Why are all cool machines from Germany or France? 10

[curiousmechanical]

Due to the nature of my work, I get to travel around quite a bit and visit many company's facilities. I see a lot of very complex automated machines (very cool stuff) all over the place. Mostly high speed injection molding (making plastic bottles), filling, and packaging machinery. Everytime I ask someone at these companies where the machines come from, their answer seems to always be "from Germany" or "from France" for some reason. Now I know the Germans have an excellent reputaion for engineering. Does France as well? Why isn't the U.S designing and building these machines? Are we not as advanced? Or we more expensive? I know we probibly DO design SOME of them, but it just doens't seem like many.

Does anyone have any insight on this?

 

[MikeHalloran]

I know some people who are in the custom fabric business in a big way. If, for instance, you want to equip a ship or a theatre or a hotel with seatcovers, bedspreads, and walls with matching fabrics all having your logo woven in, they can make it happen.

They used to own a big fabric mill in the US. I asked them why they closed it. The answer surprised me, because it had nothing to do with direct cost.

The problem they faced was that the factory kept screwing up. Orders were wrong, or late, or both, and whenever they, the _owners_, asked for something a little unusual, they got a hassle, and a thousand reasons why it couldn't be done.

Now, they have fabrics made all over the world. Despite the geographic challenges, they can and do get total custom work done on very short notice, to everyone's complete satisfaction. The only downside is that they are always traveling, in order to maintain relationships and develop new ones. When they do it right, and they usually do, they don't even see the finished product until it's installed.

They kept that factory open far longer than they should have, because they wanted to keep it open, and keep the jobs in the US. They just flat couldn't do it, because the factory just flat couldn't do the job.


As much as anyone else here in The Colonies, I wish that sort of thing weren't happening, but it is, and not just within the textiles industry.

Blame a drug- addled, under- educated, under- skilled workforce. Blame short- sighted governments at all levels. Blame the Harvard Business School. Blame television. Blame a breakdown in our moral fabric. Blame ... us.

You can't blame the Germans or the French; they're just taking up the slack we've left in global competition.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[GMIracing]

Just staying on your topic of manufacturing machinery, yes Germany and France are the big players in the Industry. I am sure you can find some of the same automated machines from a US based supplier, but it most likely didn’t have all the bells and whistles that the EU models had.

In general, your question is a good one, and would be a great conversation over a few pints at the pub. Why are some countries products considered superior? I hate to summarize, but the question really is a large and complex one:

Germany, like you said, has a good reputation for engineering. It is my opinion that this is a false reputation, and I feel the reason the German products have a good reputation is the “craftsmen” that actually put these assemblies together in production. Just to be a simple line worker involves a detailed apprenticeship, of which thousands apply, a hundreds are accepted, and a few are finally hired full time. These guys do excellent work, and as such are well rewarded for their work. In a country where unemployement is "high", they are not going to throw it away by coming to work on drugs, but they do sell beer in the plants.

Swiss have the reputation of making the best stamping machines in the world, and they usually have the price tag that follows that statement. I would also expect that this is related to their education system of their workers.

I don’t have much experience with France, but I expect that they also have a good requirement of the education of the common workers.

Now, let’s get into the US. This is the country where bigger and more is always better and quality just needs to be “good enough”. Management hires the best people you can find for $5 an hour to hammer and bang parts together, when they aren’t sniffing glue in the warehouse. These workers are never fired by management for coming to work waisted. Also, there is little desire to locally produce highly complex automated machines when you have $5 workers running and maintaining these machines. It is only a generalization, but if the “best” machine from a reputable country can be run forever with little maintenance, then it can run for quite a long time with Zero maintenance. I think that this is the mindset of management for buying the best machines.

-An American working in Germany dreaming of Danish girls Bavarian beer and a warm southern tropical beach

 

[dvd]

Ask which countries give tax deductions for R&D efforts.

 

[BJC]

Which countries have executives that are focused on their stock options and bonus for the next year, for prfit in the next quarter? Which have executives that know the long term profit and survival of the company lies with excellance in what they build.
American companies are run by accountants not engineers. Look at the Bios of the people who run both.
The account/engineer thing is very apparent if you have moved from a GM car to a Toyota for example.

 

[rhodie]

Somewhere, after reading this thread, Boeing is laughing and Airbus is crying.

 

[curiousmechanical]

Everyone,

Thank you for the very interesting posts! I hope people continue to respond to this thread!

, CuriousMechanical

 

[tripleZ]

Hmm, we have automated machinery from American, German, and Japanese manufacturers in house, plus a fair amount of custom machinery. Does the US make good, quality machinery? Sure it does. But, as was alluded to earlier, functionality and cost play a very large role in the way we run our operations here. Not that they don't in other countries, but I don't think it's to the same level. My current company has American presses and German presses. Our American presses are basic, don't have all the added control panels and options, etc. They function well and last. But they also cost a quarter mil less. That quarter mil gets me a Japanese twin spindle lathe (the German one costs about an extra $100K). As a result, I'm pressing and machining more parts for the same amount of money.

American manufacturing isn't as much about cutting corners as it is about buying just the right amount of machinery necessary to get the job done and make an acceptable profit. Is the mfg. industry declining in the US? Sure it is. But I don't think it's because of quality or neat machines. Labor cost is a big issue, as is the fact that very few kids in school want to manufacture things. Why get dirty when you can sit in an office and play on the computer all day or work on webpages and media projects? Me, I have fun in my "sandbox" with all of my toys.

Oh, and hearing the drug-addled comments, that is definitely a problem. We lose more potential employees to the initial drug screening that you would believe!

 

[Ashereng]

I guess your definition of "cool" may be factor?

If you work in an industry dominated by the German and French manufactureres, then I would guess that the majority of stuff would be either German or French.

For example, I think that the Japanese makes a lot of cool stuff too. Think Sony, Hitachi, Honda and Toyota. Didn't Sony make one of the first robots to walk a stair? Toyota made a car with an internal combustion engine that can fit inside a large Samsonite.


"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[curiousmechanical]

I suppose my definition would be the following: complex, high-speed, precision, electromechanical, automated, machinery. And yes...Robots are definetly "cool" (if not the coolest)!

Is the U.S. the leader in any kind of machine technology?

 

[kontiki99]

About 10 years ago, I did some part time work for a retrofit CNC control company while transitioning carriers.

The marketing guys there told me that generally, CNCs for the US market had to be much simpler to operate that for the European market.

They said it was because of the European perspective on training for the manufacturing trades. Machinists in Europe might work through a 3 year apprenticeship to really become capable tool and die people.

They characterized the typical US machinists as high school drop out Jethro & Bubba types that needed to be spoon fed.

 

[atlas06]

In France, kids learn how to read and write (in cursive) by age 6. Multiply by age 7 (knowing all multiplication tables). Learning is hard in France, very hard. With that, it takes 13 years (12 in the US) to get to college after succesfully passing the Baccalaureate (about 78% success rate), then 5 years for an engineering degree.
Taking the Baccalaureate is equivalent to taking the PE exam.
A Fench Engineer has gone through 18 years of study Vs 16 years for the US.

OK, they've got smarts, but check this statistic: Only 56% of French PHD's find full time work after graduation.

I don't care how cool things are if you cannot feed your kids, the US way does.

 

[WGJ]

When I left school in 1967, a tool maker's apprenticeship in the UK would be between 5 and 7 years, depending on the company you worked for (e.g. their business sector) and the academic level they wanted you to reach.

A five year tool-making apprecticeship was typical and you would also attend college, some for the whole five years.
'Technician apprenticeships' were usually shorter, but you would need at least 'O' levels or a Technical College qualification / 'A' levels to start with. 21/22 years old was the usual completion age if you started a tool-makers app at the age of 15/16 or a technician app at 18/19.

For you USA-ites - I don't know what the equivalent US system qualifactions are, but you certainly wouldn't be a school drop-out, nothing like it.

The Ford training school was near where I lived then and they would get, literally, hundreds of applications for craft apprenticships every year and would take on, maybe, 50.

I started a technician apprenticeship in 1969 (age just 18) with a defence company. I completed it in 1972 (age 21) as an electro-mechanical draftsman

I still remember my first week's pay packet being £6 12s 6d (six pounds twelve shillings and sixpence for heathens). That's about $13.24 US.


Bill

 

[tripleZ]

WGJ,

Before we hired fledgling tool & die makers, we req'd them to take both a mechanical aptitude test and a math test before they even got to the verbal interview part. The aptitude test looked for innate ability. The math test was basic: addition, subtract, multiplication, & division, all with regards to fractions or decimals. No geometry or trig. We were lucky to find a high school grad that could score a 70% on what I would call a 6th grade math test.

Many of the traditional apprenticeship programs, both union and non-union, are truly suffering in quality in the US.

The push right now in the states is that every kid should go to college, and that if you don't, you're doomed in life (those were my high school principal's exact words at freshman orientation). When plumbers are pulling down $60K a year and many fresh grads are lucky to make $35K in a non-technical field, I don't understand the logic. Not everyone can be a "knowledge" worker. And the school loans in some cases are like having your first mortgage.

 

[KENAT]

tripleZ star for you, I couldn't agree more.

Not everyone is well suited for a more academic path, this doesn’t mean they aren’t of value or even that eventually they won’t find their way into equivalent work as the guy with the degree.

Same was happening to some extent in the UK before I moved to the states a few years ago, not quite as far advanced but getting there.

One advantage the US seems to have is the associates degree. In the UK, unless things have changed since I left they don't really have this.

They do however have more vocational courses, NVQ & GNVQ for the last 2 years of high school than I've seen in the US although I'm not sure how well they've taken off or how good they are.

Certainly the apprenticeship scheme at my last place in the UK wasn’t very effective. They didn’t really invest the time in it to gain maximum benefit, also a lot of the apprentices themselves didn’t really appreciate it. It was probably 6 of one, half a dozen of the other but either way it wasn’t really working out. Sad thing is one of the senior employees had been an apprentice instructor in Portsmouth Dockyard back when apprenticeships meant something. However because of personality and ‘his face didn’t fit’ he wasn’t involved in the program, can’t help thinking he may have had something to add!

Certainly most of the ‘engineers’ at my last place in the UK had done apprenticeships with some HND, HNC, City and Guilds or equivalent ‘college’ (not quite the same meaning US – UK). This included the chief stress engineer and he was a darn sight smarter then I with my Bachelors.

I believe Germany has what seems like a good scheme for Engineering Technicians etc. We get a lot of interns from Germany and I believe they are from the technical schools not universities as such but I’m a bit confused by the details.

 

[arunmrao]

I am from India and we find that most often the European companies have a large presence. This could probably be due to geographical proximity and an aggressive marketing by the Europeans. I find a lot of activity in used machines for all purposes and individual German entrepreneurs visiting trade fairs,and seminars. US presence is nil. Also the awareness levels are low. Probably US companies are not interested in selling their engineering goods or do not know how to export goods. The US has a large presence in India in the software sector and the call centres which does not influence most of us. Only the hotels and travel industries are excited by their presence.

While the Germans and Italians do good business in selling their goods and do it the Indian way.

 

[curiousmechanical]

These are very good points. In fact, I was just reading an article in the February 22, 2007 issue of MACHINE DESIGN entitled "The wrong school" [pg, 8]. In this article the author, Leland Teschler, also comments on the pressure on students to attend four-year schools and society's view on vocational education in the U.S. as being "strictly second class."

Rather than paraphrase the entire article...here is the link so everyone can read it.

http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/vi...53&strSite=MDSite&Screen=CURRENTISSUE&CatID=3

I see a lot of people are talking about the lack of skills and trianing of machinists and technicians. What about engineers? I don't feel like engineers are being trained very well either (and I myself am one in training). As a recent graduate, I was just kind of thrown right into it on my own with no solid mentor figure (except for a short period of time). I feel like I basically teach myself everything I need to know. Although I have learend a lot, this doesn't sound like the best way to train an engineer to me. I know of others in my situation as well. Is this common? How should an engineer be trained?

 

[Ashereng]

curiousmechanical,

I can not definitively speak regarding the "cool" machines you speak of.

Having said that, I am sure there are leading edge "cool" machine companies in the US, Germany, Japan, France, Canada, etc.

Ever hear of the Canadarm? It's on the space shuttle. I think that may qualify as "cool". It was design and built in Canada I would think. So, in some instances, it may just be that it is not advertised as well as some others.


To the rest of the let's bash the US school system postings:

Yes, various countries have different requirements for schooling. And yes, obviously, some work better than others for some people. Across the board, to say one system is better than the other? I don't know. If the system is so good in France, or Germany, or the UK or wherever, you would think that there would be a corresponding "copying" by othr countries? or a corresponding dominance by that country in a specific trade?

In the automobile industry, who makes the best cars? Italy? Germany? Japan? UK? US? Each nation has had its contribution to automotive history.

Instead of concentrating on which country has the best school system, or apprentiship program or whatnot, I think that more likely, it is chance that a genius just happen to come from a specific country.

Anyhoot, to answer the OP, yes, I think if you look, there are "cool" machines being designed and built in the USA.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[WGJ]

Ashereng, curiousmechanical's original post mentioned blow moulding and injection moulding machinery as an example and from my own experience I can say that Kautex (Germany), for example, are indeed world leaders in automotive plastic fuel tank production and they build their own machine lines.

Walbro are very good at this in the USA and I was impressed by their initial fuel tank facility in the UK some years ago.

Ford also used to make their own plastic tanks (Visteon now, I think) but I never saw the advanced capabilities that Kautex have, in spite of some of their early machines coming from Kautex.
If you ever get a chance, take a look at an Audi Quatro fuel tank (Kautex).

To the rest of the let's bash the US school system postings

I didn't think this thread looked like a 'bashing' session. People are airing their views about the systems they have experienced.
In my experience, the UK's system of vocational education is virtually non-existant, in spite of what government says.
This issue (good vocational education) seems to be something that is becoming more common in the western world.


Bill

 

[BJC]

Part of what we need to fix the US problem is part of the problem. About 50% of the US congress is lawyers. They don't understand the creation of wealth but they think they do.
The creation of a few laws and regulations and rules could do wonders in making the US more inovative and competetive.
Instead they pass laws that make it easy for the people who are robbing and dimantelling corporation to wreck the wealth producing factors in the economy. Those people contribute to their re-election campaigns and spiral continues downward.
If we could just get them on that spaceship with the Telephone Sanitizers and hair stylinst.