{"id":102,"date":"2014-07-28T18:06:46","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T18:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/?p=102"},"modified":"2014-07-28T18:18:32","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T18:18:32","slug":"american-engineers-observations-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"An American Engineer in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

An American Engineer’s Observations in China<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Emil Bandriwsky – \u00a0June 2013<\/p>\n

Chinese computer programmers are skillful and plentiful.\u00a0 Yet, our small company just completed a contract for a Chinese machine builder that paid premium rates to bring our team from the USA and Canada.\u00a0 Some factors related to this transaction illustrate major accelerating trends in engineering, manufacturing, and the global economy.<\/p>\n

Specific technical expertise.<\/strong>\u00a0 Our company is among a small group with expertise in advanced Siemens Step 7 PLC programming for automotive engine and transmission manufacturing.\u00a0 Even though General Motors, Ford, and German automakers have standardized upon this platform there has been no rush to develop a pipeline of skilled engineers, thereby reflecting America\u2019s indifference to both engineering and manufacturing.<\/p>\n

Rapid response and short life cycle. <\/strong>\u00a0Less than a week after receiving a purchase order we had a team in place literally half-way around the globe.\u00a0 The trend is clearly toward faster, more flexible, more nimble companies that can assemble ad-hoc teams that combine long term core personnel with contractors.<\/p>\n

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  1. \u00a0 Giant multi-national corporations have spread a common base of standardized work practices, terminology, metrics and attitudes around the world.\u00a0 The McDonalds or Starbucks in Shanghai or Kiev are essentially the same as their counterparts in Buffalo or Seattle.\u00a0 A Ford Motor factory in China uses very similar specifications and equipment to Ford in France or Brazil, or even GM in Tonawanda.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Anglicization<\/strong>.\u00a0 The English language is ubiquitous in Chinese advertising and public signage including transportation, airports, and street signs.\u00a0 Although the Chinese often translate English in rather amusing ways, it has been said that there are more English speakers both in China and India, than in America.\u00a0 The clever Chinese have developed a \u201cwork-around\u201d to fit their unwieldy number of written characters onto a computer or smart phone keyboard; a phonetic system called \u201cPinyan\u201d is typed in English and is automatically converted into one of the 20,000 Chinese characters.<\/p>\n

    Internationalization<\/strong>.\u00a0 I was reminded of the clich\u00e9 about \u201cthe world getting smaller and smaller everyday\u201d as I sat in a Brazilian restaurant with Chinese, Canadian, American and Ukrainian engineers, who drank European beer while the American cartoon \u201cTom and Jerry\u201d played on a Japanese flat screen TV in the background.\u00a0 Just last month, our small company, which employs Engineers from all over the world, worked in four separate countries at one time.\u00a0 America is still a world leader in many ways, but the era of American supremacy in everything under the sun is over with.\u00a0 China is now the source of more international tourists than any other country; and for the past two years China has overtaken the top spot as the worlds\u2019 largest automotive market.\u00a0 China has moved past both Germany and Japan with the world\u2019s second largest economy, and in all likelihood will eclipse the total output (GDP) of America in a few years.<\/p>\n

    Higher Quality Goods and Services. <\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0My first surprise at a Chinese shopping mall was that many common consumer and electronic goods, like TVs, iPads, and Smart Phones, cost 10% to 15% more in China, despite being manufactured there.\u00a0 This was explained as the result of trade finance peculiarities, and the Chinese government\u2019s encouragement and financial incentives for its export driven economy.\u00a0 The second surprise was that China\u2019s crowded shopping malls are filled with premium priced, name brand, imported goods; and a large number of Chinese consumers prefer higher priced imported goods, especially name brands, rather than cheaper, domestically manufactured goods.\u00a0 Smart American consumers know that paying a premium price, strictly to cover brand marketing, does not translate to choosing the best value goods.\u00a0 However, the easy movement of manufactured goods to or from any point in the world, and the instantaneous transfer of product information means that essentially anyone on earth can tell the difference between a high quality product and a shoddy product.\u00a0 Chinese teenagers greatly prefer authentic Apple iPhones to knock-offs, and luxury hotels being built in formerly god forsaken corners of the globe are a sure sign that quality standards are becoming universal.<\/p>\n

    What Does it Mean for Us?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    China\u2019s phenomenal growth over the past generation has been fueled by cheap labor, export mania, free market capitalism supported by a one-party Communist state, and an artificially low currency exchange rate.\u00a0 But due to rising wages in China, and high transportation and transaction costs, there are predictions that that China\u2019s \u201clow wage manufacturing advantage\u201d versus the USA will disappear by 2015.\u00a0 Does this mean that America will shortly thereafter regain its hegemony over the world economy?\u00a0 Almost definitely not.\u00a0 New low wage countries will fill the vacuum at the bottom of the economic totem pole.\u00a0 But more importantly, there will be global competitors using every other advantage available to them : technology, raw materials, education, proximity to markets and so on.\u00a0 Ultimately for the American consumer these global economic trends will produce an even broader array of more and cheaper goods;\u00a0 as long as consumer can afford them.\u00a0 And that is the problem.\u00a0 For American workers, producers and manufacturers these economic trends point to an even faster and fiercer battle for the consumer\u2019s dollars, and ultimately for the survival our domestic companies, jobs, and the prosperity of future generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An American Engineer’s Observations in China by Emil Bandriwsky – \u00a0June 2013 Chinese computer programmers are skillful and plentiful.\u00a0 Yet, our small company just completed a contract for a Chinese machine builder that paid premium rates to bring our team from the USA and Canada.\u00a0 Some factors related to this transaction illustrate major accelerating trends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buffalo","category-global-trends","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}