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Comment by Aerroon | Hacker News Reader

Where's the problem? More efficient manufacturing means fewer components sitting around in warehouses waiting to be used. Fewer products sitting on shelves. It means having smaller buffers. An interruption to manufacturing of connivent, such as a factory shutdown, will translate into hiccups down the line due to small(er) buffers.

It's actually not at all dissimilar to how many things in computers work.

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The problem is resilience. Our economy is now fragile, which is not great. And having no excess inventory doesn't mean having no inventory, since supply chain disruptions aren't necessarily immediate to recover from.

Toyota, which pioneered lean manufacturing, is currently laughing its way to the bank; it has a stockpile of semiconductors, since the 2011 Tohoku quake and tsunami exposed how fragile its supply chain for semiconductors was.

Sure, but that still is less efficient when things are working fine. Any time you tie up resources that you don't absolutely have to is a loss of efficiency.

In this case isn't it needed to consider efficiency over the short and longer term? And for the long-term efficiency one of the parameters would be resilience to shocks, which affects the short-term efficiency (more inventory juggling) but is healthier over a longer span of time.

Short-term efficiency is there all the time. Shocks are not. If the space you're competing in has enough competition then the margins will be low. The companies that focus on short-term efficiency could end up outcompeting the companies that keep large buffers.

And at the same time every order you're not filling because of an overzealously tight supply chain is a loss of business. Penny wise and pound foolish.

If it makes sense to stockpile for the company that pretty much invented lean manufacturing as we know it, it's not without merit.

Cars are very high cost items. They probably have substantial margins on them. On the other hand, a product that has very low margins is going to find it much more difficult to stockpile.

I also don’t assume that manufacturing would have been more resilient during the pandemic if it had remained domestic, given the various public policy failures in this country over the last year: uncontrolled spread, laggard regulatory infrastructure, poorly designed labor incentives, etc.

Logistics in the country recovered fairly quickly from the various national disasters, so that's at least one less problem.

Well I can't wait until we offshore all Programming jobs, or have AI powerful enough to kick those spoiled overpaid Programmers to the curb? (This is happening. Good luck finding a Programming job after 40.)

Sometimes you want the talent close. Sometimes you want critical parts close. Sometimes you want your neighbor to have a job.

Until there's a working Basic Income; I prefer keeping most jobs/products close.

Why just until then, if ever? Keep the money local.

As for programming jobs, I think most people who have been in the field for a while have seen plenty of examples of how offshoring doesn't work, and from what I've seen this is known in the c suite as well.

The fundamental problem with offshoring is that you always want to keep important products in house. If the product isn't important you can offshore it but you can also just not do it.

Companies are already trying to flood the market with H1Bs to suppress wages and pushing people towards CS and STEM degrees in general. They don't need to do anything special, in 10 years the market will be flooded and you will be competing with someone who is willing to work 10+ hrs/day for half the wage.

Sounds like what the game dev market already is.

There are problems with the H-1B visa program but it's hardly flooding the market. Congress has held the quota stable for the past several years.

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa...

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