taiwan might be in a position to help on short notice? alternatively the same might be said for several se asian countries...
“taiwan might be in a position to help on short notice? alternatively the same might be said for several se asian countries...”
Depends on how hard they’re hit, but even if not hit hard, they are all PUNY relative to China. We’ll be finding that out real soon!
A lot of Taiwan is “management” now — with factories in China!
Yeah, Taiwan still makes SOME stuff, and generally of good quality, ditto for the Koreans, and then there are several other countries chasing them, but even they often source some material or component or tool from China.
Product development is REALLY involved these days, and the companies I worked for were small enough that I got to work the whole thing: From reading theoretical stuff to finding sources to (one job back) helping supervise initial production runs, instruct personnel, maybe even work ON the production line trial run a half day to help smooth out kinks, to QC and production problems arising later. In between is product design (probably the most fun, but has to be done with an eye to all the other elements) field testing, production design & redesign if need be to accommodate the production dept., or source limitations, FINDING reliable sources at a competitive price, sometimes seemingly interminable iterations...
All that and more takes time to get right. More staff can help, but sometimes it further complicates things too!
I’ll pose another situation: Let’s say our “gizmo” has a plastic part that will be flexed, and has to survive the “automotive” environment. (Hot, cold, UV, chemicals, vibration, etc.) It needs to meet a weight maximum, fairly tight dimensional tolerances, cost constraints, etc. We end up using a using a vacuum formed then trimmed polypropylene part with 20% talc fill. What with all the testing and so on involved, maybe a hiccup or two along the way, it takes 4 months to get it right - and this is with a known reliable supplier we work with a lot and have a bit of leverage with, due to being a valued long time customer. Then they do a pre-production run and there’s a “problem” that takes another 40 days to straighten out, get another pre-production run done, and we finally get into real production.
Blammo, supplier goes down. Act of God. Oh, hell. Entire market is tight, finally go back to some guy I talked to at a trade show 2 years back. Send them part drawings, they make a die, obtain material, make samples, ship such. WTF - this isn’t right. Excessive shrinkage coming off the die, apparently. Get that fixed, new samples - fails flex life test. THEIR supplier sent monopolymer polypro instead of copolymer & they didn’t catch it. (So much for ISO9000 or whatever.) Two rounds of samples more (and testing on our end), ok, make production order. “Sorry, production is 45 days out. Very busy.” 75 days later the production run comes in - and cross your fingers they got it right...
It’s EASY to lose 6 months in such a scenario. If industry throughout China is severely disrupted, and other countries’ manufacturing is struggling to keep up, it’ll be worse.
Sometimes I’d go to the top management and say (paraphrasal), “look, you hired me to design superior products, and instead I’m killing myself with chats with Chinese vendors @ 3 a.m. (CST) trying to resolve ridiculous problems, delays, and so on. Wouldn’t it be better to pay more for US sourced parts, make deliveries on time, and free me up?” But, the bean counters never saw it that way, partially because OUR customers would be gone if we raised prices.
There are a lot of reasons Pres. Trump eased in sanctions with lots of warning, and it’s not just giving the Chinese “fair warning”.