A great article on the reason to buy American cars.

[Fluid Power]

As a business owner dependent on manufacturing and living in a state with several Japanese owned plants, this article summerizes the affects it has on the economy.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/pf/Auto_News/Commentary/At_Witz_End_Whats_an_American_Car.S192.A11981.html

Climbing off the soap box.....

Darren

[californiacuda]

Capitalism is ruthless and necessary, the strong and capable must win so that we can be provided with the best, cheapest goods and the successful are rewarded. To move away from this philosophy is to embrace socialism and a certain non reversable decline into mediocrity and eventual economic failure.

Human nature is such that if people are taken care off, they will not work and live off welfare. Once excessive benefits are given the "common worker". they cannot be taken away. Look at the Uaw. The big 3 pay 1500 to 2000 dollars per car for retirement/medical/and bull**** worker production rules.

Gm is the largest health care provider in the US.

The only solution is for the Big3 is to continue to lose money for the next few years until all of their assets are bled off and than they will reorganize and offload their health care etc to the feds, and begin production again and attempt to be competitive.

If the best car for you is US, go for it, if not buy what appeals to you the most. Support the best product at the cheapest price, in the long run we will all benefit.

[Fluid Power]

California,

Nicely put. I agree with what your are saying but I feel that the comments are a little general. From an economic stand point, Japanese, Korea and China are not playing fair in our market. By manipulating their currency, it allows them an unfair advantage in our market place.

I do agree with your comments on GM legecy costs. (the negotiators of the old union contracts just pushed the buck to the later generations.)

The point the article made to me is the US market is only so big, and by buying goods made by foreign companies, in the US, is not really helping the US. Be it cars or toys etc. Auto's are what makes the front page.

Owning an industrial engineering firm that design builds and installs machines for industry, I am faced with this on a weekly basis. I live in Ohio, there is a Honda car plant, motorcycle plant, the Anna engine plant (the largest engine manufacturing plant in the world) and about 150-250 suppliers for these Honda facilities. Having been in business long before the Honda plants were even here, Guess how many engineering jobs I have gotten from any of the plants? If you guessed ZERO you would be correct. It is a small world I live in business wise, and my competitors have had as much success as I have at doing work with them.

You know who gets the work? There is an industrial park that houses some Japanese industrial engineers....They do all of it. To top it off, they buy Japanese parts (pnuematic cylinders, valves, controls etc) to put on the machines. Where do they get parts? From a Japanese parts house, that imports it from Japan. I was in plant this week looking at a safety guard for a new press. This plant does metal stamping for Honda. Where were the presses from? Japan. In fact every peice of equipment in the plant has been brought over from Japan. Care to guess where the dies are made that they use to form the parts? Sony computers, Panasonic TV's in the break room, I could go on...

Me? 99% of the products we represent and use on a daily basis are made in Chicago, Bimba air cylinders, Barrington Automation, Wilkerson FRLs, Parker, etc. All made here.

The article just hits close to home for me. I am not complaining about business, it is very good and I have been fortunate. But, this week, we had 2 plants close that we have done business with every year for the last 15 years..Keystone Powedered Metal (auto related components) and Lancaster Glass......

Darren

[XcYZ]

That's an excellent read.

[hectore3]

Still does not get to the elephant in the room. GM and other domestics in the business built crappy cars for years. The worker on the assembly line did not tell CEO's like Roger Smith etc. to go and buy all kinds of unrelated companies in the 80's and 90's and then lose their shirts. Or should I say the line assembly guys shirts?


I'm looking out the window right now and saw a early Chevy Lumina with huge sheets of "water based" paint peeling off it. What a great introduction to General Motors products eh?

GM,Ford,DCX can build all the AMG's,Z06's,Shelby's they want. But what keeps the lights on are the bread and butter sedans. Which the domestics ceded to the foreign brands decades ago. And it will take decades again to regain what they have lost. Not that any of them give a damn. They are all just looking to the next huge 'Bonus" payment. rant off

[ProTouring442]

Still does not get to the elephant in the room. GM and other domestics in the business built crappy cars for years. The worker on the assembly line did not tell CEO's like Roger Smith etc. to go and buy all kinds of unrelated companies in the 80's and 90's and then lose their shirts. Or should I say the line assembly guys shirts?

Ah, but let's look at a few things our own government has done to help kill the big elephant! Way back around the time of the first couple of gas crunches, our government instituted a bunch of crash standards, as well as emissions standards. Then, because many of the imports got such great mileage, our government exempted those imports from the standards!

I'm looking out the window right now and saw a early Chevy Lumina with huge sheets of "water based" paint peeling off it. What a great introduction to General Motors products eh?

Again, why did GM, Ford, and Chrysler have trouble with the water based paints? Because they were forced to use them to meet emission standars. The way a new car has its emissions tested for federal standards is by measuring ALL of the emissions the car give off, including those made from the curing of glues, plastics, and paint. A car shipped from overseas won't have as hard a time meeting those standards because it cures on the boat.

Add to all of this that, even now when the imports build cars in the US, they manage to skirt paying any taxes, have no Unions, Etc, and you can see why they still have some unfair advantages. On top of this, you have a fickle population that views anything the domestics build as inferior despite any evidence to the contrary.

Funny too that enviromentalists love the imports, especially Japanese imports, this despite the fact that Japan kills more elephants, whales, dolphins, and sharks than any other country in the world.

Shiny Side Up!
Bill

[californiacuda]

If the Japanese manufacturer in Ohio only uses Japanese related companies than they are probably shooting themselves in the foot, By being racist they are probably missing opportunities to obtain widgets at a better price or quality.

In the long run its a good sign, it means that they think they are too good, and they don't have to be competitive. Maybe if their business practice like this continues they may loose a competitive edge.

Maybe if enough people know about racist priactices like this, Honda could loose some good will and maybe a few buyers.

[Fluid Power]

Thanks Bill! You nailed it. The whole basis for moving production to the United States is to prevent the tariffs and taxes being imposed by our government.

The reason that Honda and other Japanese manufacturers use only Japanese parts is to help out their own economy and the companies they work with.

There are several plants that build parts for the big three, (brake/fuel lines come to mind) and the same companies are also suppliers to Japanese plants. There is pricing differences based on the American vs. Japanese, meaning that Gm/Ford etc, pay more for parts than the Japanese companies.

Oh well.....Quoting a bumper sticker, "Buy American, the job you save might be your own."

Darrem

[rwhite692]

One of the main reasons that world class manufacturers, including the Japanese, use plant equipment from one source is because they practice a methodology called Copy Exactly Tracking. This means that, regardless of where in the world a manufacturing center containing equipment is located, That equipment is configured, process documented, operated and maintained in EXACTLY the same way. Having two (or more) methodologies for the same process, spread across multiple manufacturing locations would never produce the exact same quality result, and automatically and dramatically adds cost; one methodology would always be better than the other one(s), in some way. World class manufacturers know that this is the only way they can achieve high consistency / quality across multiple manufacturing operations.

If it's any consolation, when you go to a McDonalds in Yokohama, Taipei, or Kuala Lumpur, the french fry and shake machines are the same exact (US Built) ones used in Ohio....get it? -Rob

[Fluid Power]

Oh Rob, if it was only as simple as your shake machine example. Like I said in my earlier post, I have been doing this longer than the Honda plant has been around. While you are correct about duplicating processes and machines for maintenance and quality, how does that example stand up when the product is not exported? In this case, the manufacturing of the Accord, it stays in the United States. Like wise the other products manufactured by Honda in Ohio. The Ridgeline Pickup, as are some motorcylces and 4-wheelers. Comparing the car business to the Milkshake machine business is hardly on the same scale. I have done work for the Kappus Company (that builds the Milkshake machines) while an impressive place, it employees a fraction of 1% of people associated with the automotive business....

Darren

[rwhite692]

Hi Darren, what I was trying to say is that in this day and age, world class companies doing business outside of their home country are going to outfit their manufacturing plants with equipment and processes that they already know and understand completely, and have one set of engineering resources in place to support. They just aren't going to spend additional engineering time and money to change a known process, no matter how seemingly small, just so that they can put some local resources and suppliers to work. Aside from higher cost, this also causes them to lose a measure of control because they are now vulnerable to the potential failure of at least twice as many process variations, and potential supplier failures, than they started with.

If you would like a larger example, look at a company like Intel. Everywhere that they build a high volume wafer fab plant in the world, they employ hundreds if not thousands of local people. But plant equipment? That's all coming straight from US companies: Applied Materials, KLA Tencor, FormFactor, Novellus, etc just to name a few, and in turn, the US suppliers that support those companies. Intel spends hundreds of millions of dollars in the simple pursuit of having every process be exactly the same and therefore, having a totally predictable process that performs as designed, every time. They can also move processes between facilities as their needs change, at a minimal cost. This flexibility is also what allows them to have quick changeover of their plants between designs as well.

Do you think that a company like Honda is not concerned with rapid changeover and manufacturing flexibility?

Don't get me wrong...there is plenty that I don't like about the way that foreign compaines are allowed to do business in the US. (All of my cars are American, also, by the way) But it's not realistic to expect ANY world class, large scale manufacturing company to do what you are saying. I'm not aware of any large scale manufacturing company (from ANY country) that is going to go into a foreign country, and significantly re-tool and change their known processes that they already know and understand, just to benefit the local economy. Sorry, it's just not going to happen.

I'm done. -Rob

[Fluid Power]

Great points Rob!

I understand your comments. Our government has a lot to do with the way these companies operate here and that is part of the issue. While I do not expect Honda to allow me to do business simply because I am here, it is just amazing how blatent nationalism overides basic engineering issues in some instances. In the few instances that the companies have looked to outside sources for engineering solutions, we have always been confined by using Japanese parts. While it makes sense from a supplier standardization issue, it amazes me when we develop a process with products far superior than what is offered by a Japanese company with proven engineering data. The last example was a cost savings of $800 per actuator with a life span 1.5x longer than the spec'd Japanese product. We built and cycled the machine in house and verified the results. The end result? They bought the machine with the Japanese parts!!!

The timing of the article and this project led to the post.

Business has been very good for me. So do not take my comments as frustrated business owner. We have adapted very well to the loss of automobile jobs and other manufacturing and have added other resources to serve the remaining business in the state.


Darren

[rwhite692]

Hi Darren, Thanks, You raise some good points as well. It certainly is a very tough and competetive marketplace, and not all decisions seem to make a lot of sense. I'm certainly glad we are seeing better and more appealing products coming from the domestic automakers. At the end of the day, good products are what it's all about if you want to keep, and grow any business.:thumbsup: -Rob

[surreyboy]

not sure why their insistence on japanese parts is "racist" but for americans to use and swear by american parts is "patriotic".

[Fluid Power]

Let the records show that neither myself or Rob called the Japanese racist.

Darren

[californiacuda]

If the Japanese manufacturers only use Japanese subs, then that's racist. Same for American or any body else.

My main point is that it is in the best interest of any company to produce their best product for the cheapest price. An exclusion of a good resource for some prejudicial reason is counterproductive to good business practices.

In a competitive marketplace bad business practices can have negative results.

[p_call]

I am an engineer for a Tier I supplier (Stanley Electric) to Honda. I completely agree with what Darren said about the Japanese supporting their own economy. They are very loyal to their own companies. Every engineering group except mine buys Japanese supplied equipment. The only way we get away with it is all of our lines are complete custom applications that need to be built here.

Darren, send me a pm. I would like to find out more about your company, I'm always looking for potential sources.