Thought I'd send you into the weekend on a lighter note. It's well worth a couple of minutes to watch this clip from the Daily Show on Wham-O – the Frisbee folks:
Life and leadership at the nexus of lean and zen.
by Bill Waddell
Thought I'd send you into the weekend on a lighter note. It's well worth a couple of minutes to watch this clip from the Daily Show on Wham-O – the Frisbee folks:
Scott Hollander says
Very funny clip, and very sad at the same time. We’ve done so much to export our manufacturing base and jobs; and then little or nothing to upgrade the skills of the American workforce that it is the “simple” jobs that will return, and the high tech value added work will still remain overseas. We have been great at innovating products, and even better at sending them overseas to be built. I do not know what the value of US made high-technology products is versus those made overseas, but imagine that we are on the short end,
Bill Waddell says
While my hat’s off to the Aguilar Group – who have only owned Wham-O since last year – for bringing manufacturing back, the fact is that it took particularly bad judgment to send it to China in the first place. The Aguilar folks are really just grasping the obvious.
Frisbees and Hula Hoops are low labor content molded products, especially with the prevalence of in-mold decorating, there is not much to them but shooting the plastics and packaging the product. With minimal labor content, the savings in labor from China are comparably minimal.
These things are bulky, but very light. They max out the cube of a container with very little weight, and the container is shipping more air than product. The cost to ship them from China has to dwarf the labor cost.
Sending a product like this to China was a really, really dumb thing to do to begin with.
I would differ with you, Scott, on one count. A product like a Frisbee is all about the molding. Finding the right balance between heat and speed in the molding machine to get the optimum number of shots per minute, keeping the molding machines running at a high OEE, maintaining the molds – these things are the real cost drivers of the Frisbee business, and this is pretty high tech stuff, if you do it well.
The technology level of the finished product is not necessarily indicative of the technology required to manufacture it. I would suggest that a good plastic molder is every bit as technology driven and dependent on the skills of the people as a surface mount shop full of people rather mindlessly sticking components through the holes on a PCB and running them across a wave solder machine.
Both require good engineering skills, but the fact that the board might go into an advanced avionics system, while the Frisbee might get chased around a park by a dog does not mean the manufacturing skills needed to make the Frisbee are lesser.
Anshul Gupta says
:)
Hahaha….nice clip dude.
mike says
Inside each stack of Hula Hoops they could fit stacks of frisbees and in between those gaps they could fit pool noodles. Less bulk but more labor in shipping.