2014年8月30日 星期六
Less Can Be More for Product Portfolio
https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/lean_manufacturing_consumers_products_less_can_be_more_product_portfolios/
by Hannes Pichler, Peter Dawe, and Love Edquist
2014年4月19日 星期六
NPR podcast on customs duties and tariffs for imported apparel
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/01/26/133120017/the-friday-podcast-a-meat-grinder-for-fabric
Marian Federoff uses an autopsy saw to cut apart shoes at the port of Long Beach.Alex Blumberg/NPR
Almost half of all the duties collected in the U.S. are on apparel or footwear, and the laws that govern the importing of these goods are extremely complicated. Where the goods come from, what they are made of and how they are assembled, all play a role in how much duty an importer will have to pay.
We've talked about tariffs before on the podcast, but now that we've got our own Planet Money t-shirt in the works, we're paying much closer attention. Since it's likely at least some part of our t-shirt will be made abroad, we wanted to know exactly what to expect.
Cotton (left) and polyester (right) under the microscope at the port of Long Beach.U.S. Customs & Border Protection
On today's podcast, we consult with trade lawyer Michael Cone, and visit the lab where customs officials check to make sure importers are following the rules.
Almost half of all the duties collected in the U.S. are on apparel or footwear, and the laws that govern the importing of these goods are extremely complicated. Where the goods come from, what they are made of and how they are assembled, all play a role in how much duty an importer will have to pay.
We've talked about tariffs before on the podcast, but now that we've got our own Planet Money t-shirt in the works, we're paying much closer attention. Since it's likely at least some part of our t-shirt will be made abroad, we wanted to know exactly what to expect.
Cotton (left) and polyester (right) under the microscope at the port of Long Beach.U.S. Customs & Border Protection
On today's podcast, we consult with trade lawyer Michael Cone, and visit the lab where customs officials check to make sure importers are following the rules.
2014年4月18日 星期五
Car industry_ Podcast of history of the attempt by General Motors to absorb and replicate Toyota-like processes and culture.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi
MAR 26, 2010
A car plant in Fremont California that might have saved the U.S. car industry. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. Frank Langfitt explains why GM didn't learn the lessons—until it was too late.
Host Ira Glass introduces the story of the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., aka NUMMI. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. But today, GM cars still don't have the quality of Japanese imports, GM is bankrupt and on March 31, NUMMI will be closed, sending thousands of car workers looking for jobs. In this hour-long story, NPR Automotive Correspondent Frank Langfitt tells the story of NUMMI and why GM—and the rest of the American car business—wasn't able to learn from it more quickly
The rise of NUMMI, or how one of the worst auto plants in America started producing some of its best cars, thanks to lessons learned from the Toyota production system.
Why did it take so many years for GM to begin implementing the lessons of NUMMI across the company? NPR Automotive Correspondent Frank Langfitt continues his story.
403: NUMMI
MAR 26, 2010
A car plant in Fremont California that might have saved the U.S. car industry. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. Frank Langfitt explains why GM didn't learn the lessons—until it was too late.
Host Ira Glass introduces the story of the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., aka NUMMI. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. But today, GM cars still don't have the quality of Japanese imports, GM is bankrupt and on March 31, NUMMI will be closed, sending thousands of car workers looking for jobs. In this hour-long story, NPR Automotive Correspondent Frank Langfitt tells the story of NUMMI and why GM—and the rest of the American car business—wasn't able to learn from it more quickly
The rise of NUMMI, or how one of the worst auto plants in America started producing some of its best cars, thanks to lessons learned from the Toyota production system.
Why did it take so many years for GM to begin implementing the lessons of NUMMI across the company? NPR Automotive Correspondent Frank Langfitt continues his story.
2014年4月12日 星期六
China’s Exports Perch on Uncertain Truck System
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: April 28, 2011
Moving those goods from the factory floor to one of China’s enormous seaports — often a drive of less than two hours — typically means relying on an independent trucking company. And as vital as trucking is to China’s mighty export machine, the government seems to be ignoring the drawbacks of what analysts say is an increasingly disorganized, inefficient and even costly way to transport factory goods to seaports.
Trucking’s tenuous (稀薄) status has been underscored by recent protests and demonstrations by drivers. Last week, in an unusually bold display of public anger, 2,000 truckers went on strike in Shanghai to complain about the rising cost of fuel and unfair government transportation fees. Some protestors hurled (猛力投擲) rocks, tried to overturn police cars and smashed the windshields of truck drivers who refused to join the strike.
The Shanghai municipal government eventually ended the three-day strike by arresting protestors and threatening strike organizers, while also promising to lower some fees that trucking companies must pay to use the roads and seaport.
But the challenges that trucking pose to China’s $1.5 trillion a year in exports are still in place — and could become even greater, now that huge factories have begun relocating to poorer, inland regions to save on labor costs.
“Our concern is that as these factories move away from the coast, the service standards won’t keep pace,” said Ken Glenn, an executive at APL, a transportation services company. “Rail and barge are even less developed.”
Within China, thousands of small trucking companies, many of them family-owned, compete by promising low-cost delivery. Then they overload their 18-wheelers in dangerous ways, pay bribes to ward off highway inspectors and hope to eke out (增加，補充) tiny profits.
Now, though, with global oil prices sending the cost of fuel soaring, many truckers say they are heading toward bankruptcy.
“We’re paying a lot more money for fuel than we did three years ago, but what we get paid for freight has stayed the same,” said Qi Zhenwei, a truck owner stationed at a dusty trucking depot near one of Shanghai’s busiest ports. “How am I supposed to survive?”
Mark Millar, a China logistics expert at M Power Associates in Hong Kong, sees Chinese trucking as “a seriously fragmented and brutally competitive industry.”
“Most of the drivers are owner-operators, and in order to make money, they carry more cargo than the truck is supposed to hold,” Mr. Millar said. “This is obviously not a healthy model.”
Not all trucking in China is such a seat-of-the-pants affair. Some global companies transport goods by truck in sealed shipping containers from factory to dock, sometimes accompanied by security escorts.
But more often, goods destined for export are delivered to seaports by small trucking companies — usually hired by logistics firms that bargain to get the lowest possible shipping price. To scrape by, many of the small trucking firms violate the law, pay bribes to avoid heavy fines and transportation restrictions, and even force drivers to sleep in the trucks overnight, sometimes in insecure parking lots.
These rigors might seem to contradict the heavy investment in infrastructure and expressways that China has made to make its transportation network more efficient.
But many of this country’s modern roadways are expensive toll roads. And the government has placed tough regulations on many aspects of the transportation industry, which analysts say have burdened companies with heavy taxes, insurance and government fees. As a result, transporting goods by truck in China is relatively more expensive than doing so in the United States.
According to the American Trucking Associations, moving goods by truck in the United States costs about $1.75 per mile. That includes driver salaries, truck leases, insurance, tolls and many other related costs.
By comparison, trucking costs in China’s two biggest export regions — the Yangtze River Delta region near Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta around Hong Kong — are $2.50 to $3 a mile. That is despite low pay to Chinese drivers, who might earn only 25 cents an hour, versus about $17 an hour in the United States.
Corruption is also a major problem. Chinese truck drivers say highway and port inspectors routinely demand payoffs or bribes. Drivers who refuse to pay may find themselves hit by large fines for even the smallest infraction. (That many of the trucks are overweight makes them ripe for sanctions.) Some regions even operate illegal toll booths.
Rachel Katz, a Fulbright research fellow from the United States who is spending a year in China traveling with long-haul truck drivers, says the drivers are constantly harassed by highway officials.
“There’s every kind of fine you can imagine,” she said in a telephone interview from Chengdu, in southwest China. “There are many different people regulating the roads and finding a way to tax the truckers. I can’t believe the system operates this way.”
Ms. Katz recalls one driver telling her: “In the U.S., you issue tickets in order to control traffic. In China, we control traffic in order to issue tickets.”
Truck drivers do not get much sympathy from their clients — factory bosses who are also struggling to cope with inflation. With labor and raw material and energy prices soaring here, factories are reluctant to pay higher fees to move goods to the major ports.
Despite fears of government reprisals (報復), they agreed to talk this week in the rusted metal container that now serves as a lounge at their dusty truck depot, amid engine parts and a bucket filled with cigarette butts. Between phone calls and dashes in and out of the makeshift lounge to talk to colleagues, they told their story.
Until about seven years ago, they were peasant farmers struggling to make a living in Henan Province, one of the country’s poorest regions. Neither of them had finished high school.
They traveled more than 500 miles east to Shanghai and found work as truck drivers. (“I once went 24 consecutive days without sleeping in a bed,” Qi Zhenwei said.) Eventually, they earned enough to combine their savings with $100,000 they borrowed from some friends and relatives to buy their own fleet of five new and used Chinese-made trucks.
But shortly after they invested in some of their most expensive vehicles, the global financial crisis struck. Exports plummeted, devastating their container hauling business. A year later, in 2009, when China’s exports began to rebound, so did inflation and fuel prices. And now, the brothers are faced with greater competition from a growing number of small trucking companies.
“So far, I didn’t make any money,” Qi Zhenwei complained.
The brothers refused to talk about the recent strike here, saying the government had been visiting all truckers in the area. But they freely discussed their costs: tire fees, insurance, driver salaries, road use fees, oil changes, repairs and even fees that trucks pay to enter the city.
“If I had a chance to sell the truck, I’d get out of the business,” the older brother said, dejectedly smoking a cigarette. “I’d go back to my hometown. Now, people there are planting crops for Chinese medicine. And they’re making good money.”
Published: April 28, 2011
SHANGHAI — For years, China’s export juggernaut (重型卡車) has been fed by highly efficient factories, low-cost labor and a fleet of container ships capable of transporting huge volumes of toys, textiles, electronics and other goods to every corner of the world.
But there is a surprisingly weak link in the Made in China chain.Moving those goods from the factory floor to one of China’s enormous seaports — often a drive of less than two hours — typically means relying on an independent trucking company. And as vital as trucking is to China’s mighty export machine, the government seems to be ignoring the drawbacks of what analysts say is an increasingly disorganized, inefficient and even costly way to transport factory goods to seaports.
Trucking’s tenuous (稀薄) status has been underscored by recent protests and demonstrations by drivers. Last week, in an unusually bold display of public anger, 2,000 truckers went on strike in Shanghai to complain about the rising cost of fuel and unfair government transportation fees. Some protestors hurled (猛力投擲) rocks, tried to overturn police cars and smashed the windshields of truck drivers who refused to join the strike.
The Shanghai municipal government eventually ended the three-day strike by arresting protestors and threatening strike organizers, while also promising to lower some fees that trucking companies must pay to use the roads and seaport.
But the challenges that trucking pose to China’s $1.5 trillion a year in exports are still in place — and could become even greater, now that huge factories have begun relocating to poorer, inland regions to save on labor costs.
“Our concern is that as these factories move away from the coast, the service standards won’t keep pace,” said Ken Glenn, an executive at APL, a transportation services company. “Rail and barge are even less developed.”
Within China, thousands of small trucking companies, many of them family-owned, compete by promising low-cost delivery. Then they overload their 18-wheelers in dangerous ways, pay bribes to ward off highway inspectors and hope to eke out (增加，補充) tiny profits.
Now, though, with global oil prices sending the cost of fuel soaring, many truckers say they are heading toward bankruptcy.
“We’re paying a lot more money for fuel than we did three years ago, but what we get paid for freight has stayed the same,” said Qi Zhenwei, a truck owner stationed at a dusty trucking depot near one of Shanghai’s busiest ports. “How am I supposed to survive?”
Mark Millar, a China logistics expert at M Power Associates in Hong Kong, sees Chinese trucking as “a seriously fragmented and brutally competitive industry.”
“Most of the drivers are owner-operators, and in order to make money, they carry more cargo than the truck is supposed to hold,” Mr. Millar said. “This is obviously not a healthy model.”
Not all trucking in China is such a seat-of-the-pants affair. Some global companies transport goods by truck in sealed shipping containers from factory to dock, sometimes accompanied by security escorts.
But more often, goods destined for export are delivered to seaports by small trucking companies — usually hired by logistics firms that bargain to get the lowest possible shipping price. To scrape by, many of the small trucking firms violate the law, pay bribes to avoid heavy fines and transportation restrictions, and even force drivers to sleep in the trucks overnight, sometimes in insecure parking lots.
These rigors might seem to contradict the heavy investment in infrastructure and expressways that China has made to make its transportation network more efficient.
But many of this country’s modern roadways are expensive toll roads. And the government has placed tough regulations on many aspects of the transportation industry, which analysts say have burdened companies with heavy taxes, insurance and government fees. As a result, transporting goods by truck in China is relatively more expensive than doing so in the United States.
According to the American Trucking Associations, moving goods by truck in the United States costs about $1.75 per mile. That includes driver salaries, truck leases, insurance, tolls and many other related costs.
By comparison, trucking costs in China’s two biggest export regions — the Yangtze River Delta region near Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta around Hong Kong — are $2.50 to $3 a mile. That is despite low pay to Chinese drivers, who might earn only 25 cents an hour, versus about $17 an hour in the United States.
Corruption is also a major problem. Chinese truck drivers say highway and port inspectors routinely demand payoffs or bribes. Drivers who refuse to pay may find themselves hit by large fines for even the smallest infraction. (That many of the trucks are overweight makes them ripe for sanctions.) Some regions even operate illegal toll booths.
Rachel Katz, a Fulbright research fellow from the United States who is spending a year in China traveling with long-haul truck drivers, says the drivers are constantly harassed by highway officials.
“There’s every kind of fine you can imagine,” she said in a telephone interview from Chengdu, in southwest China. “There are many different people regulating the roads and finding a way to tax the truckers. I can’t believe the system operates this way.”
Ms. Katz recalls one driver telling her: “In the U.S., you issue tickets in order to control traffic. In China, we control traffic in order to issue tickets.”
Truck drivers do not get much sympathy from their clients — factory bosses who are also struggling to cope with inflation. With labor and raw material and energy prices soaring here, factories are reluctant to pay higher fees to move goods to the major ports.
=> Due to increasing material, energy and labor costs, factories are not willing to pay higher to transportation.
Besides, many of the factory bosses seem to recognize that there is an oversupply of small trucking companies desperate for cargo.
“They face a situation of absolutely cutthroat competition, and many of them are not well educated,” said Tyrrell Duncan, a transportation director at the Asian Development Bank. “There aren’t programs to train them.”
Qi Zhenwei, who is 35, and his 31-year-old brother, Qi Erwei, are typical trucking bosses working in Shanghai’s bustling (活躍的) Baoshan port district.
Besides, many of the factory bosses seem to recognize that there is an oversupply of small trucking companies desperate for cargo.
“They face a situation of absolutely cutthroat competition, and many of them are not well educated,” said Tyrrell Duncan, a transportation director at the Asian Development Bank. “There aren’t programs to train them.”
Qi Zhenwei, who is 35, and his 31-year-old brother, Qi Erwei, are typical trucking bosses working in Shanghai’s bustling (活躍的) Baoshan port district.
Despite fears of government reprisals (報復), they agreed to talk this week in the rusted metal container that now serves as a lounge at their dusty truck depot, amid engine parts and a bucket filled with cigarette butts. Between phone calls and dashes in and out of the makeshift lounge to talk to colleagues, they told their story.
Until about seven years ago, they were peasant farmers struggling to make a living in Henan Province, one of the country’s poorest regions. Neither of them had finished high school.
They traveled more than 500 miles east to Shanghai and found work as truck drivers. (“I once went 24 consecutive days without sleeping in a bed,” Qi Zhenwei said.) Eventually, they earned enough to combine their savings with $100,000 they borrowed from some friends and relatives to buy their own fleet of five new and used Chinese-made trucks.
But shortly after they invested in some of their most expensive vehicles, the global financial crisis struck. Exports plummeted, devastating their container hauling business. A year later, in 2009, when China’s exports began to rebound, so did inflation and fuel prices. And now, the brothers are faced with greater competition from a growing number of small trucking companies.
“So far, I didn’t make any money,” Qi Zhenwei complained.
The brothers refused to talk about the recent strike here, saying the government had been visiting all truckers in the area. But they freely discussed their costs: tire fees, insurance, driver salaries, road use fees, oil changes, repairs and even fees that trucks pay to enter the city.
“If I had a chance to sell the truck, I’d get out of the business,” the older brother said, dejectedly smoking a cigarette. “I’d go back to my hometown. Now, people there are planting crops for Chinese medicine. And they’re making good money.”
In Roaring China, Sweaters Are West of Socks City
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: December 24, 2004
ATANG, China - You probably have never heard of this factory town in coastal China, and there is no reason why you should have. But it fills your sock drawer.
Datang produces an astounding nine billion pairs of socks each year - more than one set for every person on the planet. People here fondly call it Socks City, and its annual socks festival attracts 100,000 buyers from around the world.
Southeast from here is Shenzhou, which is the world's necktie capital. To the west is Sweater City and Kid's Clothing City. To the south, in the low-rent district, is Underwear City.
This remarkable specialization, one city for each drawer in your bureau, reflects the economies of scale and intense concentration that have helped turn China into a garment behemoth（巨獸）. On Jan. 1, a new trade regime will end the decades-old system of country-by-country quotas that divide the world's exports among roughly 150 countries. Now, China is banking on its immense size and efficient operators to grab an even larger share of the world's clothing orders.
Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx could possibly have imagined that this kind of capitalism would evolve from a communist system in quite this way, with an obscure town in the middle of nowhere becoming the world's socks capital. But these days, buyers from New York to Tokyo want to be able to buy 500,000 pairs of socks all at once, or 300,000 neckties, 100,000 children's jackets, or 50,000 size 36B bras. And increasingly, the places that best accommodate those kinds of orders are China's giant new specialty cities.
The abolition of quotas is expected to accelerate this trend over the next decade or so, particularly under the guidance of China's visible hand. The niche cities reflect China's ability to form "lump" economies, where clusters or networks of businesses feed off each other, building technologies and enjoying the benefits of concentrated support centers - like the button capital nearby, which furnishes most of the buttons on the world's shirts, pants and jackets.
The new era, thus, offers a glimpse into how China's fast-paced economy is developing into more than just a beehive of individual private enterprises. Beyond the entrepreneurial vigor so palpable here, the textile business is a prime example of how the Chinese government's attempt to guide development more indirectly through local planning instead of outright state ownership is starting to pay off in a big way.
China is not just becoming the leader of the pack. In many ways, it hopes to run away with as much of the market as possible.
New import limits by the United States, along with other external and internal forces, are expected to hamper China's progress in apparel and textiles for several years, if not longer. That should allow several other countries to maintain vigorous garment industries as well. But there is little question that China will ultimately be the dominant force in the business, and the growth of its industrial enclaves here highlights just how powerful a force China's industries are becoming in almost every sector they have entered.
In the late 1970's, Datang was little more than a rice farming village with 1,000 people, who gathered in small groups and stitched socks together at home, and then sold them in baskets along the highway.
Back then, government officials branded Datang's sock makers as capitalists and ordered them to stop selling socks. Now, they produce over a third of the world's output, and the government has nothing but praise for such entrepreneurs and their domination of the sock business.
"If the restrictions are dropped, there'll be even more production here," says one government official, Weiming Feng, the town's deputy party secretary and an official at the city's sock market.
Signs of Datang's rise as a socks capital are everywhere. The center of town is filled with a huge government-financed marketplace for socks. The rice paddies have given way to rows of paved streets lined with cookie-cutter factories. Banners promoting socks are draped across buildings. And each year, Datang is decorated with balloons and flags for the annual sock fair.
And rags-to-riches tales abound in Datang. Just ask Dong Ying Hong, who in the 1970's gave up a $9-a-month job as an elementary-school teacher to make socks at home. Now, she is the owner of Zhejiang Socks - and a sock millionaire.
Hai Yun Shi, the 41-year-old founder of Hongyun Socks, has a similar tale.
"I started out making socks by hand when I was 18," he said at the company's headquarters. "In '96 we founded this company. Now, we have a contract withWal-Mart."
These kinds of gains have sharply eroded America's old sock-making might. American textile companies filed a petition earlier this year asking Washington to place limits on Chinese sock imports. Hoping to ease trade tensions, the Chinese government said in early December that it would voluntarily add tariffs on some of its own textile and apparel exports to reduce their competitive thrust.
That is one reason, among others, why many specialists believe that China's wallop(v.痛打,n.重擊 ) will not come all at once.
"It won't happen overnight," said Bruce Rockowitz, president of Li & Fung, a Hong Kong company that is one of the world's largest apparel distributors. "It's not a big movement to China right now for retailers. There's too much uncertainty."
Smaller countries, like Bangladesh and Cambodia - which feared they could not keep up with China - are breathing easier. At least for now.
Still, China already accounts for about 16 percent of all apparel imports into the United States. And several studies project that in the next few years, once all the limits are lifted, that figure could soar to 50 percent to 70 percent.
"There's no question, at the end of the day, China ends up a much bigger player in the global apparel business," said David Weil, an associate professor of economics at Boston University.
Textile and apparel makers in China have long been preparing for the coming boom. In recent years, they have invested billions of dollars in new factories along the country's eastern seaboard, particularly here in the Yangtze River Delta.
Many of the old government-owned operations are gone. Private enterprises are importing high-end machinery and luring millions of peasants from the countryside.
Since the early 1980's, when China began moving to a market economy, much of its competitive advantage was built on low-cost labor. Companies spend about 92 cents an hour for each worker in China, versus $1.20 in Thailand, $1.70 in Mexico and about $21.80 in the United States, according to a study by Goldman Sachs. Among big exporters, only India, at about 70 cents an hour, is cheaper.
Investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea were among the first to come. But in recent years, Chinese entrepreneurs set up their own shops, starting out with small stitching operations and quickly expanding into gigantic factories.
For instance, Shengzhou, now popularly known in Chinese as International Necktie City, developed after a Hong Kong investor moved his necktie operations there in 1985 and brought modern tie-making techniques to the city. That was only a few years after China opened itself to capitalism when Deng Xiaoping in 1978 declared, "To get rich is glorious."
Later, some of the company's managers broke away to start their own tie companies. And within a decade, Shengzhou was awash in tie makers and suppliers.
Similar stories can be heard throughout the province of Zhejiang, which is considered one of this country's most enterprising regions.
But textile specialists say China's boom is not simply the product of the newfound entrepreneurialism that is sweeping this country; it is also the nation's ability to form what are called lump economies, focused on one product.
Savvy entrepreneurs started out by luring suppliers, like fabric, dye or tool makers, to their cities, and as these clusters grew, they attracted more local investors who competed by trying to further specialize in socks or jeans production.
"The clusters are getting more and more specialized," says Qingliang Gu, a professor of textile economics at Donghua University in Shanghai. "It's a little like Italy, where you have the city of Como making silk fabric, Vicenza with fine wool and Veneto for knitting."
=> Specialized cities like Italy
The Chinese government has also played a crucial role, opening huge swaths(收割的寬度) of land for development, forming giant industrial parks, doling out tax benefits and developing the infrastructure and transportation networks needed to move products quickly to market.
=> Role of government
"The textile cities started initially from the spontaneous development of private companies," said Chunyi Xie, an economist at the Shanghai Garment Trade Association. "But when it reached certain dimensions it drew attention from the government."
Private companies, with the support of the government, now build huge textile factory complexes, complete with dormitories, hospitals and even curfews to replace the state role in providing food, shelter and health care, along with close supervision. Many textile companies in the province of Jiangsu house and feed thousands of migrant workers who are bused in from the countryside, often for three- or four-year factory stints (定量，限額).
The campus of the Huafang Group, one of China's largest textile companies, has over 100 factory buildings, 30,000 employees and round-the-clock operations.
On any day, it teems with more than 20,000 workers, who live free of charge in Huafang's dormitories. Conditions are hardly heavenly, but they are often a step up for these workers, who are mostly young women from poorer inland provinces like Anhui or Henan. Many of them come here after high school, intending to stay for a few years before returning home to be married.
Then, after those women return home, another 10,000 or so are bused in from the countryside, beginning yet another cycle in the pool of migrant labor that perpetually feeds China's bustling mills.
"When we need new workers," said Wei Xin Shi, a Huafang Group executive, "we just announce it and people here call home and tell their friends to come to work at our factories."
Yun Liu, 23, is one of those workers. She left a small town in northern Jiangsu four years ago. Now, she makes $130 a month in Huafang's cotton spinning mill, where she spins raw cotton into fine threads eight hours a day.
"I really like being here," she said one afternoon outside the factory. "It's a stable job, and I like the environment."
Few places on earth can match the sheer scale and variety of textile and apparel companies clustering in this region.
"In terms of vertical supply chain, China has no competition," says Ruizhe Sun, president of the China Textile Information Center, a government-sponsored agency in Beijing. "We have button makers, fabric makers, thread makers, zipper makers, you name it."
=> Vertical supply chain including button makers, fabric makers, thread makers, zipper makers.
That situation is luring investors and competitors from other parts of the world.
"A few years ago, when I came here there were no Italians," said Ellen Zhou, a Chinese citizen now working for a textile company based in Thiene, Italy. "Now they're everywhere, in the hotels, at the cafes."
Chinese textile executives, however, are well aware of the risks of over-expansion. And there are other problems looming as well. The market for labor has tightened in the past year, pushing up wages.
=> Risk: wage go up, over-expansion, market change, etc.
Companies and even government officials have long ferried migrant workers into Zhangjiagang from the nearby province of Anhui, many of whom were willing to work for $4 a day. But recently some factories have been struggling to find workers, and many executives say they expect wages to rise.
"We feel labor costs are going up," Jianhong Gu, vice general manager of Pukun Textile, a Zhangjiagang suit maker whose factories operate 24 hours a day. "There's tremendous competition."
Moreover, foreign designers and retailers are keen to keep a network of business ties with other countries with relatively modern factories, like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Fred Abernathy, a researcher at the Center for Textile and Apparel Research at Harvard, says retailers in the United States will continue to buy quantities of textiles and apparel close to home, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, because of the need for "just in time" delivery for some items.
He also expects specialty clothing and textiles operations to continue to survive in New York, North Carolina, France and Italy. But, he concedes, "China will gain over the long run."
Jinfei Wang, the chairman of the Jiangsu Diao Garment factory in Tongzhou, just outside Nantong, says there's no doubt about that.
"I've been to factories all over the world," he said in a recent interview while walking his own bustling factory floor, observing women's suits destined for J. C. Penneystores. "And we can compete with any of them. Without restrictions, certainly China is going to be No. 1
Published: December 24, 2004
ATANG, China - You probably have never heard of this factory town in coastal China, and there is no reason why you should have. But it fills your sock drawer.
Datang produces an astounding nine billion pairs of socks each year - more than one set for every person on the planet. People here fondly call it Socks City, and its annual socks festival attracts 100,000 buyers from around the world.
Southeast from here is Shenzhou, which is the world's necktie capital. To the west is Sweater City and Kid's Clothing City. To the south, in the low-rent district, is Underwear City.
This remarkable specialization, one city for each drawer in your bureau, reflects the economies of scale and intense concentration that have helped turn China into a garment behemoth（巨獸）. On Jan. 1, a new trade regime will end the decades-old system of country-by-country quotas that divide the world's exports among roughly 150 countries. Now, China is banking on its immense size and efficient operators to grab an even larger share of the world's clothing orders.
Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx could possibly have imagined that this kind of capitalism would evolve from a communist system in quite this way, with an obscure town in the middle of nowhere becoming the world's socks capital. But these days, buyers from New York to Tokyo want to be able to buy 500,000 pairs of socks all at once, or 300,000 neckties, 100,000 children's jackets, or 50,000 size 36B bras. And increasingly, the places that best accommodate those kinds of orders are China's giant new specialty cities.
The abolition of quotas is expected to accelerate this trend over the next decade or so, particularly under the guidance of China's visible hand. The niche cities reflect China's ability to form "lump" economies, where clusters or networks of businesses feed off each other, building technologies and enjoying the benefits of concentrated support centers - like the button capital nearby, which furnishes most of the buttons on the world's shirts, pants and jackets.
The new era, thus, offers a glimpse into how China's fast-paced economy is developing into more than just a beehive of individual private enterprises. Beyond the entrepreneurial vigor so palpable here, the textile business is a prime example of how the Chinese government's attempt to guide development more indirectly through local planning instead of outright state ownership is starting to pay off in a big way.
China is not just becoming the leader of the pack. In many ways, it hopes to run away with as much of the market as possible.
New import limits by the United States, along with other external and internal forces, are expected to hamper China's progress in apparel and textiles for several years, if not longer. That should allow several other countries to maintain vigorous garment industries as well. But there is little question that China will ultimately be the dominant force in the business, and the growth of its industrial enclaves here highlights just how powerful a force China's industries are becoming in almost every sector they have entered.
In the late 1970's, Datang was little more than a rice farming village with 1,000 people, who gathered in small groups and stitched socks together at home, and then sold them in baskets along the highway.
Back then, government officials branded Datang's sock makers as capitalists and ordered them to stop selling socks. Now, they produce over a third of the world's output, and the government has nothing but praise for such entrepreneurs and their domination of the sock business.
"If the restrictions are dropped, there'll be even more production here," says one government official, Weiming Feng, the town's deputy party secretary and an official at the city's sock market.
Signs of Datang's rise as a socks capital are everywhere. The center of town is filled with a huge government-financed marketplace for socks. The rice paddies have given way to rows of paved streets lined with cookie-cutter factories. Banners promoting socks are draped across buildings. And each year, Datang is decorated with balloons and flags for the annual sock fair.
And rags-to-riches tales abound in Datang. Just ask Dong Ying Hong, who in the 1970's gave up a $9-a-month job as an elementary-school teacher to make socks at home. Now, she is the owner of Zhejiang Socks - and a sock millionaire.
Hai Yun Shi, the 41-year-old founder of Hongyun Socks, has a similar tale.
"I started out making socks by hand when I was 18," he said at the company's headquarters. "In '96 we founded this company. Now, we have a contract withWal-Mart."
These kinds of gains have sharply eroded America's old sock-making might. American textile companies filed a petition earlier this year asking Washington to place limits on Chinese sock imports. Hoping to ease trade tensions, the Chinese government said in early December that it would voluntarily add tariffs on some of its own textile and apparel exports to reduce their competitive thrust.
That is one reason, among others, why many specialists believe that China's wallop(v.痛打,n.重擊 ) will not come all at once.
"It won't happen overnight," said Bruce Rockowitz, president of Li & Fung, a Hong Kong company that is one of the world's largest apparel distributors. "It's not a big movement to China right now for retailers. There's too much uncertainty."
Smaller countries, like Bangladesh and Cambodia - which feared they could not keep up with China - are breathing easier. At least for now.
Still, China already accounts for about 16 percent of all apparel imports into the United States. And several studies project that in the next few years, once all the limits are lifted, that figure could soar to 50 percent to 70 percent.
"There's no question, at the end of the day, China ends up a much bigger player in the global apparel business," said David Weil, an associate professor of economics at Boston University.
Textile and apparel makers in China have long been preparing for the coming boom. In recent years, they have invested billions of dollars in new factories along the country's eastern seaboard, particularly here in the Yangtze River Delta.
Many of the old government-owned operations are gone. Private enterprises are importing high-end machinery and luring millions of peasants from the countryside.
Since the early 1980's, when China began moving to a market economy, much of its competitive advantage was built on low-cost labor. Companies spend about 92 cents an hour for each worker in China, versus $1.20 in Thailand, $1.70 in Mexico and about $21.80 in the United States, according to a study by Goldman Sachs. Among big exporters, only India, at about 70 cents an hour, is cheaper.
Investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea were among the first to come. But in recent years, Chinese entrepreneurs set up their own shops, starting out with small stitching operations and quickly expanding into gigantic factories.
For instance, Shengzhou, now popularly known in Chinese as International Necktie City, developed after a Hong Kong investor moved his necktie operations there in 1985 and brought modern tie-making techniques to the city. That was only a few years after China opened itself to capitalism when Deng Xiaoping in 1978 declared, "To get rich is glorious."
Later, some of the company's managers broke away to start their own tie companies. And within a decade, Shengzhou was awash in tie makers and suppliers.
Similar stories can be heard throughout the province of Zhejiang, which is considered one of this country's most enterprising regions.
But textile specialists say China's boom is not simply the product of the newfound entrepreneurialism that is sweeping this country; it is also the nation's ability to form what are called lump economies, focused on one product.
Savvy entrepreneurs started out by luring suppliers, like fabric, dye or tool makers, to their cities, and as these clusters grew, they attracted more local investors who competed by trying to further specialize in socks or jeans production.
"The clusters are getting more and more specialized," says Qingliang Gu, a professor of textile economics at Donghua University in Shanghai. "It's a little like Italy, where you have the city of Como making silk fabric, Vicenza with fine wool and Veneto for knitting."
=> Specialized cities like Italy
The Chinese government has also played a crucial role, opening huge swaths(收割的寬度) of land for development, forming giant industrial parks, doling out tax benefits and developing the infrastructure and transportation networks needed to move products quickly to market.
=> Role of government
"The textile cities started initially from the spontaneous development of private companies," said Chunyi Xie, an economist at the Shanghai Garment Trade Association. "But when it reached certain dimensions it drew attention from the government."
Private companies, with the support of the government, now build huge textile factory complexes, complete with dormitories, hospitals and even curfews to replace the state role in providing food, shelter and health care, along with close supervision. Many textile companies in the province of Jiangsu house and feed thousands of migrant workers who are bused in from the countryside, often for three- or four-year factory stints (定量，限額).
The campus of the Huafang Group, one of China's largest textile companies, has over 100 factory buildings, 30,000 employees and round-the-clock operations.
On any day, it teems with more than 20,000 workers, who live free of charge in Huafang's dormitories. Conditions are hardly heavenly, but they are often a step up for these workers, who are mostly young women from poorer inland provinces like Anhui or Henan. Many of them come here after high school, intending to stay for a few years before returning home to be married.
Then, after those women return home, another 10,000 or so are bused in from the countryside, beginning yet another cycle in the pool of migrant labor that perpetually feeds China's bustling mills.
"When we need new workers," said Wei Xin Shi, a Huafang Group executive, "we just announce it and people here call home and tell their friends to come to work at our factories."
Yun Liu, 23, is one of those workers. She left a small town in northern Jiangsu four years ago. Now, she makes $130 a month in Huafang's cotton spinning mill, where she spins raw cotton into fine threads eight hours a day.
"I really like being here," she said one afternoon outside the factory. "It's a stable job, and I like the environment."
Few places on earth can match the sheer scale and variety of textile and apparel companies clustering in this region.
"In terms of vertical supply chain, China has no competition," says Ruizhe Sun, president of the China Textile Information Center, a government-sponsored agency in Beijing. "We have button makers, fabric makers, thread makers, zipper makers, you name it."
=> Vertical supply chain including button makers, fabric makers, thread makers, zipper makers.
That situation is luring investors and competitors from other parts of the world.
"A few years ago, when I came here there were no Italians," said Ellen Zhou, a Chinese citizen now working for a textile company based in Thiene, Italy. "Now they're everywhere, in the hotels, at the cafes."
Chinese textile executives, however, are well aware of the risks of over-expansion. And there are other problems looming as well. The market for labor has tightened in the past year, pushing up wages.
=> Risk: wage go up, over-expansion, market change, etc.
Companies and even government officials have long ferried migrant workers into Zhangjiagang from the nearby province of Anhui, many of whom were willing to work for $4 a day. But recently some factories have been struggling to find workers, and many executives say they expect wages to rise.
"We feel labor costs are going up," Jianhong Gu, vice general manager of Pukun Textile, a Zhangjiagang suit maker whose factories operate 24 hours a day. "There's tremendous competition."
Moreover, foreign designers and retailers are keen to keep a network of business ties with other countries with relatively modern factories, like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Fred Abernathy, a researcher at the Center for Textile and Apparel Research at Harvard, says retailers in the United States will continue to buy quantities of textiles and apparel close to home, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, because of the need for "just in time" delivery for some items.
He also expects specialty clothing and textiles operations to continue to survive in New York, North Carolina, France and Italy. But, he concedes, "China will gain over the long run."
Jinfei Wang, the chairman of the Jiangsu Diao Garment factory in Tongzhou, just outside Nantong, says there's no doubt about that.
"I've been to factories all over the world," he said in a recent interview while walking his own bustling factory floor, observing women's suits destined for J. C. Penneystores. "And we can compete with any of them. Without restrictions, certainly China is going to be No. 1
2014年4月10日 星期四
Dead White People’s Clothes
How the used clothes you send to Africa are killing the local textile industries.
BY: MERI NANA-AMA DANQUAH
Posted: March 5 2009 6:40 AM
It's impossible to have a conversation about fashion in Africa—traditional or contemporary—without talking about the used-clothing industry and how damaging some people say it’s been.
A whole industry has cropped up around apparel that's been donated to charities located oceans away, imported throughout the African continent and then sold cheaply in African marketplaces. These low prices undercut local retailers and undermine the entire textile and garment business in Africa.
The importing is sometimes done by enterprising individuals, but, more often than not, this huge, multimillion-dollar industry is orchestrated by charitable multinational organizations. These aid agencies' primary mission is, ostensibly (表面上)
, to provide various forms of relief to residents—not only in the harrowing face of disaster, but also through the challenging facts of day-to-day life. That’s one major aspect of the controversy surrounding the industry.
But it's not the only one. The psychological—and, as a result, financial—blows of the used-clothing industry have been crippling. What seems to be carried over, along with the previously worn clothing, is that old-colonial mentality of "ours is better than yours," the often unspoken belief heralding all that is Western as superior, and all that is African as inferior.
Especially telling are the various names, phrases and labels attached to the industry. In Togo, the garments are referred to as "dead yovo" clothing. Translation: “dead white person clothing.” Across the border, in Ghana, my native country, the used clothing is called "broni wa wo." Literally translated, this expression means: “a white man has died.” After all, only death could separate a white person from such wonderful clothing: jeans—skinny, bootleg, stonewashed, stretch; faux Burberry dresses, trousers, scarves; T-shirts advertising products, Web sites, conferences and other events; bras—lace, Wonder, padded, with underwire, without underwire.
In some countries, the preference for used clothes has all but killed the local textile industry. The used-clothing industry is Kenya’s seventh largest import, raking in well over 60 million euros per year. Hundreds of thousands of African workers have lost their jobs as a result of these imports. In Malawi, the largest textile company had to close its doors. Other such companies in Mozambique and Uganda are headed toward bankruptcy. Zambian textile workers have staged several strikes in an effort to promote national and international awareness of their plight.
In Ghana, the government has tried to rejuvenate their local textile industry by announcing a program called National Friday Wear, which encourages all citizens to dress in traditional clothes in hopes that the trend will spill over into other days.
African designers have mounted a spirited defense. Many are biting back at the Western world and revitalizing the fashion industries in their own countries, industries which had nearly been brought to a grinding halt by the demands of a changing market.
Part of the problem is that younger generations no longer want to wear "outdated" traditional attire; instead, they crave the sort of sophistication and modernity promised in the pages of American and European magazines. They covet the styles they see on the latest television shows—Hollywood sitcoms and celebrity gossip shows imported by a fast-paced cable market. And the controversial used-clothing trade is quick in its attempt to fill each and every one of those fashion desires.
There are no easy answers. But what many don’t understand is that African textiles are much more than an assemblage of brightly colored cloth. Many of the designs have names, usually in the form of an aphorism. And they contain stories, folklore which is sometimes literally written into the cloth. Africans use fabric in much the same way that the Western world uses newspapers and magazines to commemorate, document and celebrate events, accomplishments and individuals.
When Barack Obama was elected as America’s first black president, Africans all throughout the continent sewed their pride into their cloth. When Miriam Makeba died, she was honored the same way. In traditional engagement ceremonies, fabric is a requisite part of the dowry that a male suitor presents to the woman’s family. Fabric is handed down from one generation to another. I inherited a number of my grandmother’s outfits. I will pass them on, along with the history and culture they carry, to my daughter. Because of what I’ve seen first-hand, I believe that donating used clothing to charities which then export them to Africa will ultimately result in the death of such traditions and legacies—which is why I won’t do it.
BY: MERI NANA-AMA DANQUAH
Posted: March 5 2009 6:40 AM
It's impossible to have a conversation about fashion in Africa—traditional or contemporary—without talking about the used-clothing industry and how damaging some people say it’s been.
A whole industry has cropped up around apparel that's been donated to charities located oceans away, imported throughout the African continent and then sold cheaply in African marketplaces. These low prices undercut local retailers and undermine the entire textile and garment business in Africa.
The importing is sometimes done by enterprising individuals, but, more often than not, this huge, multimillion-dollar industry is orchestrated by charitable multinational organizations. These aid agencies' primary mission is, ostensibly (表面上)
, to provide various forms of relief to residents—not only in the harrowing face of disaster, but also through the challenging facts of day-to-day life. That’s one major aspect of the controversy surrounding the industry.
But it's not the only one. The psychological—and, as a result, financial—blows of the used-clothing industry have been crippling. What seems to be carried over, along with the previously worn clothing, is that old-colonial mentality of "ours is better than yours," the often unspoken belief heralding all that is Western as superior, and all that is African as inferior.
Especially telling are the various names, phrases and labels attached to the industry. In Togo, the garments are referred to as "dead yovo" clothing. Translation: “dead white person clothing.” Across the border, in Ghana, my native country, the used clothing is called "broni wa wo." Literally translated, this expression means: “a white man has died.” After all, only death could separate a white person from such wonderful clothing: jeans—skinny, bootleg, stonewashed, stretch; faux Burberry dresses, trousers, scarves; T-shirts advertising products, Web sites, conferences and other events; bras—lace, Wonder, padded, with underwire, without underwire.
In some countries, the preference for used clothes has all but killed the local textile industry. The used-clothing industry is Kenya’s seventh largest import, raking in well over 60 million euros per year. Hundreds of thousands of African workers have lost their jobs as a result of these imports. In Malawi, the largest textile company had to close its doors. Other such companies in Mozambique and Uganda are headed toward bankruptcy. Zambian textile workers have staged several strikes in an effort to promote national and international awareness of their plight.
In Ghana, the government has tried to rejuvenate their local textile industry by announcing a program called National Friday Wear, which encourages all citizens to dress in traditional clothes in hopes that the trend will spill over into other days.
African designers have mounted a spirited defense. Many are biting back at the Western world and revitalizing the fashion industries in their own countries, industries which had nearly been brought to a grinding halt by the demands of a changing market.
Part of the problem is that younger generations no longer want to wear "outdated" traditional attire; instead, they crave the sort of sophistication and modernity promised in the pages of American and European magazines. They covet the styles they see on the latest television shows—Hollywood sitcoms and celebrity gossip shows imported by a fast-paced cable market. And the controversial used-clothing trade is quick in its attempt to fill each and every one of those fashion desires.
There are no easy answers. But what many don’t understand is that African textiles are much more than an assemblage of brightly colored cloth. Many of the designs have names, usually in the form of an aphorism. And they contain stories, folklore which is sometimes literally written into the cloth. Africans use fabric in much the same way that the Western world uses newspapers and magazines to commemorate, document and celebrate events, accomplishments and individuals.
When Barack Obama was elected as America’s first black president, Africans all throughout the continent sewed their pride into their cloth. When Miriam Makeba died, she was honored the same way. In traditional engagement ceremonies, fabric is a requisite part of the dowry that a male suitor presents to the woman’s family. Fabric is handed down from one generation to another. I inherited a number of my grandmother’s outfits. I will pass them on, along with the history and culture they carry, to my daughter. Because of what I’ve seen first-hand, I believe that donating used clothing to charities which then export them to Africa will ultimately result in the death of such traditions and legacies—which is why I won’t do it.
訂閱：
文章 (Atom)
Practical Steps for Attacking Complexity Without Jeopardizing Value
Harmonizing specifications along the supply chain (such as for ingredients and formulations, product specifications, and packaging) enables the company to reduce changeover times and free up line capacity, thereby generating savings through improved line efficiency. Growth opportunities for products with harmonized specifications can be pursued at lower incremental costs. Companies can achieve the greatest impact by harmonizing the specifications of high-volume products.
Companies can increase scale in procurement by introducing a “menu card” that sets out standard ingredients and packaging materials. A company should select product ingredients and materials on the basis of cost, with the objective of developing a minimum number of base formulations. It should then diversify products only where the market analysis has identified a value to customers. This creates savings for procurement by allowing that function to purchase greater quantities of fewer ingredients, packaging materials, and raw materials.