Lenovo Announces Grand Opening of US Manufacturing Facility 153
Kohenkatz writes "Chinese PC maker Lenovo had a ceremony [Wednesday] to mark the official grand opening of their new manufacturing facility in Whitsett, North Carolina. The 240,000-square-foot facility, located approximately 10 miles east of Greensboro, NC, was already being used as a Logistics Center, Customer Solutions Center, and National Returns Center, and is now also being used for Production. While actual line operations began in January 2013, the facility is on track to reach full operation by the end of June. The facility is equipped to build several types of Think-branded products, including desktops, tablets, and ultrabooks. Note that due to the extensive use of automation, the factory only adds 115 manufacturing jobs at the facility."
Recovering ground (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably aimed at some of the issues Lenovo's been having with people inferring that, because Lenovo's a Chinese company, that the Think line of computers are now unsuitable for business and government purposes due to the possibility of back doors and spyware build directly into firmware/hardware.
Re:Recovering ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Two problems with your theory:
1. You assume a chinese company is immune from influence from chinese government. Lenovo is based in Beijing.
2. You are only considering the product that is assembled within the US and not the components that are imported.
Re: (Score:2)
A computer built in the US and shipped via American carriers is significantly less likely to be tampered with in transit. In China, you're trusting that there are no "stops" between the factory and the dock.
As someone who's had to follow DSD (Defence Signals Directorate) security policies, no OEM software ever survives. For sensitive computers we bought new hard drives and DBAN'd them before running up our SOE. We even had our own management cards (ILO/DRAC) for servers. To make sure the hardware wasn't suspect, random samples were disassembled. It didn't matter where the computer came from, it was made secure by us.
Mandating that the secretaries computers in the department of land management cant be purcha
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It also has to do with costs. A LOT of companies are moving production back to the US due to the cost. Business people are starting to clue into the fact that Chinese production isn't actually all that inexpensive when you factor in R&D, communication with the factories, Q/C, product lifecycle, shipping costs, and just general, overall ROI.
For instance, Whirlpool has made a corporate commitment to move all Chinese manufacturing back stateside. They've already re-engineered a great number of their produc
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget transportation costs. Fuel prices are in no ways stable, so we are hitting the point where it is cheaper for places to set up shop here in the US just so that things made are sent by rail or semi, compared to the cost of shipping them from the factory, then all the work with getting them on a ship and all the diesel the freighter uses.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this happening more and more as fuel costs go up.
Re: (Score:2)
Q/C
This is the real value, as far as I can tell.
I've gotten some good quality stuff from China, but also some really abysmal stuff.
We got a John Deere lawnmower yesterday. The ticket says it was assembled stateside. I know that means the parts came from China (we got a low-end one) but I'm comforted knowing that somebody under a US QA system saw the parts before bolting them in. I'd like to think that any with serious metal voids or poor machining went into the rejects bin. If the finished goods came fr
Re: (Score:2)
I hope it will fix their crap quality. We have T30s that are still fully functional, save for being woefully outdated and bad batteries. On the other hand T61s have had their screens replaced every 18 months or so until the warranty runs out and then they are just unusable.
The T line is unsuitable because the quality went straight to poop.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably, but this is not a panel issue.
The problem with these is the low quality backlights.
Not sure where they get them, but decent QA would have found the issue and selected a different vendor.
Re: (Score:2)
You have not done this in a while have you?
The backlight is sealed into the panel assembly. It used to be you could take out the cold cathodes, but not anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm still using my old 760XL running Windows 98SE.
Re: (Score:2)
You should tell you boss to buy you a new computer, or are you a masochist?
Windows 98SE was bad enough when it was new, it must really suck to use today. Heck, I bet most webpages would take ages to load.
Re: (Score:2)
I never said I was using it as my main desktop computer. The thing is connected to legacy CNC hardware via the parallel port and the laptop isn't even connected to the network. Files are copied via CompactFlash cards and a PCMCIA adapter.
Re: (Score:2)
I still have a 365XD with an old RedHat distro with custom pcmcia-cs code. Still has a 1.5 MB (yes, megabyte) PCMCIA flash disk from Sun drive (not Sandisk), and a combo 10baseT Ethernet card/modem that worked quite well as a smart firewall for a couple years until DSL was available.
I would pay a price premium for something as solid as those old laptops, although I want one with a TPM chip [1], and Macbooks don't have that available.
[1]: The technology cuts two ways, but with BitLocker, I can just enable
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, hell... (Score:5, Funny)
It's actually happened...
Now Chinese are outsourcing to us
Re: (Score:2)
It's actually happened...
Now Chinese are outsourcing to us
This is the first thing that came to my mind. :-) Mind you, you could have ended up a lot worse: The Chinese could have outsourced to India and the Indian subcontractor could have outsourced it to the US. *That* would have been a sight.
Re: (Score:2)
And then the U.S.A. outsources the whole thing north, eh?
Re:Oh, hell... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're outsourcing to robots really, not to us. It just happens to be convenient for the robots to live in North Carolina in this case, probably due to regulatory issues in some governments/businesses over purchasing Chinese-made computers.
Re: (Score:2)
They're outsourcing to robots really, not to us. It just happens to be convenient for the robots to live in North Carolina in this case, probably due to regulatory issues in some governments/businesses over purchasing Chinese-made computers.
I'd imagine that this facility probably helps with turnaround time on custom orders as well. Popping in CPUs and option cards isn't terribly demanding work; but if you give customers the option to choose exactly what CPU/RAM/cards combination they want you either have to be really good at guessing ahead of time, willing to quote lead times based on container-ship speeds, or relatively close to the customer.
Re: (Score:2)
The interesting thing is that robotics are something the US is very good at. Vehicle production is mostly automated.
Of course, sometimes robotics get hair-pulling in ironic ways. I was trying to find a maker that could build me the mechanism for a raw hard drive autochanger (where it would take hard disks without any enclosures and mount/dismount them), and the only game in town was Siemens, and they were asking $10,000 a unit.
I still wouldn't mind making a hard disk library that didn't have to have speci
Re: (Score:2)
If you want shovels of salt in your food, come to Canada. Some of our stuff is even worst in sodium content.
On the bright side, every time I go to the grocery store it feels like a treasure hunt "Hey, look! I found something with only 10mg of sodium per serving!"
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully they can consistently make a system board that will last for more than 2 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Despite all the hype of recent years China's exports have not surpassed the US manufacturing output.
Re: (Score:2)
It's actually happened...
Now Chinese are outsourcing to us
[Insert "In Soviet Russia" joke here]
Re: (Score:2)
Now that we've driven wages down, destroyed the unions and saddled our youth with hundreds of thousands of dollars of college debt so they're scared to death and desperate to take any job, we've finally made it cost effective for China to bring their Foxconn work camps here.
Progress!
Sounds like a lonely job (Score:5, Funny)
If the 115 employees all work the same shift and are uniformly distributed, then each would have 2086 square feet of floor space. That's a minimum spacing of 45.7 feet (13.9 meters) between employees!
Correction: 45.7 feet between the _center of mass_ of each employee. So if we further assume the employees are spherical ...
Re:Sounds like a lonely job (Score:5, Funny)
Based on what I see from the average american that seems like a totally reasonable assumption.
My guess is that much of this will be automated and the humans highly concentrated at steps that cannot be automated for one reason or another.
Re: (Score:2)
Unions require employes to have breaks, lunch time and vacation. Since the automated equipment was willing to work 24/7, they had to hire 115 people because the law requires factories to have at least one floor employee for every 2086 square feet of floor space.
Re: (Score:2)
The law requires the first two as well. Ideally it would require vacations as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Ideally it would require vacations as well.
It does, here. And most of the civilised world, I believe.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you are coming up with the maximum distance, not minimum .The minimum space is if management packed everybody into a closet and put a bear outside so the employees won’t mess with the robots.
I would guess a large chunk of the factory floor is given over to inventory – either coming or going so employees would be backed slightly closer. I also assume each employee maintains multiple robots so they are probably not working elbow to elbow.
Re: (Score:2)
So if we further assume the employees are spherical ...
A much more reasonable assumption with American employees than with Chinese.
You know... (Score:4, Insightful)
min wage is higher and saftey costs are higher (Score:2)
In the usa you can't get away with lot of stuff that been happening at foxconn.
Health care should be at the government level in t (Score:2)
Health care should be at the government level in the usa and not on the works or employer. Even then they still have to have liability for safety and have and can get fined.
Hooray! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
A small amount of the jobs. Expect maybe 10% of the jobs back, automation has made the rest unneeded, if you did factory work.
You know the US has hit rock bottom.... (Score:2)
You know the US has hit rock bottom when the Chinese start opening factories here because of cheaper labour. :)
Great (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It depends... Robots break, and someone clued enough to know what components need replaced can be fairly difficult to find. With computers, it is fairly easy... something on the motherboard dead, pull the board. HDD dead, pull that. With a robotic install, just ripping the robots out of the factory floor and replacing them if there is a hiccup isn't going to work.
Automation eats jobs, but I don't think it is a bad thing. I'd rather see a robot be turning screws 24/7 than having to force a human get RSI
Re: (Score:2)
Manufacturing - a shitty way to attract jobs (Score:2)
Employment in manufacturing is down against steady and healthy growth of the industry in the US due to automation. If you open a manufacturing plant you're going to get a small number of jobs for an operation of such size and cost, maybe some local robot purchases if you're lucky. If you want jobs, buy some time by finding an industry that can't be automated so easily. We don't rely on farms or textile plants for jobs anymore but nobody got the memo about manufacturing in general. I know it has that nice fo
Re: (Score:1)
Well that's the hope.
A fully automated factory would be totally awesome.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:lets try to get rid of the 115 jobs as cost 2 h (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll supervise.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually the next step would be to replace capitalism, as it no longer makes sense in a post-scarcity society.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Without the poor and middle class, you can't have rich people. It's not strictly about money, it's about exclusivity - and money is an easy way to be exclusive. Capitalism in a post-scarcity society is all about maintaining class in a more traditional way, and (almost) nobody gives up what is "theirs" to others - especially those who value exclusivity and are currently at the top of the economic food chain.
Re: (Score:2)
Would they not want more exclusivity?
By that I mean us peons will be driving robot made cars, but the 1%s will demand only hand crafted one off cars.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment.
Too bad it was a robot-made hammer hitting the nail.
Re: (Score:3)
Capitalism, more than any other system, makes possible the change of economic prosperity of worthy individuals, where "worthy" means "provides things other people want."
That's inflammatory and misleading language, which implies that the rich are suppressing the others. It assumes that rich and poor can only be used as relative terms; that there can be no absolute standard of rich and poor.
In a just, productive society, the accumulation of person
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't that be meritocracy, rule of the worthy? Unlike capitalism which is rule of the rich?
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism, more than any other system, makes possible the change of economic prosperity of worthy individuals, where "worthy" means "provides things other people want."
Rupert Murdoch used this idea recently to argue that capitalism was the moral system.* "Worthy" is a red herring here as it carries righteous overtones. Since it is defined in the same sentence we can rewrite as;
Capitalism, more than any other system, makes possible the change of economic prosperity of individuals who provide things other people want."
Now it isn't self-declaring as high-minded. From outside we can then ask, is this fair? Maybe, maybe not, but maybe it's the fairest system we have. On
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism is not about exclusivity, it's about private ownership of the mean of productions (and implied is that such ownership is limited to a small group). A different system might still have stratification and class distinctions, but it won't be capitalism.
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism is an economic system, not a political system. It can affect the latter (in that undue concentration of wealth becomes political power in and of itself), but that is not what capitalism is "about".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no way to replace capitalism or free markets without using force and the threat of violence to scare every single human being into submission and eliminate those who won't submit.
Then, you're right back to the system of haves(the enforcers) and have-nots(everyone else) that you were trying to replace.
Re: (Score:2)
What do we do went human labour is a product that no one needs to buy? Why worry about the big evil socialist government stealing the product of your labour when your labour isn't worth anything?
Re: (Score:2)
"Need" and "want" are different things. Some people will always want human labor or its results. "Hand crafted" always has its market.
So many errors in one sentence! Labor will never be worthless. The underlying purpose of socialism is not to steal the product of your labor. It isn't even to steal your labor (slave
Re: (Score:2)
Some people could choose to buy "hand crafted" and some people could choose to make it. That doesn't mean it would be anything like the situation we have now when virtually everyone has to sell their labour to someone (slavery).
"It is to have total control over all aspects of everyone."
This is the first I've heard of this. Can you explain further.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, one day your labor will have negative value since it will cost more to keep you alive to work than a robot would cost to do the work.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather eke out a living that way than live life as a drone in an anonymous apartment with a government approved # of square meters, a government approved food ration, a government approved energy ration, etc. etc.
A post-scarcity society does not need a government to enforce socialism, it will just happen on its own (but it will need a government to enforce property rights that underline capitalism).
Re: (Score:3)
The only alternative to the dreary yoke of capitalism which you can imagine is force, threat, violence, and submission? But capitalism is already the concentration of wealth into the hands of the privileged.
Capitalism is ownership of the means of production by the privileged few. Socialism is ownership of the means of production by a faceless, merciless central state bureacracy in the name of the people taken as a mass. There is a better way. Distributism is ownership of the means of production spread as wi
Re: (Score:3)
Do you think that "capitalism" itself or some cabal of elites within a system of capitalism is what pits people against each other? I tend to think of that as partially a result of hard-wired behavior. If you start out with the premise that you need to change human nature, or change everyone's viewpoint as a pre-condition to creating a better system, I think that entails force and violence or several generations of effort.
I like your idea of distributed ownership and a more "bottoms up" production system.
Re:lets try to get rid of the 115 jobs as cost 2 h (Score:4, Interesting)
I make a distinction between capitalism, which rewards privilege to a large extent, and free enterprise, which rewards industriousness and talent, though itself it makes no provision for hardship.
I am not so sure I see human attitudes in quite so much the dark light that you do. For example, the majority of people will hold the post office door for you rather than let it slam in your face, give you directions rather than ignore you, tip service givers, say please and thank you, give to organized charity as well as occasionally hand a twenty to someone in the gas station with a sad story, etc - not to mention call 911 for an accident victim. OTOH, most people see their business life in a completely different light than their personal life.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no way to replace capitalism or free markets without using force and the threat of violence to scare every single human being into submission and eliminate those who won't submit.
That's not true. The only thing that makes capitalism possible is society- and state-recognized (and enforced) private property. Which is to say, the government will intervene on your behalf and enforce your claim of ownership on some piece of land or a share in the company that you have never even set a foot in. Rescind that recognition and protection, and capitalism dies overnight.
Re: (Score:2)
Not necessarily. Individuals can still claim ownership of land or companies, and defend that ownership themselves with guns.
It's not exactly stable ownership if a guy with a bigger gun can come in and take it away from you at any time. For an example of what economics looks like with such an arrangement, see Somalia.
Land ownership is natural in any agricultural society (if you work the land, planting seeds and maintaining it, then it makes sense that you own the land)
Exactly - if you work the land. In other words, if you occupy it, or otherwise use it. But in our society, you can buy a plot of land ten states away, and it's still yours - and if someone trespasses, the state will protect your property.
It's not even the land that's an issue here, it's means of production in general
Re: (Score:2)
Amazing, isn't it? No matter what new system humanity dreams up, what ideals it attests to embrace...it all ultimately degenerates into a single form: that of the master / slave relationship. It's almost like it's a universal constant.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is no way to replace capitalism or free markets without using force and the threat of violence to scare every single human being into submission and eliminate those who won't submit.
Then, you're right back to the system of haves(the enforcers) and have-nots(everyone else) that you were trying to replace.
Not true,
Social systems get replaced when they no longer make sense. Which capitalism (completely separate idea to the free market) wont in a post scarcity society. In this scenario, the only way to prevent the capitalism from being replaced is to use force and violence to keep the old system in place.
Also stop trying to confuse capitalism with the free market. Capitalism can survive and even thrive in controlled markets (see: China) and is more often than not a control on the market itself (see: Mono
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We are not about to step into a post-scarcity society, so that's really irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2)
"The Midas Plague"?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Those grease fittings, bearings, valves, flow meters, circuit breakers, tool dies, taps, drills, and other things don't service themselves you know...
For now. Biological life shows that having a closed, self-sustaining complex system perpetuating itself by mere flow of energy and raw materials is not only conceivable but actually a reasonable proposition.
Re: (Score:2)
But it's amorphous and has no real goal, and is fragile and has a tendency toward chaos rather than order. It also functions because it has no designer, as opposed to the ordered design of a factory or other ostensibly-closed system that has a specific purpose.
Re: (Score:2)
and has a tendency toward chaos rather than order.
I thought that just about everything in this universe has a tendency towards chaos.
It also functions because it has no designer, as opposed to the ordered design of a factory or other ostensibly-closed system that has a specific purpose.
Well, in that case, it will either have to be self-adjusting or will require some limited maintenance on the organization level (as in a few people steering the system in a certain direction by means of programming, not maintenance as in getting your hands dirty).
Re:lets try to get rid of the 115 jobs as cost 2 h (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it automate servicing the machines that build the other machines? Those grease fittings, bearings, valves, flow meters, circuit breakers, tool dies, taps, drills, and other things don't service themselves you know...
Not yet. But they will. It used to be that we needed humans to take parts from place to place in a factory, and do stuff to them. Then taking stuff from place to place was automated, the parts not only come down a belt or a chute but they get placed and fixed for the next step as well. The same will happen with the machines as well. A robot will trundle around and replace big compartmentalized components of the machines at first, with the big components sent out for rebuild. Later, the robots will reach into the modules and replace parts like bearings, but they'll do the job much better and faster than any human. Instead of holding a puller in their hand, they'll wear a hand which is a puller/pusher, though they may supply bearings to it with a humanlike hand so that it can easily handle a broad variety of sizes and styles.
Tooling changes are already made by machine. It won't be long before the tooling is also restocked by a machine. We only don't do it now because we have really amazing tooling that lasts for some time, and there's not sufficient cost savings in it. It's cheaper to pay humans to run around and do these jobs because there are not standardized robots capable of doing them. Barring global cataclysm it's only a matter of time :)
Re: (Score:2)
And if it's a machine, who or what will service that machine?
And that machine?
All serious aside, my original comment was intended partially as a joke. Obviously the better the original design of a machine the less service it will need in its intended lifespan, but as humans that design things are not infalliable, there inevitably will be things that are missed. We sent the most expensive mirror in human history at the time of its c
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, then who'll service the machine that services the machines?
And if it's a machine, who or what will service that machine?
And that machine?
I dunno, who treats your doctor? And your doctor's doctor?
Re: (Score:2)
All serious aside, my original comment was intended partially as a joke.
The best jokes are always based on the truth, though, so if you have a particularly good joke you're probably near an insightful comment... or you could be, if someone took the time to leave it. Sometimes, I do.
The serious answer to your question is that for a while these things will go out to human rebuilders in centralized locations, but eventually the machines will be standardized to the point that rebuilding is also automated; if the rebuilders are built out of standard components, then no humans need d
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually where most of the new jobs are going - the machines generally need daily maintenance and service and handling when things are just a bit off. But for the most part, all the dull boring jobs that took thousands of Chinese workers to do are replaced by robots.
Manufacturing is
Re: (Score:1)
That was Steve Jobs' original vision at NeXT --- a fully-automated factory where raw materials came in one end and finished computers the other. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/24/business/all-next-inc-s-plant-lacks-is-orders.html [nytimes.com]
The problem of course is how to sustain people who aren't / can't work. For a pessimistic view on this look at Manny by Marshall Brain: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Have a link to back that assertion up? I've not seen any Thinkpads in the past year or two which suck; the opposite is true: they all seem to be of surprisingly rugged quality.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Toshiba and Sony, quality laptops? Why do you want to kill us with laughter so early in the morning?
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2020725/apple-macbooks-lead-in-laptop-features-and-reliability.html [pcworld.com]
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-survey-asus-and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/ [engadget.com]
So...shut the fuck up. I fix and sell laptops at my shop. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a very good idea of what I'm talking about but my experience is not recent. We used to have nothing but troubles with Toshiba and Sony laptops.
I do agree on the HPs though, I have two friends with HP laptops and they're nothing but trouble on both the low end and the high end models.
So, shut the fuck up yourself.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
[Citation needed]
Re: (Score:2)
China did buy one of the largest hog farm companies in the US, so in a way, that wish is granted, as they now provide our bacon.