Manufacturing in China vs. Manufacturing using robotic automation in North America
Let's take a look inside one automotive parts plant's decision-making process on whether to keep their manufacturing in the U.S. or move to China.
The plant manager knew that his machine tool uptime was a target area to look for cost savings. Originally, a person had to stand in front of each machine tool constantly. Basically, the person would load a five pound aluminum part into a machine tool, wait for the machine tool process, and then take the machined part out of the machine tool. This occurred two shifts a day, five days a week. There was an incredible amount of wasted time for both the operator and the machine tool. The operator was idled the majority of the time while the machine tool processed the part. The machine tool was idle any time the person wasn't present – lunch breaks, coffee breaks, etc.
- In this U.S. plant, the operation originally cost 32 cents per part to produce with manual machine tending.
- In China, the part would have cost 14 cents per part including shipping and storage. However, when robotic automation was applied to handle the part, the efficiency of the machine tool improved by increasing machine uptime by 10%.
- Machine uptime is the name of the game. 10% increase in machine uptime actually reduced this plant's cost from 32 cents per part to 10 cents per part.
- Moving to robotic automation proved to be actually 40% cheaper than moving their manufacturing to China.
- In addition, this manufacturer did not have to worry about delays due to overseas shipping/import problems, labor issues in China, government issues in China, etc.
- The company proved that by automating their plant, they were able to reduce their costs from 32 cents to 10 cents/part, and were able to produce well below the 14 cents per part if manufactured in China and shipped to the U.S.
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