Manufacturing Schedules in Taiwan 3

[rselby7]

The small company I work for is working with a manufacturing group in Taiwan. We are having serious problems keeping things on schedule with "time zone delays" and "language barrier" being blamed for most of the issues. The company we are working with is fairly westernized with the owners having lived and schooled in the US, but their vendors are not. They get upset and delay/demand price raises when you ask what they can do, or if they can do what they are doing better even if it is easier. Our projects are not huge in volume approx. 20k/year. When I envision a (highly simplified) US/western product development process, I see it going through idea, modeling/analysis, prototype, fixing bugs identified in proto, tooling, 1st build and introduction. The generalized Taiwan process seems to be make prototypes until it works, make it and document it only if forced to. Yes, I am being a bit cynical.
Have others had issues keeping schedules with Taiwan/China? Does anyone know of any cultural (corporate or national) insights to getting things done? Any recommendations for how to speed up a project?

Thanks,
R. Selby
Western US

 

[profengmen]

Yup,
Been there... been to Taiwan to try and fix the problem too. We spent most of our time touring the foundry and then touring the machine shop. Then we drank a lot of tea and smoked strange cigarettes. When we finally finished with all the crap we spend an hour discussing one small machining operation that they just could not get through their head... after a lot of head nodding, and assurances that they understood the problem, we visited some Buddas, ate some chinese food and went home. After six months of the same old crap, we cancelled our business relationship and had the parts made domestically.

There are good shops in Asia. If you pick a dog from the get go, you are not going to get much of a resolution. One of the problems is that they don't want to mess with small quantities. When you do find one that will handle small lots, they are not very good at what they do and you pay for it in the long run. They mean well, they really do, but we found out that the problems just never seem to go away.

Remain cynical, get ready to bite the bullet and find a new vendor. You should have had a contingency plan in your supply chain to deal with overseas manufacturing any how...for example, we always have a set of domestic tooling on hand. We are always ready to shift the supply to other vendors before a shortage hurts us.

On the other side, we have had very good luck with the China vendors. They make prototypes in small quantities and send them to us for approval before they start production. They fix their problems and charge us very little for our changes. The castings from China are actually better than our castings from the USA, but they are not any cheaper.

My bet is that your problem is not going to go away, the best thing to do is bail out and find a new shop.

 

[flamby]

I do not know what do you do but perhaps in India, you will have no language barriers and costs might be similar. But I am sure you must have already known this.

 

[WangChong]

Well, I agree with profengmen.

I worked for a US company in Shanghai before. We had a vendor in China makeing products for us. Many problems happened.

The first thing is that, with same quality, the price is not much lower than in US, or not as low as we hoped. It is strange, but it is the fact.

And delay is always a big problem.

To choose a good or proper vendor is not a easy thing in China.
The big state-owned factories have good equipments and can provide good quality at relatively low prices, but also they do not care small quantities.
The small factories can do everything you want, no matter how many times you change your drawing and other tiny strange requirements, but the quality is not so good and there is always a delay.
I found that the factories in Shanghai owned by Taiwanese are a little bit better. They make things carefully, so the quality is good, and they keep promises ( I do not mean other people in China do not keep promises, I myself is Chinese ), so there is little delay. And they can accept small quantities, but usually at the beginning phase. But the price is always higher than we expected, so we have to negotiate again and again to cut it down before production.

Sometimes it is a matter of luck in finding good vendor.

However, at last the result we got was not so good. Maybe our US designing engineers changed their drawings really too many times, and always.

We delayed our plan again and again and again, and then I left. Maybe they are still working on the project now.

 

[unclesyd]

Quantity does make a difference.

Strange things just happened to my friend in the fastener business.
He ordered a container of fasteners from Taiwan/China and got a delivery date of mid June, 2005. He queried the manufacturer about another container of mixed fasteners, the delivery date for both came back the first of May, 2005. Expanding on this approach he queried the manufacture on a third container. It worked, the delivery date for all three is the first of April, 2005.
He has gotten the essentially same results through a Korean supplier. Increase the quantity and improve the deliver date.

 

[ornerynorsk]

Doing business in Asia is a bit like waltzing with someone who wants to polka. If you have a business partner that is not meeting agreed upon specs (some short delays are routine) they will not come out and tell you openly about problems. Maybe means no, probably means no, "I think so" means no. This is the culture. You need to realize it is a culture of face, meaning they will not lower their own dignity by telling you something that you don't wish to hear. Pull the plug, and on to the next company. The companies who have achieved a level of organization, structured procedure, reliability, and capability/capacity will be apparant from the word GO. Doesn't matter if it's Taiwan, China, Philippines, etc. I've dealt with all of them, and it's more or less the same. Study the culture of the country where you are doing business, visit there if possible. it will be of great insight and value. Good Luck!

 

[plasgears]

I have been critical of doing business in Taiwan ever since hearing about the shoe project where LH were shipped in one container and RH in another.

Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but there are several breaches of communications that can occur on the Pacific rim. Yes, try India.

 

[ornerynorsk]

India has a ways to go to meet Taiwan's quality, generally speaking.

 

[AeroEng33]

i was born in taiwan came to the US 20 years ago and i speak fluent mandarin and english. 2 years ago i visited plants in taiwan and china to assess their capaibilites for projects.

Taiwan: Culturally, and technically much easier to deal with because they are more Westernized. Should look for bigger and more established companies to work.

China: VERY VERY difficult to work with. May be able to produce good machined parts but bad work ethics can ruin the business. They really haven't caught up to the 21st century yet. Going thru the wrong technical person can be hell. They are used to cutting corners, playing politics, they only care about profit and will make false promises to land the contract. Better luck with Taiwanese owned factories China. As they are more used to dealing with foreigners.

 

[kehuawu]

Not all Chinese factories are so poor like what it is in your mind, though your experiences speak for that.

There ARE good factories understanding the business rules, what their customers value and those important for the business.

There are so many Chinese products all over the world also says something for that.

The main problem is you did not find a good one, or it is difficult for good factories to find you.

Ken

 

[HVAC68]

Have you tried India ? The quality levels are excellent, especially for exports from India. There's lot of benefits of earning foreign exchange and hence companies put in more efforts than they would do otherwise for a product to be sold in the local market.

Good luck.


HVAC68

 

[Heckler]

What has happened to MADE IN THE USA! I work for a small company and the owners are hell bent on never sending stuff off shore. Even though a lot of their competitors do. I guess they make money....I still have a job.

Best Regards,

Heckler

Do you trust you intuition or go with the flow?

 

[airhose]

Not totally off-topic here...
I manage a CAD (Pro-E WFII) group for a large privately-owned international company. We operate in the US (C.S.T.) and build extremely complex Pro-E models of our product. I have been tasked with developing a "24/7" CAD modeling strategy that will leverage some of our off-shore assets that are 13 hrs. ahead of us to compress development timeline. The general idea is that we work on the model during the day and then hand it off to our partners for further development during our off-hours, then when we get back in the following morning grab the model and continue. In nutshell it'll look like "CAD gnomes" came in and helped us out.

Has anyone had any experience with this methodology +/- ?

 

[dozer]

Airhose,

Sounds like an accident going some place to happen.

 

[Heckler]

I have a friend that works for Sun Microsystems and they are currently involved in that type of asset leveraging. I guess I tend to see this as an opportunity for a companies designs duplicated. I heard of some instances where a company sends designs offshore to be manufactured and the next thing some Chinese company is creating a "knock off". I worked for a machine tool manufacture that was in a legal battle with a French company that stole one of there patented designs....extremely costly

Best Regards,

Heckler

Do you trust your intuition or go with the flow?

 

[Jhewes]

You folks that trade overseas are getting just what you deserve.. My favorite story of doing business with those foreign devils goes like this.

A competitor of ours tried a Chinese die caster for gasoline nozzle bodies and swivel components. Four months later a Chinese firm opened up selling gas nozzles and swivels that looked very similar to the proto types the company had sent to China only they sold for a third the cost.

While all manufacturers of these products lost money in the short term typical Chinese quality previaled and our market share returned. Eventually like all things Chinese quality will catch up but for know most of our customers have a bad taste in their mouths for Chinese.

 

[FalsePrecision]

Airhose,
My previous job, I was QC engr for what you describe. Didn't work at all. Absolute nightmare. I won't name the country responsible (I don't want to start a war of words here)

 

[JTMcC]

I'm curious, how much would the same thing cost if made in the US?

JTMcC.

 

[Jhewes]

JTMcC

That would depend on how well it was managed. Lean initiatives, TQM, TPM and automation when well managed can allow a company to compete with low labor costs.

The owner of a company called last night interested in hiring my services. He wanted to hire me to fix their quality problems. It appears they moved to Mexico two years ago and had 65% failure rate in their product along with only marginal efficiency at 45%. The new equipment they had bought for this Mexican factory was breaking down at abnormal rates.

I responded by asking him where he was born. He said somewhere in Ohio. I told him that you can not change a culture regardless how much you think it might save you. I also stated my integrity prohibitted me from working for American traitors and that he was only reaping what he had sewn.

I have always wondered had Deming not gone to Japan would the US still be the leader in electronics.

 

[Heckler]

Someone had to listen to Dr. Deming! I bet the labour unions wish they had.


Dr. Deming is the ultimate of the quality gurus. He developed, implemented, and made work many of the ideas that we currently use in quality. The story of his going to Japan and teaching the Japanese about quality has become legend. But, what did he teach? What are the nuggets of information we should remember?
The first of his teachings is the fourteen points of quality management:

1.Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.

2.Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.

3.Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.

4.End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.

5.Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

6.Institute training on the job.

7.Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.

8.Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

9.Break down barriers between departments.

10.Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

11.a. Eliminate work standards on the factory floor. b. Eliminate management by objective.

12.a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker ofhis right to pride of workmanship. b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship.

13.Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.

14.Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everyone's job.1
The second of his nuggets of information is his seven deadly diseases:

1.Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business, and provide jobs.

2.Emphasis on short term profits.

3.Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review.

4.Mobility of management; job hopping.

5.Management by use only of visible figures, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.

6.Excessive medical costs.

7.Excessive costs of liability.2
The final teaching of Deming is the system of Profound Knowledge. The system of profound knowledge is made up of four areas: (1) knowledge about variation, (2) psychology, (3) theory of knowledge, and (4) appreciation for a system. This system is covered in some detail in the paper, "Theory of Knowledge on a Bumper Sticker: Deming's Abstruse Aphorisms," ASQC 49th Annual Quality Congress Proceedings, ASQC, Milwaukee, WI, pp. 92-97. It is also covered in Deming, W.E., (1993), The New Economics: For Industry, Government, Education, Mass. Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

The system of profound knowledge basically has three statements: (1) There is no true value of anything, (2) experience teaches nothing, (3) management is prediction.


Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 2.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
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Do you trust your intuition or go with the flow?