I Can't Stop Watching These Videos Of Steel Casting and Machining In India

z31maniac said:

I trust their engineers as far as I can throw Rosanne Bar. 

When I worked for TWG (Tulsa Winch Group), Dover wanted us to start using our office in India for drawing changes. Because it was quote "cheaper" than having me.......the guy with a Journalism degree doing it. 

Add in the time difference and the fact that it usually took 2-3 back and forths for them to handle the incredibly simple task of Rev'ing a drawing according to the Redlines sent to them and updating the BOM it, in fact, was not cheaper or more efficient than just having me do it. There must have been some accounting trick that taking 3 days to get something done was better than me spending ~1 hour to update the CAD file and the BOM. 

I've been having that same... discussion... with our bean counters for 15 years...  It takes me longer to mark it up, check-it, mark it up again, check it again, and again... than for me to just do it the first time. 

I am also a sucker for watching these videos... definitely a combination of awe and cringe... 

Kinda reminds me of the old video of a guy in SE Asia (Thailand, maybe?) rebuilding a rusty VW bus with little more than a hammer and an oxy-acetylene torch. 

In reply to ShawnG :

We typically get RSU's along with a raise, but I think that sucks as a form of pay/bonus. It's not there for every paycheck and it vests 25% per year for 4 years. So to actually get the other part of the raise, you have to stay for 4 years. 

Stock price goes down, your "bonus" goes down. 

After his retirement, my Dad did some consulting work for a large American company.  My Dad's expertise was in casting metal.  He took a couple trips to China and related stories of just how primitive their foundries were.  He said the workers would be huddled around an open fire on the dirt floor first thing in the morning to keep warm.  The processes resembled stuff that might have happened in US foundries 100 years ago.

We have an "Atlas" branded lift here at the shop and the safety locks were clearly just poured into an open hole in the ground. there is a visible convex meniscus of "iron" and a dodgy amorphous shape to them that just doesn't inspire confidence. I'm glad I don't stand under it.

That tech is 6'5" and special ordered his own extra tall lift.

z31maniac said:

This year they also changed our pay schedule from semi-monthly (twice a month, meaning 24 paychecks per year) to bi-weekly (meaning 26 paychecks per year). Why? I suspect it was to make it look like on paper our health insurance wasn't going up, when we actually have to make two more payments on it per year. 

My last job was bi-weekly but the insurance was quoted to us as monthly. That meant that two paychecks a year we didn't get charged for insurance.  That combined with me setting my budget per week meant that those two paychecks also didn't have to pay for mortgage and all other monthly expenses. I used the extra from those weeks as a biannual bonus to myself for fun money.

I was always shocked at how rough conditions were in factories in Madagascar.... and I'd often send them the Indian/Pakistani casting videos as things to aspire to. "See this, this is better than what you guys do now! Copy it!" and they would, mostly....

The fun part is that E36 M3 is used in industry all over the world. The bean counters slap each other on the back for saving $$$$$, and are typically two or three notches up the corporate ladder before the gear or whatever explodes spectacularly and ruins someone else's day. 

I have seen it repeatedly over the last quarter century. Cap screws made from pot metal with heads that pop off in normal use. Scabbed together Machine frames with Bondo welds. Pallets of brake discs with golf ball sized inclusions.  Large castings that just randomly crack under normal operation.  Millions of dollars in downtime losses and unusable material at multiple companies, and it just keeps happening.  

In India, a Royal Enfield Bullet is a status symbol. There is a whole world devoted to fixing and customizing them. I worked on this one stateside. It was built in India for a guy who couldn't afford to buy regular 'custom' parts from England or wherever. So they made the fuel tank, seat and rearsets by hand.

The rearset shift linkage was clever (and clearly formed from other cycle parts) but unfortunately didn't work all that well. It was a crap shoot if you would actually engage the next gear or not. After a lot of time spent fiddling with it, I could get it to shift properly about 70% of the time.

This bike was built in India in one of those street shops where they work on the floor and have one light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was a rusty pile of scrap when they started. It's pretty impressive what they can do, even if it doesn't always function that well.

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

Kinda reminds me of the old video of a guy in SE Asia (Thailand, maybe?) rebuilding a rusty VW bus with little more than a hammer and an oxy-acetylene torch. 

Was that the one where he was hammering out new floor pans on the dirt floor?

In reply to ddavidv :

Royal Enfield's quality has gone up drastically in the last ten year. I like their bikes, i'd have one if I didn't have a bunch of stuff already.

A guy I used to work with had a Triumph motorcycle dealership in the 1980s. He described the conditions in the factory at that time as not far off from they way it's done in the videos above.

stuart in mn said:

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

Kinda reminds me of the old video of a guy in SE Asia (Thailand, maybe?) rebuilding a rusty VW bus with little more than a hammer and an oxy-acetylene torch. 

Was that the one where he was hammering out new floor pans on the dirt floor?

I think so. I tried searching for it, but I can't find the video.

It would suck to be a manufacturer of good quality product in a country known for its crap. "(sigh), Yes I know what's happening down the road, but we aren't like that". 

z31maniac said:

I trust their engineers as far as I can throw Rosanne Bar. 

When I worked for TWG (Tulsa Winch Group), Dover wanted us to start using our office in India for drawing changes. Because it was quote "cheaper" than having me.......the guy with a Journalism degree doing it. 

Add in the time difference and the fact that it usually took 2-3 back and forths for them to handle the incredibly simple task of Rev'ing a drawing according to the Redlines sent to them and updating the BOM it, in fact, was not cheaper or more efficient than just having me do it. There must have been some accounting trick that taking 3 days to get something done was better than me spending ~1 hour to update the CAD file and the BOM. 

The international engineering company I work for outsources to India.  They get paid probably a third to a forth of what the same role pays in Houston.  "Low overhead profit centers" is what they are called.  Our company just mandated that 40% of a project's man-hours must be done in the India office.  The major operators, who are our clients, basically require this content.  I think its a scheme to export money and jobs to 3rd world countries similar to how the US exported our manufacturing capability.   Its not just jobs being exported.  Its also our knowledge of how to do what we do.  Basically we are teaching India, and probably China by proxy, how to design offshore floating production facilities.  

 The accuracy of these people is atrocious.  Multiple iterations of rework required.   They do 3D modeling.  Its not unusual to have the overnight modeling show a pipe running through a building.    The office there has a high turnover.  People leave to go to other companies doing the same thing for a dollar an hour raise.   They are something like 13  hours ahead of us time wise so we have to  schedule meetings with them very early in our morning or later in our evening because they don't work at their night. 

My issues with this is exporting our jobs, spotty performance, meeting times, and also its hit or miss on getting someone who actually understands English.   The people can be speaking your language but my experience is they don't always understand the meaning of the phrases but will say they do - only to find out later that they are just saying that because agreement with the boss is locked into their culture.  And their employees are scared for their jobs.  If complaints are made they don't encourage the guy to learn from the mistake; they just fire hem.  

In reply to jharry3 :

The only way it will stop is if the actual costs are exposed. I don't think people want to export money, they just want to get the cheapest labor. Sadly, the lowest cost labor tends to be the most expensive long term decision. 
 

You guys need to let the failures through. 

jharry3 said:

The international engineering company I work for outsources to India.

As with everywhere, there are good engineers in India and there are bad engineers in India.  I think the key word in your sentence is "outsourcing"; it suggests that your company isn't taking responsibility for the employees in India, instead they are hiring some consulting service and letting them worry about it.  Yes, that's cheaper, but as always you get what you pay for.

I write software for a large networking vendor, we have an office in Bangalore (an actual office of our actual company, not a consultant) and the quality of the engineers I work with there is no different from that of the folks I work with in the US.  Some bad, most average, and some really sharp super stars.  Yes, the time zone is a challenge -- it works best if the India office has its own projects and thus can proceed with more independence from the US office and thus fewer meetings required.

Just wait until (Ketamine Boy Elon) thinks AI is smart enough to do engineering without human interaction or oversight.

In reply to jharry3 :

Never rule out the possibility that there are a tax implication for such action and they are exploiting it.

Getting stuff outsourced to Puerto Rico is all the rage around here right now -- lower hourly cost than mainland without the cost/complication of global trade compliance issues.

I don't think this is the first time this had been tried, but the global trade issues may have changed the math.

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

It would suck to be a manufacturer of good quality product in a country known for its crap. "(sigh), Yes I know what's happening down the road, but we aren't like that". 

If you thing about "low cost" asian products , 

its probably started with postwar  Japan then Taiwan , Hong Kong , Korea , China  

I think India was always there but seemed to be more aimed at the UK .

now you can throw in Vietnam , Thailand , Malaysia , Indonesia  and coming up Laos , Cambodia and Myramar / Burma when it reforms.