[lit-ideas] Re: The Modern World
- From: "Lawrence Helm"<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:24:25 +0000
This doesn't quite ring true. Having worked for Douglas, McDonnell Douglas and
Boeing I know something of how an airplane is put together. An Aircraft
company does not build a plane from scratch. In fact it doesn't actually build
much of the airplane. It should more properly be called a final assembly
company. If there are parts that an aircraft company can make, it goes through
a "Make or Buy" analysis to decide whether to make the part or have someone
else do it. As time went on fewer and fewer parts were made by the company.
While I don't know anything about how automobile manufacturing in particular, I
would think that a similar process would be employed. The idea of shipping the
automobile back and forth across borders doesn't make any sense to me. I can
imagine having some parts shipped back and forth. There was something called
"CFE" in aerospace. It meant "Company Furnished Equipment." If a vendor
needed something in order to complete his task, the company might furnish it to
him. So if the vendor was in some other country, the Auto company might ship
a part to the vender whereupon the vendor would assemble his part into the CFE
part and return the combined part to the Auto-company.
Lawrence
------------Original Message------------
From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, Jun-12-2007 10:54 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Modern World
Sometimes a piece of informationbecomes indicative of how things are going. I
offer two candidatestoday:
From a speech given by the CEO of UPS:
The CEO used the automotive industry to illustrate just one of theproblems with
the current customs process.
"Did you know that the average North American-produced vehicle crossesthe
border more than seven times during production?" he asked. "Duringthe journey,
each vehicle faces a staggering 28,200 customstransactions. By comparison, cars
imported from Europe or Asia toNorth America involve a single customs
transaction. If we delaycross-border shipments by just a day, the Americas lose
theirproximity advantage over Asia."
From a story in our paper:
Big-name researchers are prized commodities for hospitals competing inthe
booming cancer care business.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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