From Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School"
Dr. Phillip Barbay: ...now, not withstanding Mr. Mellon's input. The next question for us is where to build our factory?
Thornton Melon: how 'bout fantasyland?
Posted on 08/24/2011 10:45:19 AM PDT by Dick Holmes
How whole industries disappear
Take the story of Dell Computer [DELL] and its Taiwanese electronics manufacturer. The story is told in the brilliant book by Clayton Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang, The Innovator’s Prescription :
ASUSTeK started out making the simple circuit boards within a Dell computer. Then ASUSTeK came to Dell with an interesting value proposition: “We’ve been doing a good job making these little boards. Why don’t you let us make the motherboard for you? Circuit manufacturing isn’t your core competence anyway and we could do it for 20% less.”
Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. On successive occasions, ASUSTeK came back and took over the motherboard, the assembly of the computer, the management of the supply chain and the design of the computer. In each case Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. However, the next time ASUSTeK came back, it wasn’t to talk to Dell. It was to talk to Best Buy and other retailers to tell them that they could offer them their own brand or any brand PC for 20% lower cost. As The Innovator’s Prescription concludes:
Bingo. One company gone, another has taken its place. There’s no stupidity in the story. The managers in both companies did exactly what business school professors and the best management consultants would tell them to do—improve profitability by focus on on those activities that are profitable and by getting out of activities that are less profitable.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Ditto for designing graphics and video editing. I need a quad core computer, a BIG screen, mouse and keyboard. No way you can do that on a tablet.
In the Korean War, the Chinese Army did a pretty good job of banging our troops up while using whistles, bugles and flares for commo.
It’s painful to contemplate going against them now that they have nearly reached technical parity at least at the troop level.
ANY union? I like my credit union. Union 76 was alright.
As a rabid fan of the iPad, I can assure you desktop computers are far from obsolete.
In a quick look of the history of the MBA, it doesn’t look any different than the usual create a degree, and they will come. Harvard took it on in 1908, and then it gained credibility. It all sounds too much like the “food pyramid” where a diet is imposed without any shred of evidence of being correct, and put into the public’s eye, and on cereal boxes, and voila!, it can not be questioned.
The left’s love of “accreditation” goes too far.
It is also the model used to impose european schooling (actually Prussian schooling) on this country by sending students to europe to get degrees not offered here, come back and get into government and civil jobs, and then THEY want to impose the same system here. That is how we got public schools.
This MBA stuff is not too different.
When our country started out, protective tariff income was 100% of Federal Revenues. \
One can see the story here in the average tariff the last column, and in the % of Federal Revenues, third column.
“Well said Abathar, throw in the use of dual screens for CADD and tablet will never do. Screen size is also of importance for many applications.”
Ah, but fantasize for a moment about using a good solid modelling program like IronCad coupled with a Kinect game controller, 3D glasses and a rapid prototyping 3D printer.
I saw a TV show about oil exploration which demo’d 3D glasses and three engineers walking around & through a visualization of geology going 5 miles deep and scores of miles wide & long.
Think of doing a virtual walk through of the part or machine you are designing. Beats a 36” monitor!
Nice, but you will not get that from a tablet.
Complex supply chains are the basis for a healthy industrial base. Ship the low level stuff off and in a few years or decades they grow up to replace your industrial base. In the short term, great profits were made. In the long term, the overseas guys became your boss and ate your lunch. The fallacy of business schools is that they treat making maximum profit as the only thing that is important. American companies will learn the hard way when Chinese and Indian companies have replaced them because we do not think strategically like our overseas competitors. It took decades to gut our industrial base and it will take decades to fix it. The current leadership better clue in as a 20% unemployed population will be very focused on taking them out and replacing them with people that care about this issue.
Oh grow up! Show me something that is not MADE IN CHINA! Their labor is cheaper so US businesses move there.
Why do we have so many illegals working in the USA? Their labor is cheaper so US business managers hire them.
Kindle can’t be made at a profit in the USA so US managers moved manufacturing to a cheaper labor pool.
US business managers may lack the brass ones to take on the US Labor Unions, so they do the PC thing and “go international.”
Labor unions, like governments are a destructive, predatory influence on the US Economy.
Labor Unions and governments will not stand up and say that they were wrong, they just try all the harder to shut the critics up.
US business management may be cowardly, but they will prosper in spite of unions and governments owned by unions.
Thanks for posting this great article
bookmark
Not anymore, they sold their entire inventory on Sunday. HP marked the tablet down to $99 and they sold like hotcakes. The main problem is they cost $300 to make.
I’ve not used a tablet myself, but it seems more an entertainment curiosity to me.IMHO, tablets are great for consuming content, which is what most people do on their computers. If all you do is watch videos, view web pages, read ebooks (for those who actually do read books) and play "Angry Birds", a tablet is perfect. It's easy to carry, the battery lasts a long time
They are terrible for producing content, which is why PCs aren't going away any time soon.
I hope not, but it will take forever if we keep up the way we have been.
The current leadership better clue in as a 20% unemployed population will be very focused on taking them out and replacing them with people that care about this issue.
Where will those people come from, though? The way our two party system seems to work, the one party gets in power, blames the other for everything, then if things get worse the voters "throw the bums out" and put the other bums right back in. Rinse and repeat.
Yikes!!! Hadn’t heard that.
From Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School"
Dr. Phillip Barbay: ...now, not withstanding Mr. Mellon's input. The next question for us is where to build our factory?
Thornton Melon: how 'bout fantasyland?
It’s really up to us, specifically who we elect to public office, whether we want to be a manufacturing power again.
We’re not now, because people have placed other priorities higher, such as a clean environment and stringent labor laws.
...which is fine until you realize that a THIRD WORLD country (as we’re about to become) cannot afford expensive pollution controls and ridiculous labor laws.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.