
Lenovo Computers, Soon To Be Made In America - andreiursan
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/02/lenovo-computers-soon-to-be-made-in-america/
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mediaman
Lenovo is probably doing this for a few reasons:

* The corporate market often prioritizes speed and ease of doing business over the absolute rock-bottom cost. Local manufacturing offers advantages due to a much shortened supply chain.

* The gap between an hourly worker's wages in the US versus China is shrinking, due to Chinese labor inflation and US collar wage stagnation.

* The hours of labor per assembled unit is declining due to advances in automation, rendering regional labor variances less important.

Labor is becoming less of an issue while local manufacturing continues to have
major supply chain cost benefits, so Lenovo considers that the scales have
tipped enough to justify a US presence for the market segment that values that
responsiveness the most.

~~~
zubiaur
Yes, higher oil prices are starting to affect profit margins, the cost of
shipping a 40 foot container has tripled since the 2000s. Shipping finished
products is getting more expensive.

Lead times are also very important, it takes about a month to get something
from china to the US. This means that you need higher inventory levels in
order to be able satisfy the demand without considerable shortages.

When you take into account the variety of configurations available its very
hard not to get low rotation items on your inventory. Specially if you are
expected to always have stock and when your inventory levels have to consider
that it takes a month to get an item to the US.

Shifting assembly to the US reduces the number of SKUs imported and allows an
easier control over inventory levels and supply chain costs.

~~~
tedunangst
Lenovo just has too many choices (technical term for this condition is SKUs up
the butt). A T430 can be configured with one of 7(!) CPUs, some Sandy Bridge
and some Ivy Bridge. There are _two_ pairs of CPUs that cost the same. There
are four wifi choices, even though the most expensive is only $40 (and is
actually available 3rd party for ~$17 on ebay). Lenovo should just always
stick the good one in there, and either eat the cost or bump the base price.
Whenever Apple offers an option with two choices, Lenovo offers it with six
choices, and then there's twice as many options on top of that.

~~~
jarek
> Lenovo should just always stick the good one in there

I'm sympathetic to this argument - there's always the oddball page in the
configuration process that doesn't make sense, like the not-actually-
selectable "Selectable SIM" on the current page for the T430. But the number
of choices that _actually_ don't make sense isn't that high, and the wifi
adapter is not a good example. Which is "the good one"? The one with a working
driver for someone's oddball OS, or the one with 802.11a support for someone's
legacy network?

Do you think Lenovo should do away with one of the two palmrest combinations
on the T430, and if so, which one, the one with the fingerprint reader or the
one without?

~~~
tedunangst
Considering all the wifi adapters use the same driver and all of them support
802.11a, I'd say the best one is the one with 3 antennas, instead of 2
antennas or 1.

~~~
jarek
Can you point me to the information that specifies whether the 'ThinkPad 1x1
b/g/n' adapter supports 802.11a or the 5 GHz band, and uses the same chipset
as the Intel Centrino adapters? I honestly tried looking and couldn't find any
confirmation.

~~~
tedunangst
Ah. Sorry I was hasty, some don't support a. All the more reason to include
the good one. :) I believe all the intel chips are essentially identical
driver wise, but dunno about the unlabeled one. Then again, I would not be
picking the unlabeled mystery chip if I were concerned about drivers.

~~~
jarek
> Then again, I would not be picking the unlabeled mystery chip if I were
> concerned about drivers.

You would if you knew what the chip was from sources other than the ordering
page. Owning a model already is an obvious example but if I wasn't so lazy I
could probably dig up the model spec book, grab the FRU of the card and google
up the specs based on that.

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Zak
More configurability? Great. When can I order one with a screen that isn't
some low-res 16:9 TN monstrosity?

~~~
muhfuhkuh
When people stop buying cheap bric-a-brac with just-enough-for-youtube-480p
integrated graphics from HP and Dell for 499.

~~~
qdog
Last time I bought the cheapest dell laptop with a discrete card it was maybe
$600, now it appears to be $719. That's only on the 'small business' more
brick-like ones, though. The 'consumer' ones don't even offer discrete, but
hey you can get Skull Candy[TM] speakers for an up charge!

Even the cheapest comes with a dual core processor, though, so you can share
your memory among 2 cores and an integrated graphics engine. Progress it
ain't.

~~~
dman
Joe Q Public had been subsidizing performance for quite some time. I think
that era is ending because most of Joe's use cases can now be met with a ~1.5
Ghz arm tablet. I think the high end of the market is going to become more
expensive unless a use case emerges where everyone wants that performance.
Intels been hard at work trying to invent such a use case, but so far theres
been little to show for it. Making games more realistic is one reasonable use
case but those efforts have recently been stymied by content creation costs.

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wmf
BTW, although IBM is based in the US the ThinkPad line was originally designed
and manufactured in Japan before the sale to Lenovo.

~~~
jmsduran
The original design of the ThinkPad was said to resemble the shape of a
Japanese lunchbox.

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bduerst
From a business standpoint, what is the strategy here?

What does North Carolina have over Mexico? How does this cater to the
corporate "custom" PC market?

I'm curious to see why the company is moving operations there.

~~~
eli
Currently, if you want a custom configured Lenovo PC, you have to wait for it
to be shipped from China. This increases the average time it takes to get the
computer and introduces the risk of a customs problem holding up your shipment
indefinitely.

~~~
bduerst
I didn't think that larger exporting companies had problems with customs in
China. Even so, wouldn't it be better to take advantage of your infrastructure
and distribution already existing in Mexico?

~~~
eli
I know nothing about logistics, but I've ordered a fair amount of hardware
from Lenovo and one of my biggest complaints is the erratic shipping times.

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pasbesoin
_Assembly_ for _custom orders_.

Hardly a domestic industry, although I speculate it may also help in some
political/contract situations.

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mangler
In all fairness, the US corporations probably owe more than a little to
Mexico. On purely ethical grounds, I'd rather buy an IBM machine built in
Mexico than in the US. It's that little personal satisfaction.... But it DOES
make a difference if you're going to use it for the next year or two...

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xcirrian
I hardly think this is a big deal. The cost for assembly is low anyway. Even
though the laptop might be assembled in the US, the major parts of a laptop
(chip, case, screen) are still made in Asia.

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SkyMarshal
Only 8 years after the sale of Thinkpad to Lenovo. Interesting how fast the
economic dynamics can change.

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whichdan
I would love to see the resulting shitstorm from that sticker actually being
on the laptop.

~~~
sliverstorm
Are you saying people would have problems with any "Made in USA" sticker, or
that one in particular (which is obviously a fanciful clipart made in MS
Paint)

~~~
whichdan
Just that one in particular. I think putting stickers on laptops is an
atrocious practice, and one that huge would be hilariously awful.

~~~
Cletus100020
I hate it when they put stickers on laptops.

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ThomPete
It's the jobless recovery

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witoldc
This is going to be huge.

No more waiting 4 weeks to get a computer/laptop I actually want.

~~~
jarek
If you're a big purchaser ordering a thousand of them, anyway...

