[AT] Import tractors

Dennis Johnson moscowengnr at outlook.com
Fri Jan 6 20:37:03 PST 2017


Jim,

I think this is a cultural issue. I lived there 4 years and got some perspective.

There was a big issue not to question authority. There was also a big issue not to take personal responsibility for things, but just do what was instructed.
In addition there was not incentive for reporting problems, so problems did not surface and reporting was surprised.
Sometimes instead of repair of an equipment problem, the machine was just replaced.

My over simplified opinion is that today's workers had grandparents that may have been shot or sent to Siberian work camps if they had an different idea than the government. The result of this is a few generations that repressed free thinking ideas or questioning authority. I had trouble hiring engineers who would think freely.

Another example is I had a PhD engineer work for over a year to convince a factory that something they insisted on doing was not a regulation, and the factory was misreading the relevant regulations or standards.

There is also many people who have an opinion that "what we have is good enough, so why change", instead of a common attitude here in the US that thinks "my widget is 9 months old and I need to get newer widget just because..." The result is there is less customer incentive pushing to get better stuff. Along with this is manufacturing executives were treated just a small notch below communist party leaders. The market was determined by what manufacturers wanted to build or what the government told then to build instead of what customers wanted or needed.
 
The results of all of the above is there was little inventive for improving quality. I think this is changing slowly. My guess is the internet is opening up worldwide communications and people can see new things most places on the globe.
 
There are great people there, but there politicians have just as many issues as politicians here, resulting in the population suffering from regulatory stupidity, just like we have here.

Thanks
Dennis

Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 6, 2017, at 2:02 PM, James Thomson <macowboy at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
>   Dennis,
>   This is interesting information. The design looks to be OK but the
>   assembly is poor. I am wondering why this is not corrected. Is it a
>   cultural thing or do they not care. I work in the quality assurance
>   field and have visited a lot of the automotive assembly plants here in
>   the US. They will still have problems but they are corrected very
>   quickly. My current employer makes dental implants. The manufacturing
>   floor is the best I have ever seen with lots of automated inspection
>   points and very tight tolerances being held. I just can't picture how
>   bad this factory is.
>   Jim Thomson
>   Macowboy at comcast.net
> _______________________________________________
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