

Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK - iamdann
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925

======
simonbarker87
This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for
over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there
is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can
maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony
facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great.

We priced our product for uk and china and china was infact more expensive
because of the way they price plastics. Sometimes UK is best

~~~
oliwarner
I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes.

China has _everything_ they need to bleem out consumer electronics
indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most
of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency.

I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do
this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money.
Often more money than it would be to have them fab the whole thing in the
first place.

I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world
keeps paying China to make everything they __will __end up owning us all. On
paper they probably already do.

~~~
andrewcooke
"bleem"?

~~~
jrockway
It's clear from context that it's a perfectly cromulent word.

~~~
freehunter
True, but using unusual words embiggens the chance that your audience might
not understand. The only regular use of bleem Google finds is for a PS1
emulator.

~~~
finnw
There's also this bleem[1], but that wouldn't make sense either.

[1]:
[[http://www.strangehorizons.com/2000/20001120/secret_number.s...](http://www.strangehorizons.com/2000/20001120/secret_number.shtml)]

------
mappingbabel0
I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this
about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-
cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason
British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton,
founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows
that British manufacturing can be competitive." (
[http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-manufacturing-comes-
home-a...](http://www.zdnet.com/raspberry-pi-manufacturing-comes-home-as-
production-shifts-to-uk-7000003839/) )

Are there similar moves underway in the US?

~~~
dangrossman
Yes, it's actually a White House talking point this week: "Since February
2010, the U.S. manufacturing sector has added roughly 500,000 jobs, the
fastest pace of job growth in the sector since 1995".

~~~
kokey
I think there has been a general recognition that rebuilding local supply
chain in manufacturing is essential. Especially in the industries where this
is still possible.

Cheap labour only helps if two years of labour is cheaper than a machine that
can do the work. The machines get cheaper and labour gets more expensive. It
obviously doesn't mean a lot of the low skilled jobs are ever going to return
to the countries they have left, but at least it creates opportunity for an
ecosystem of local suppliers and innovation.

------
toyg
> we had been unable to find a British manufacturer [...] who believed that
> the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us.

I think that sums up current European attitudes to manufacturing and
capitalism all too well, sadly. Note how they eventually ended up with a Welsh
factory... owned and run by Sony.

And what does a supposedly business-friendly government do? Worry about
building houses. Sigh.

~~~
simonbarker87
Well, our ageing housing stock, escalating house prices and lack of urban
social mobility does warrant focus on housing, the knock on effects for the
construction industry also show this as being a sensible economic policy as
well as solving an increasing socioeconomic problem.

I'm not sure how using a Welsh factory shows how this government is anti
capitalist or anti manufacturing - given that Wales is in the UK and it is the
UK government I don't think it matters where it is in the country. The factory
is probably based there as a result of the government incentives about a
decade to fifteen years ago which were introduced to get large corporations to
base operations in areas of Wales who had been relient on the mines and who,
at that time, had spiralling unemployment.

Alos, The EU isn't anti manufacturing. Everyone is looking to the German model
(high value manufacturing) as they are the only one bucking the downward trend
and actually growing. The UK itself still has a very healthy manufacturing
sector - I forget the exact figure but it makes up a double digit percentage
of our GDP so it is not insignificant at all.

I agree more could be done to improve the position of manufacturing but to
look at the Chinese model and say "hey, we should have all the back here" is
not the answer. Electronics, chemicals and high end goods we should have but
let china make the Barbie Dolls and cheap tat, that's not what we should be
aspiring to.

~~~
toyg
My point was that it's not a British factory: it's a Sony-owned plant that
happens to be in the UK at this point in time. Sony is a Japanese-American
corporation; all this chest-beating is quite unwarranted.

The point about capitalism is that "Euro" capitalists don't want to face any
risk, as this story proves: British money didn't want to back the Pi when it
was unproven, and even now they could only find Japanese-American money.

I live in the North-West of England. I'm surrounded by modern (and mostly
empty) high-rise developments built in the last 15 years, alternating with
cheap new low-rise which have been rebuilt from scratch on the ashes of failed
towns, and they're slowly decaying again, because the problem is that you
can't maintain a nice house without a nice job, and construction jobs are not
even for local people these days.

the sort of jobs that provide social mobility are in services (as we all know
on HN), in high-quality manufacturing, and in the public sector; and it's
clear this government has no idea how to help those sectors.

~~~
simonbarker87
I would argue that it is a british factor, regardless of the name above the
door it is based in the UK and as a result help the UK economy.

The reason for all those empty buildings is due to an old insurance policy
(now illegal) that meant developers could build and insure against it being
empty ... essentially the insurance company pays the rent if the building is
empty and as such there is no incentive for the developer to actively let it
out.

Setting up a line like this is expensive and unless you are willing to foot
the bill for the factory setting up the line then it is understandable that
most factories would decline the work if they thought the market opportunity
was small of the business plan was weak.

Either way I think we both agree on this being a good thing but we don't know
the context in which the work was previously declined

------
bitwize
Now I'm imagining Maurice Moss examining his frotzed Raspberry Pi board,
finding the "Made in Great Britain" badge, and shaking his head in
resignation.

~~~
krzyk
Same for Dr Von Braun :)

------
bane
With all of the manufacturing issues the RPi team has had, I can't help but
think what a tremendous PIA building something reasonably sophisticated is.

Kudos to the team for taking on such a difficult and worthwhile project and
putting up with all of the issues. Even if the RPi in and of itself isn't
successful, it's definitely brought these kinds of small, cheap simply
computers to the forefront of many minds and that's a good thing.

------
freehunter
Hopefully this brings more control over the production by the RPi team. If
something is going wrong, it's a lot easier to take a trip down the M4 (or the
train) than it is to fly to China and sort things out.

~~~
robotmay
I wouldn't be so sure of that with the currently absurd amount of roadworks on
the M4 ;)

~~~
freehunter
Being infatuated with Top Gear, I have to imagine your name means you are an
AI that James May built to do the boring things humans do like spend time
online while he's away in the garage or doing another special on planes.
Therefore, with you being an extension of Mr May, I have to say I agree with
your proposal to charge councils by the minute for not having roadworks done
properly. Imagine how well funded the Raspberry Pi Foundation would be with
just one trip from Cambridgeshire to Wales!

[http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-
pricing-2...](http://www.topgear.com/uk/james-may/james-may-road-
pricing-2007-04-01)

~~~
robotmay
Haha, I do share the same surname & hair style so you're not too far off!

------
Zenst
Fantastic news and glad they have been on the case about this since day one.

Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are:

1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available
so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area.
Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of
the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made more aware of this local
resource.

2) TAX on a made product compared to the bits to assemble said product. From
the current standing it is more cost effective to make products outside the UK
as apposed to buying in those parts seperately and in bulk and making the
product localy TAX wise, this is again another area the UK goverment has to
address.

But the reality of bring some types of manufacturing back localy, even if
driven by some of the lesser reasons makes sence.

This all said I would love for a Pi with more ram and also love a couple of
network ports, make a lovely firewall unit then without messing with USB
network adaptors. I'd also like USB3. So with that in mind maybe there is
scope for a model C and D, idealy a model you can upgrade a little bit more in
those respective area's. But if I had to pick anything overall it would be a
little bit more ram. But there is nothing stopping me making my own board and
modifications (skills pending), like most out there probably thinking about.
Open Hardware schematics on github and group effort - anybody aware of any
plans or projects along those lines?

~~~
option_greek
2) - Would not be such a good idea. Remember that a good chunk of these get
exported to outside. Raising a protectionist barrier will just encourage other
countries to do the same.

~~~
michaelt
The current situation, according to [1], is that there is a higher import tax
on _components_ than on _assembled boards_.

This is, as I understand it, because there's no import duty on components that
are part of information technology products such as computers[2] - but
components which are not yet part of such a product are subject to import
duty.

To fix this we don't need to raise a protectionist import duty for IT products
- we can just drop the import duty on electronic components.

[1] <http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509> [2]
<http://www.charleswalker.org/import-duties>

~~~
Zenst
Maybe a better way to tackle this would be to balance things up by imposing a
weight based import duty that we shall call the enviromental TAX. This would
be the way to address this and also balance out the whole import/export
aspect, especialy if every country sat down and looked it from a impact
perspective. But in a way that if you import a product in component and in
part form that they both at least cost the same import TAX wise, that would be
a start at least.

But at the very least the current situation is only accomodating with large
plants like Sony's who are able to talk to goverments about TAX breaks and
deals to actualy make a plant and the cost of import viable. This needs to be
addressed as a whole and allow even medium sized companies to compete, so that
even little people have some hope.

Sadly until enough people that people listern to speak up this situation will
just stagnate on as it is. I'm full of hope this news item may eventualy put
some momentum behind the needed changes and at the very least get them on the
table in goverment so they start to look at the issues.

------
agumonkey
So happy they finally found a local factory, and one of great technical and
"entrepreneurial" quality

------
koushikn
Since the dawn of globalization and the post-Cold war era, a number of
countries are getting slot marked into particular sectors like: China for
manufacturing, US for design, software, German auto mobile, India for
outsourced services etc.

But to have a thriving and healthy society in a country, the variety is
important so that people can pursue different interests and are not forced to
migrate because there is no high-quality work in that area in that country.

Only way to do this is to protect the domestic market from foreign investment
and give some time for high quality local players to grow. Then open for
competition. But if a second world government does it, it is blamed for not
allowing reforms and accused of denying progress to its citizens

So now another way is opening up.

So it is good for China too if such things happen. If a bunch of high quality
companies open up in stuff that UK is traditionally known for (financial
services?) then the balance will be stuck.

I hope financial institutions like IMF, World Bank take such things into count
and come up with measures to increase variety in every country. It will make
life a lot better for a lot of people.

------
drone
I don't understand this statement at all:

"Last year, when nobody had heard of the Raspberry Pi, we had been unable to
find a British manufacturer whose prices per unit (especially at a point where
we were thinking of sales in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of
thousands you’re seeing now) would work for us, and who believed that the
project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us."

Who wouldn't take one project because they were afraid you wouldn't come back
for more? Is business so hopping over there that people scoff at a $1M deal
because you may not come back later for a $5M deal? Or, were you actually
asking them to reserve production, but that you might cancel before it
started?

~~~
jcollins1991
The key point I think is line space. Getting set up for production is quite a
bit of work, and given that their new contract is for 30,000/month, the
manufacturers clearly didn't want to set up an entire production line if they
may only get a couple of months of usage out of it (since the original order
would've been only in the tens of thousands).

~~~
drone
That is the key thing I question and makes me wonder about EMS in the UK.
There are literally dozens of vendors who would kill for that job here in the
States - even without any guarantee of repeat order. There just must not be
very many there in the UK.

(I do understand some of what it takes to setup and run a manufacturing line,
I work with several EMSes both in the US and China and run a [smaller scale]
electronics manufacturer.)

Edit: Before my comment is taken the wrong way, what I am wondering is if the
UK has much capacity for mid-scale EMS/CEM, or if the industry there has been
largely tailored towards the very big players. But, I'm pretty sure I misread
the statement, namely that they meant that the only places willing to take the
jobs were charging too much, rather than that no one wanted the job because it
was too small.

~~~
ippisl
drone, does 30 workers needed for 30,000 units a month for this makes sense ?
it seems pretty high for an automated process.

~~~
drone
It depends on the design (PTH or SMD). A lot of PTH takes a lot of people, as
many parts still can't be machine-placed.

The facility we use an hour from us runs about 600 PTH units (about 40
components/board) on one assembly line with 10 people in about 4 hours. I
doubt one would always work them at that level. Lead-bending, wave soldering
is all pretty much automated.

The bulk of an SMD process is done by pick-and-place, our stuff gets run on
10,000+ CPH machines. You need one person to load/de-load panels and switch
out feeders - and one person can work multiple machines if everything is set
up right. The machines in general are really good these days.

Printing and machining the PCBs takes some time, but this is a process that
can flow continuously once you let a little backlog build up at each stage.
Electrical testing can be slow at the back-end, as is polishing board edges,
packaging, etc.

I could see it taking 30 people to do 10k a month, but the same 30 people
possibly capable of 60k+ a month. It depends on where you load them in the
process. The more SMD the more volume you can get up to the testing/packaging
stage. rPi is mostly SMD, with some PTH - so they have to mix the processes,
but its really hard to avoid...)

Notably, however, if you look at the Hackberry (which I like better, btw!) the
vast majority of the connectors are SMD. I wonder if the rPI could see some
labor savings (at higher BOM) by switching to them.

One thing we've been working on in-house is making big automated jigs to
program and test entire panels of devices at once, before they're de-paneled.
These are really expensive to make though (think $5k+ per jig) - but they save
us thousands of hours of labor a year. We're moving to make machines that can
do it without jigs now. Fun stuff =)

------
AUmrysh
Hopefully this will facilitate better placement and attachment of the c6
capacitor.

------
nicholassmith
The biggest thing to take away from this isn't just they get to say made in
Britain but that they've created an additional 30 jobs. Not only are they
making a difference in encouraging people to learn from the hardware but
they're also now creating another positive effect on society through job
creation.

Not bad for a small, charitable business.

------
rwmj
Does anyone know where BBC Micros were manufactured? Sinclair's ZX machines
(and C5s) were made in Dundee.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I tracked down this snippet which says who built it:

"A feature it shares with the BBC is that it is an all-British product;
designed by Acorn, it is being built by ICL and Cleartone with custom-built
chips by Ferranti."

From this article: [http://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/cr-BBCMicro-
CToday.ht...](http://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/cr-BBCMicro-CToday.html)

This from The Reg has detail on production and the race to win the place as
BBC computer partner -
[http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th...](http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/30/bbc_micro_model_b_30th_anniversary/page3.html).

This guy, who appears to be an authority, mentions the above and AB
Electronics, see <http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCMicros.html>. He
details info on the companies in the Acorn ecosystem,
<http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Companies.html>, but appears to miss out the
suppliers ...

[http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_IndiaTakes...](http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Nov84_IndiaTakesOnBeebAssembly.pdf)
gives detail of the Indian manufacture by Semiconductor Complex Ltd [under
license from the American Rockwell Corp] and Mexican production by Harry Mazal
(a company). It notes that the ULA will continue to be made by Acorn
themselves (presumably in the UK).

> _In both China and India, the consumer markets are comparatively small, but,
> as the Indian deal shows, the educational and industrial sectors are
> massive. And both countries are crying out for western technology_ //

Talk about turn-around.

\--

Edit:

[http://yourcomputeronline.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bbcs-
prot...](http://yourcomputeronline.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bbcs-proton-
project-and-the-nuclear-family/) mentions:

> _Acorn will probably subcontract assembly to Cleartone in Abercarn; the
> Department of Industry’s £60,000 contribution meant that assembly would have
> to be in Britain. It will be marketed under licence from a box number, by
> mail-order._ //

Looking back <http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/BBCAI2.html> shows an
Abercarn manufactured issue 2.

------
jilt
Great news! However, it would be even better if everything were made in the
UK. Would be nice if the US could follow suit. Unfortunately it usually isn't
good for business. But I don't believe that the government should interfere
with free trade to promote such things.

------
mmahemoff
With robotics and 3D printing, we'll probably see a lot more on-shoring of
manufacturing soon.

