posted March 12, 2003 01:39 PM               

China has targeted the plastics business. They have purchased hundreds, if not thousands of extruders. They now have several companies making extruders from the technology gained from these purchases.

Many extruded items can now be purchased from China at near the cost of the raw materials available in the US. That includes import duties and shipping. Your company will be forced to lower its prices to compete, or just buy the items from China and resell. The production department will suffer. I see it happening all over the plastics business.

Other parts of the plastics business are fighting back with productivity improvements. This is not the case in the extrusion business where apathy reigns supreme.

The US government is not going to step in and save you! Your company administration is not going to save you, to them extrusion is an uncontrollable mystery. You must take the initiative and save your jobs.

Productivity is one cure. It can be had through process development, process design, product design, labor incentives, continuos improvement programs, training, computer modeling, and so on. I just don’t see many of these tools used in the extrusion industry. These tools need to be proposed and managed through the production department.

The help you need is available at this web site, and other resources. Your future is in your hands.

posted March 15, 2003 05:13 PM               

There, they (experianced) work for about US$ 250 a month, have nationalized healthcare, and are provided a place to live in, and food to eat from their employer's. Take away about US$ 50/month, that leaves them with US$ 200/month to spend freely. Tax rate there is about 7% for the average factory worker.

There simply is no way that we can economically compete, as more and more American companies are sourcing or even building plants there. There is indeed a rapid movement there, and they have their own oil and gas. Resin polymerization as well, with vast new projects being struck almost on a daily basis.

I agree that there is no hope in rallying up anybody in Congress to change things, as our Trade Surplus with China has reached a record level.

They love American Technology, and have been accused in the past for stealing much of it. However, they are now a part of the WTO and must abide by it's rules and regulations.

A Danish Company LEGO has successfully won a legal battle and China literally has dismanteled the Chinese Plant where LEGO knock off's were being produced. I believe this only happened due to the publicity from the Danes around the world.

However, how to compete against low wages, as well as China Federal owned Shipping Companies?

The cost of shipping from China is low, where the cost of shipping to China is high (as we use other vessels).

I would not be opposed to charge higher tariffs on inbound sea traffic, but this then becomes very political.

You are indeed correct that China has indeed targeted the Plastics Industry here.

So Tom C., what do we do - other than raise this fact of life - to all Americans, when most Americans purchase the goods sent here - because they are cheaper. And you know as I know that there is some merchandise that is shoddy, but other stuff that is very high in quality, as they are improving quality more and more so.

posted March 15, 2003 06:52 PM               

The answer is productivity and technological developement. If one worker can produce as much as 20 Chinese, then your labor cost would be less than the Chinese.

This is not impossible. How many Chinese would it take to make a microprocessor to match Intel. Maybe millions would not be able to do it.

Education, training, expereince, capital investment, R&D, risk, and other components feed into productivity and development.

Other concepts such as; short run manufacturing; just in time; and so on, when properly marketed can lock out the low cost option.

My big beef is that the extrusion industry does little productivity development, and generally ignores technical development. Partly this is because few have a good grasp of the more complex aspects of extrusion. You can't see what is going on inside the extruder, so how can you control it?

In other chemical industries measurement, modeling and simulation are used extensivly by chemical engineers to control processes where they can't see exactly what is going on. In extrusion this is a concept that has basically been abandoned or ignored.

Since generally there is no well developed special technology and investment in extrusion, the technically unsophisticated can become competitive quickly and easily. When you add in a low labor cost, the game is lost.

Therefore my call for the extrusion production and process engineers and managers to lead the way to productivity improvement. Their job are the one at most risk right now.

posted March 15, 2003 09:43 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by zabielski:

They love American Technology, and have been accused in the past for stealing much of it. However, they are now a part of the WTO and must abide by it's rules and regulations.

---

posted March 18, 2003 07:48 AM               

China - being a part of the WTO MUST abide by all rules and regulations - including honoring Patents.

However, if the Cryovac patent was not filed in Asia, then Cryovac looses. To be protected in any Country, you have to file there to begin with, not "after-the-fact.