and the employers/buyers of our skills.

 

 

You and me both.

 

"You get what you pay for, no such thing as a free lunch (unless you're a politician, craptain of industry, oligarch), etc....."

 

*groans*

[Ron Ron Ron]

Interestingly the new steam models that have just been announced all have die cast boilers/bodies, so presumably the corgi factory is involved with, at least the supply of parts, for these models.

 

 

This is not the first time they have used metal bodywork.  They did it for the T9 to add extra weight over the drivers.  Though it still has a low haulage capacity.

 

I don't there's anything new in this.

Hornby have been using die-cast for loco bodies, boilers etc, for a couple of years, on many of their newer Hornby International locos (e.g. the USATC S100, SNCF 150C etc,).

 

 

 

.

[billbedford]

I don't there's anything new in this.

Hornby have been using die-cast for loco bodies, boilers etc, for a couple of years, on many of their newer Hornby International locos (e.g. the USATC S100, SNCF 150C etc,).

 

These and the T9 all post-date Hornby's acquisition of Corgi and the take over of Sanda Kan factory by Kader. 

[Fat Controller]

Surely the problems with production in China are in part down to the use of semi-skilled migrant workers, who are paid as little as possible and so have no real incentive to do a good job or stay. Setting up a factory in the UK along the same lines wouldn't make much sense.

It's what the Industrial Revolution was based on from the end of the 18th century onwards throughout Europe; when tracing family histories, we found three separate lines where families had stayed in the same villages for three hundred or so years, migrating to industrial towns as jobs became available. it was the point of Adam Smith's example of pin-making that it had moved from a small-volume, highly-skilled cottage industry, to one where the process was divided up between many more workers, individually much less skilled. People in the UK would be unwilling to return to Victorian conditions in the workplace and outside; to someone from the backwoods of China or Vietnam, such conditions would probably seem luxurious.

[DropTheTap]

...So the labour cost is roughly £15-20, which in fact sounds pretty high when compared with Rapido's labour cost for items involving far more hand assembly of many more detail components - Rapido quoted a shade under $13 (Canadian) for assembly work on a coach which requires 7.5 hours of labour although those figures are just over a year old and have probably risen by about 20%, the Canadian Dollar is currently worth 57p.  

 

So in fact labour as an element in the final retail price is fairly small but Chinese labour costs are rising on average at about 20% per annum although the rate of growth, and actual cost per hour, is considerably less in some provinces...

 

You make some well- reasoned points. I'll be honest, I have little of constructive value to add at the moment, except that there was something I couldn't quite put my finger on when I read the post on the Rapido website... the figures seemed intended to make a point in a specific direction. Again, nothing I can justifiably argue right now, just had me raise my eyebrows a little.

 

Personally, I think with some degree of collective will (as happens in China, and the USA to an extent), manufacturing on a larger scale *could* return to the UK...

[PenrithBeacon]

IIRC one British manufacturer of toys repatriated their catalogue from China and started to make same in South Wales. They got around the increase in labour costs by automating so c25 workers here produced what 400 Chinese workers did. Clearly 25 extra jobs isn't going to make a big dent in the unemployment figures (which at over 2 million is far too high), but if every British manufacturer did this (think of the demise of the northern clothing industry) then perhaps ...

 

Regards

[Ozexpatriate]

The video makes it clear that Hornby are bringing back some of the Airfix production back to Margate. This has a low labour input, almost no assembly needed.

Quite why Hornby have decided to make the  the (new) Airfix range in England is not necessarily entirely clear but perhaps you have answered it as it is largely automated, added to which it is a low value product where transport might add a significant element. 

The Airfix quick-builds are essentially LEGO clone bricks - with an emphasis on specialty parts.

 

Im a toolmaker ,still working in engineering and with plastic mould tools,1 example the last company i worked for starting taking on eastern euro workers on who would work very hard,but were not skilled and were payed alot lower,result more profits in the short term,job quality went down,and when they had training ,they left to get better money ,only a few skilled people remaining the company moved to i think mexico,another down side for people like myself is i can not get a job as easy as i used to as these e u workers are doing the same job for less,and its not going to get better.

While their design is still done in Denmark, LEGO does a lot in what we would at one point have considered Eastern Europe. According to wikipedia:

Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at a number of locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; and Monterrey, Mexico. Brick decorations and packaging is done at plants in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico and Kladno in the Czech Republic.

Plus, their custom brick order fulfillment (which I would guess is pretty manual) is done in (or at least shipped from) Stryków in Poland.

 

Given these locations, it's not inconceivable that a similar product can be produced in the UK. The mark-up on ABS plastic toy bricks is pretty huge. Please don't confuse this product with fully-assembled, highly detailed electro-mechanical models.

[railroadbill]

Interesting entry on the Rapido e-mailed blog about the manufacture of their products in China.  One assembly point if in the UK would be the equivalent of the "Little Snoring village young mums club" assembling Hornby trains....

 

Read it at   http://www.rapidotrains.com/blog/2014/01/07/the-twelve-days-of-china/

 

Excellent customer communications. imho

 

 

 

 

[andyman7]

Interesting entry on the Rapido e-mailed blog about the manufacture of their products in China.  One assembly point if in the UK would be the equivalent of the "Little Snoring village young mums club" assembling Hornby trains....

 

Read it at   http://www.rapidotrains.com/blog/2014/01/07/the-twelve-days-of-china/

 

Excellent customer communications. imho

That's not much different from the pieceworkers in Margate that used to paint the figures in Triang sets in the 60s (or the footballers in Subbuteo sets) - they'd get sent out, done at home and returned..... 

[Ozexpatriate]

Interesting entry on the Rapido e-mailed blog about the manufacture of their products in China.  ...

 

Read it at   http://www.rapidotrains.com/blog/2014/01/07/the-twelve-days-of-china/

 

Excellent customer communications. imho

Yes, truly excellent communications and the LRC locomotive saga is an excellent insight into the difficulties of developing a model in China. I expect Hornby has many similar stories that they could tell. Unlike Jason, they just don't do so.  

 

Of course nor does Bachmann Branch-Line, but Bachmann does a better job of interim reporting than Hornby. They're not as open and transparent as Jason, but better communications would serve Hornby well.

[GreenDiesel]

Interesting program on Newstalk 1010 (CFRB), a news chat show that I listen to here in Toronto, this morning.  It was about a news story on "Reshoring" about how several US companies are bringing their manufacturing from places like China back to the US.  And these are major companies too, such as General Electric & Whirlpool. Basically, it's costing these companies almost or just as much to pay workers in China now (because conditions have improved there in recent years) as it would in the US, so the jobs & work are returning. 

[alfsboy]

That's not much different from the pieceworkers in Margate that used to paint the figures in Triang sets in the 60s (or the footballers in Subbuteo sets) - they'd get sent out, done at home and returned..... 

Britains figure were  painted under a similar system until its demise .

[Adams442T]

Britains figure were  painted under a similar system until its demise .

 

Britains figures were painted by outworkers until the closure of the Walthamstow factory in 1977, when production was switched to Nottingham, and outworker painting was still used right up until 2004 when quality and cost issues meant a wholesale transfer to China.   The diecast cheaper models had been produced and spray painted in Hong Kong for some time by then, and I was responsible for initiating production and painting in Kowloon for the higher spec detailed figures.  They still use the same Kowloon factories today.

[Nimbus]

That's not much different from the pieceworkers in Margate that used to paint the figures in Triang sets in the 60s (or the footballers in Subbuteo sets) - they'd get sent out, done at home and returned..... 

 

Add DCMT (Lone Star) to that list. A van used to do a round from their Welham Green (Marshmoor to you, probably) factory to the local council estate. I think the work was mechanical sub-assembly, as Lone Star painting was probably not detailed enough to need hand finishing.

 

The Nim.

[7013]

Interesting video, the things that Hornby have bought back are the less labour intensive lines.They could manufacture their locos here and they would cost more, but I don't see it happening....yet. It would be good to see British locos made in Britain and the workers as Dave points out would be contributing to our economy not China's.

However I have just preordered the superb Bachmann C class for £76, I doubt it would cost that much if manufactured here, but saying that I would be prepared to pay a lot more for British built models.

[Adams442T]

Interesting video, the things that Hornby have bought back are the less labour intensive lines.They could manufacture their locos here and they would cost more, but I don't see it happening....yet. It would be good to see British locos made in Britain and the workers as Dave points out would be contributing to our economy not China's.

However I have just preordered the superb Bachmann C class for £76, I doubt it would cost that much if manufactured here, but saying that I would be prepared to pay a lot more for British built models.

 

So would I, but how many others would?  I doubt enough to make it viable, especially when India and/or Africa beckons.........................

[billbedford]

So would I, but how many others would?  I doubt enough to make it viable, especially when India and/or Africa beckons.........................

 

It doesn't matter how many others would pay a lot more for British built models, there just need to be enough.

[7013]

One can hope

[Paul Cram]

I wouldn't

[Fenman]

... I have just preordered the superb Bachmann C class for £76, I doubt it would cost that much if manufactured here ...

 

So now I'm curious; how much do you think it would cost?

 

I'm asking because this issue was discussed on another thread and the consensus there seemed to be that it would at the very least double the cost of a loco to manufacture it in the UK rather than China. But I'd like to see your figures.

 

Paul