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How do we compete with this?

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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 08:41 AM
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Default How do we compete with this?

Fascinating story on a Chinese company called BYD on CNN.com today:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology...rtune/index.htm

How does any company compete with someone who can hire an army of people for less than the cost of robots? Plus, look at the cost of his engineers.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 08:57 AM
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I don't believe American's are going to move to electric quickly.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 02:50 PM
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"They are the top of the top," he says. "They are very hard-working, and they can compete with anyone." BYD can afford to hire lots of them because their salaries are only about $600 to $700 a month; they also get subsidized housing in company-owned apartment complexes and low-cost meals in BYD canteens. "They're basically breathing, eating, thinking, and working at the company 24/7," says a U.S. executive who has studied BYD.
that number doesn't surprise me.
it's not much highger than that in India either.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 03:45 PM
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Originally Posted by Legal Bill,Apr 13 2009, 09:41 AM
How does any company compete with someone who can hire an army of people for less than the cost of robots?
Robots are expensive. Often it is cheaper to hire people than to install robots.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 06:20 PM
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Originally Posted by mikegarrison,Apr 13 2009, 06:45 PM
Robots are expensive. Often it is cheaper to hire people than to install robots.
Sure, the up front cost is going to be more than one year of wages here in the states, but at those wages, the cost of the employee is less than the cost of the robot year to year over the life of the robot, certainly when you figure in maintenance. And this company has higher quality than the more technologically advanced manufacturers.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 06:23 PM
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Perhaps you didn't read the article carefully. They noted that the cars were substantially lower in quality than their competitors (although also substantially lower in cost, too).

That's where the robots come in -- they tend to be more expensive but the standardization of the work tends to provide very high quality.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 06:30 PM
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The part I was refering to was about batteries, which they have now been making for a while. The article claims they have never had a recall, unlike thier leading competitors.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 06:33 PM
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You mean the batteries they reverse-engineered from their leading competitors?

Maybe they reverse-engineered the fixed versions. Or maybe they spotted the problem and fixed it first. I don't know, it doesn't say.
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 07:08 PM
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How do you overcome, "we will never never rest?"
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Old Apr 13, 2009 | 07:11 PM
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Originally Posted by RC - Ryder,Apr 13 2009, 08:08 PM
How do you overcome, "we will never never rest?"
Once they get rich they will get fat and lazy, just like Americans.
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