Where is it made now??

[Cardiarms]

OK, I apologise to Rotherham. The point remains the same.You are running a business and have the option of employing better qualified, cheaper labour outside of Britain to manufacture your goods or provide your services. (e.g. Dyson who tried for so long to keep UK based). What do you do?

[Trojan]

Cardiarms wrote: OK, I apologise to Rotherham. The point remains the same.You are running a business and have the option of employing better qualified, cheaper labour outside of Britain to manufacture your goods or provide your services. (e.g. Dyson who tried for so long to keep UK based). What do you do? Dunno aren't the Chuckle Brothers from Rotherham?

[Bert]

Cardiarms wrote: OK, I apologise to Rotherham. The point remains the same.You are running a business and have the option of employing better qualified, cheaper labour outside of Britain to manufacture your goods or provide your services. (e.g. Dyson who tried for so long to keep UK based). What do you do? There is a cultural/attitudinal difference at the heart of this. UK firms nearly always seem to end up relying desperately on brand strength to keep selling from the UK at over-the-odds prices, then doing manufacture under license (MUL) deals with overseas manufacturers rather than investing in overseas manufacturing themselves (Dyson are as guilty of this easy option as anyone else), then, assuming they are PLC's, selling out because of a total acceptance in the UK of the free movement of capital and of the principle that major stockholding institutions should always sell out to anyone willing to pay them more than the current stock market value. This happens extremely rarely in, for example, Japan, and that's not because the same market disciplines do not in theory operate there - IN THEORY they do, but not in practice because any self-respecting Japanese company will go to the ends of the earth to keep its own manufacturing fate under its own control, and its Japanese institutional shareholders will keep backing it to do so. That's why so many of the top UK brands that used to be manufactured under license in Japan are now owned in Japan outright - their UK owners' shareholders having eventually been offered prices too good to refuse by their former Japanese MUL partners.Japan of course is an extreme example at one end of the spectrum, but the UK is also an extreme example at the other end of the spectrum. Most others - France, Germany etc - seem to be able and willing, like Japan, to find ways of mitigating the march of globalisation to keep more control over their industrial fate.Unless someone can find some national switches to change all this, manufacturing in the UK under the control of firms beneficially owned in the UK will depend more and more on just three areas: (1) defence and aerospace, where government orders and golden shares held for national security reasons insulate UK firms; (2) kit which is too local, specialist, cheap and bulkily expensive to ship to be a practical proposition for foreign competitors; and (3) small, high-quality firms still privately owned by determined entrepreneurs with a dream who would rather remain small or grow very slowly than sell their dream to the highest bidder or license it to foreign competitors.We need a new Joshua Tetley in category 3.

[Cardiarms]

Thanks - v interesting. D PLC boards have a legal duty to maximise profits? Does this drive them offshore?Where do you think wages and productivity come in. We often here that compared to Europe, let alone the rest of the world, we have high wages and low productivity. I've no idea if this is true or myth. Maybe this explains how some European manufacturers can maintain their production in house?    

[Bert]

I don't know about a legal duty, but their shareholders have the power to remove them at the AGM if they don't keep them happy, so..... Mind you, the same rule applies in any market economy, Japan included. Maybe to some extent its patriotism and/or more paternalistic care for their employees overriding immediate and personal self-interest, and maybe to some extent its Japanese, German shareholders etc having more faith that in the long term Japanese, German ownership and management will deliver a better long-term return than the shorter term horizons of the foreigners making the tempting offers.I don't think the underlying problem in the UK is workforce or junior-to-middle management quality. When Japanese firms put their car plants here for example, they achieve world-class productivity and quality standards with UK workforces and management. So if there is a workforce and management problem in the generality of UK firms it must be something to do with their corporate culture and senior strategic management rather than with the basic quality of people available to them for recruitment in the UK.

[Trojan]

Bert wrote: I don't know about a legal duty, but their shareholders have the power to remove them at the AGM if they don't keep them happy, so..... Mind you, the same rule applies in any market economy, Japan included. Maybe to some extent its patriotism and/or more paternalistic care for their employees overriding immediate and personal self-interest, and maybe to some extent its Japanese, German shareholders etc having more faith that in the long term Japanese, German ownership and management will deliver a better long-term return than the shorter term horizons of the foreigners making the tempting offers.I don't think the underlying problem in the UK is workforce or junior-to-middle management quality. When Japanese firms put their car plants here for example, they achieve world-class productivity and quality standards with UK workforces and management. So if there is a workforce and management problem in the generality of UK firms it must be something to do with their corporate culture and senior strategic management rather than with the basic quality of people available to them for recruitment in the UK. The State We're In written by Will Hutton at the fag end of the Tory years in power pointed out these shortcomings in the British economy. Short-termism being the main one. New Labour were supposed to use his book as a blue print of how not to run the British economy - fat chance. The problem is that most of us depend on institutional investors for our pensions and they are honour bound to maximise profit wherever they can. They are not motiviated by the long view in other words.    

[simonm]

Cardiarms wrote: OK, I apologise to Rotherham. The point remains the same.You are running a business and have the option of employing better qualified, cheaper labour outside of Britain to manufacture your goods or provide your services. (e.g. Dyson who tried for so long to keep UK based). What do you do? What do you mean "better Qualified"???? It's a well known fact that british manufacture is second to none! Trouble is the cost, and rightly so!! Thing is, many companies look to make max proffits over as little expenditure as possible! In the whole thats what busines is all about. However, majority of companies totally exploit the workforc of the foreign country as they have little choice but to work for such low renumeration!! Greed has brought us to this position, not quality!!

[Cardiarms]

On the whole we do not produce enough trained, skilled engineers and crafstmen. Other countries are producing them and their rates are often lower than ours. Many many design offices for British companies are now loacted abroad.We are among world leaders at specialist and precision engineering, innovation and design. As Bert mention in his post we have lots of small to medium sized business with a single owner who are world beaters but relatively small fry, the ones in category 3 of his post, not neccesarily a bad thing. However when you get to mass production line, volume manufacturing of things with little intrinsic value (kettles, toys, cheap furniture, household goods and appliances, car mats etc), cost per unit becomes the main driver and it's cheaper to get them made offshore. Yes it's greed/profit/cheap to the customer/retruns for the investor, and as you say often sweat shop exploitation on factory floors.Mass production was not an area where we were known for quality during the 70s and 80s. Unrelaible washing machines and poorly designed cars etc. Compared to what the Japanese and Germans were producing we were still in the 50s trading on faded glory.

[Uno Hoo]

I bought a new Datsun Sunny in 1972. It had as standard a push-button radio, clock, cigarette lighter (I smoked then). It ran for millions of miles on a gallon of petrol - there was an oil crisis at the time. It always started despite standing out in all weathers, and never broke down. I sold it for nearly as much as I paid for it.What were the Brits turning out? The Austin Allegro. The car with the square (almost) steering wheel. Most common viewing of the Allegros was their being stationary at the side of the road waiting for the RAC.The Datsun was boring to drive, though.

[Loiner1960]

You would be forgiven for missing the fact that UK still exports cars. Although they are badged as Nissan or Toyota. BMW builds the Mini in Cowley. Brits are still the best engineers in the world, just we let accountants run companies. The internet we are using was created by a Brit. You'd be pleasantly surprised by how much is still here, quietly going on. I do remember Leeds as the engineers home with ROF, Hunslet Engines and lots of companies making the worlds stuff. Just we all wanted a better life and the costs meant all the big heavy stuff went abroad. China sounds like Britian in the 19th Century, with all the pollution, mine disasters etc.Governments don't help either, too much to banks and not to primary manufactuering.