The Chinese Are Coming, The Chinese Are Coming!  By  w650 (Read 4,693 times)

A fairly important bit of news. I'm guessing Kymco is satisfied with the Chinese work force.

powersportsbusiness.com/news/2016/12/21/kymco-breaks-ground-on-new-manufacturing-complex-in-china/

That is what Piaggio did however they were committed to quality and kept they own engineers on-site to verify that their standards were being consistently met. They found that spot checking did not work and that they had to be a fully committed on-site partner not just a distant customer or only on-site after a problem had been detected.

I saw the quality of the bikes the Chinese partners made under their house brand literally leap ahead in quality after their first years association with Piaggio.

Hmm, more like "Chitalian" perhaps?

In the 50's the US laughed Dr Deming out of the country when he claimed that most quality and production issues with American products were caused by the poor management practice of not consulting with production line workers on what potential issues were however the Japanese welcomed him with open arms and sponged up what he had to say and the rest is history. If Chinese manufacturers take action on what they are seeing from the best of what Piaggio, Yamaha and Honda showed them and take on Dr Deming's methods we should see similar improvements in Chinese products coming from those factories. Its mostly office politics and management perceptions of what drives quality that makes or breaks things.

Today Western Private Equity practices are driving Western Quality down in many industries so one does have to be careful of whose example they follow. Look how bad Harley quality got under the Private Equity group that took over AMF. Private Equity tries to lower costs by having their trained and expert workers distill each job position down into recipes and then optimizes things by getting rid of the people who know what they are doing replacing them with people who can read well enough to follow the recipe calling this process Work Force Optimization headed by a corporate officer called the CIO. When problems or variations arise the Monkey See Monkey Do workers who only know to do the A, B, C, etc steps on the recipe can't handle it and everything falls apart. Meanwhile the expert work force that would have prevented the quality escapes keeping everything running smoothly and such stand in unemployment lines.

Unfortunately I think that sooner or later the day of the (relatively) cheap Chinese scooter will come to a close. You might end up with lots of low quality scoots still being offered, but I think the more established "major" Chinese manufacturers will eventually up both the quality and price. But yes you're right, the scoots (with upgrades and some wrenching) have been a good value for the money and sure beat some of the more over-the-top prices being ask by other name brands

Prices started to climb after the Olympics were held in China in order to pass scrutiney from a larger than normal presence of international media in China.

Today China faces such high air pollution levels that they are forced to restrict travel or even shut down airports and all motorized transportation to combat it. Look at the notices just this past month of travel restrictions in China due to bad air quality it will make you wonder what impact this has on the young and elderly in the areas impacter the worst. The days of unregulated pollution by industry in China are just about over and since they waited so long to bring this change about its going to cost a lot more to fix it. John Maxwells Law of the Price Tag applies here as the longer you put off paying it the more its going to cost.

Things are changing there and while they are making improvements in their products cost have to go up across the board to pay up for what they have done to their own environment the past 100 years.