Bloomberg Business Week
Made In China?
Manufacturing and the
Future
March 11,
2015 | Andrea Mackenzie
Think of a factory. What do you
picture? Machinery? Workers? Assembly lines? Is it grimy and dark or is it
clean and bright? Where are most of the things that you use made?
Manufacturing. It means to make,
to build, on a large scale. Everything you own was made somewhere, and most of
it was manufactured in a factory.
But factories today are very
different than factories a hundred years ago.
Manufacturing is very different
than mining, farming, or forestry. Cutting down a tree is not manufacturing.
Taking some wood and forming it into a wooden spoon is manufacturing.
Where is most of the world's
manufacturing happening today? Can you guess. Think of your clothing labels.
Think of where cars are made, electronic, clothes, and candy. Where is it all
made? Is there any manufacturing in the city that you live in?
Look at the graph below. What
does it tell you about manufacturing today? What kinds of products do you think
are made in China? What kinds of products do you think are made in the USA?
What about Japan? Canada?
More products are manufactured in
China than anywhere else in the world. And products are manufactures on a
massive scale.
Foxconn
Foxconn
is a company that runs factories. They make things. They make things for other
companies. They can pretty much make anything. You know that iPod that says
"Designed in California, made in China"? The iPod wasn't manufactured
by Apple. It was manufactured in China by Foxconn. Apple made the plans and
Foxconn puts it together. Foxconn can make half a million iPhones everyday. They
also manufactures for PlayStation, Wii, Blackberry, and Xbox. Foxconn has
factories in countries all over the world, and all in all, about 40% of all
electronics are made by Foxconn. Foxconn's largest factories are in China. The
main one is called Foxconn City. It's a huge complex with 15 factories,
apartments for workers, a fire department, a grocery store, a bank and a
hospital. Most workers at Foxconn City live on site, and put in 12 hour shifts,
6 days a week.
Over
300 000 people work at Foxconn city.
Economies of Scale
Things
become cheaper when thousands of them are manufactured. Why is that? Think
about it. If a hundred workers all work together to make one iPhone, the cost
of that one phone will need to pay for all those workers. But if a hundred
workers make 100 000 iPhones, then all those phones added together will need to
pay for all those workers. Large scale manufacturing makes things affordable
for people who want to buy them. Cars, electronics, clothing, anything really,
is all cheaper because of large scale manufacturing.
Controversies
But
there are problems with this type of manufacturing. What might they be? Why are
so many of these factories located in countries like China? What is different there
than here? Think about it.
