I remain unconvinced that a company who outsources production does not add value or perform useful engineering and quality control. Sure, I wish the west had retained some of its manufacturing and design capabilities. But I don't think his examples make a very compelling point.
We're mostly SW folks here, I think, so we generally understand that interfacing components requires a well written contract and appropriate testing at the boundaries. Why is it not the same in manufacturing? If I'm outsourcing the manufacturing of my toaster to various parties, I still have a hand in specifying the pieces, assuring they meet my requirements, and verifying they are put together in a way that upholds my brand value and meets customer expectations. That very much requires engineering talent. It also benefits from comparative advantage and provides my company with more profit which could, theoretically(although seemingly rarely in practice) allow me to provide a superior product at a better price point.
Any decline in quality would be the result of (poor?) business decisions and not inherently a result of outsourcing.
> If I'm outsourcing the manufacturing of my toaster to various parties, I still have a hand in specifying the pieces, assuring they meet my requirements, and verifying they are put together in a way that upholds my brand value and meets customer expectations.
Except eventually you can't, other than in very vague, handwavy sense. Engineering specification is a skill, and it dies when manufacturing base moves overseas.
You get maybe a decade of transitional time when you both have an oversupply of now unemployed engineer force AND cost savings from doing the actual work elsewhere, but then people change careers and new college students know better.
> We're mostly SW folks here, I think, so we generally understand that interfacing components requires a well written contract and appropriate testing at the boundaries.
It also means that we understand the overhead in doing so, compared to doing things inside of a team.
We're mostly SW folks here, I think, so we generally understand that interfacing components requires a well written contract and appropriate testing at the boundaries. Why is it not the same in manufacturing? If I'm outsourcing the manufacturing of my toaster to various parties, I still have a hand in specifying the pieces, assuring they meet my requirements, and verifying they are put together in a way that upholds my brand value and meets customer expectations. That very much requires engineering talent. It also benefits from comparative advantage and provides my company with more profit which could, theoretically(although seemingly rarely in practice) allow me to provide a superior product at a better price point.
Any decline in quality would be the result of (poor?) business decisions and not inherently a result of outsourcing.