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0 pointshellbannedguy4y ago0 comments

Do you, or anyone else here, know how much money Apple saved by offshoring?

I sometimes get it. Then when I hear robots were used, I wonder if it's really necassary to always go to the cheapest labor route.

For years, I held it against Apple for moving manufacturing, but gave up when everyone followed.

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bobsomers4y ago

> Do you, or anyone else here, know how much money Apple saved by offshoring?

There's another axis here, which is how our desire for a product overlaps with DFM. It could be the case that offshoring to cheap labor actually increased the manufacturing costs 2x, but enabled a product that would sell 10x better than its DFM counterpart.

(I have no data to say that is the case, only the intution that these things are complicated systems which rarely come down to single-issue decisions.)

pimlottc4y ago

For those unfamiliar, DFM = design for manufacturing. I had to look it up.

varjag4y ago

Manpower is a lot easier (and cheaper) to reconfigure between different products than robotic production lines.

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