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rand17 wrote:
Update my understanding?. not sure about that... it's pretty clear actually...And I guess that's why China isn't mass producing any commercial aircraft.... Pretty much get one shot at building aircraft correctly and not be focusing on hiring cheap labor..
I thought this thread was about building lenses, not aircraft. Anyway, it is not a good analogy as there is a huge difference in technology, ability, cost and decades of safety records! Lenses are relatively simple things to make. Having said that, even if China did start building commercial aircraft, who is going to buy them? Most airlines buy from Airbus, Boeing and a few other smaller aircraft makers due to long term deals, and they have safety records that have been earnt over many decades. Those main airlines older aircraft are then sold off to lower end airlines in poorer countries so there is a long-term link and cost amortization over a long life of the aircraft. This whole system would be very difficult to break into and will take many decades to infiltrate. The rest of the world has been making aircraft, whether military or commercial, over many decades and thus have a record of safety and expertise and the major airlines buy those aircraft due to this. China is relatively new on the block with regards to any aircraft. However, China do make their own military aircraft and they seem to be excellent. Give it time, they will be making commercial aircraft. Now, back on topic.
It really amazes me that there is still this belief that Chinese made means inferior quality. You can't broad brush subjects like this. In some cases Chinese made can mean inferior quality and built down to a low price point but a low price for a reason, but in other cases it is definitely not the case, the quality is top shelf and for the opposite reason. This can be said for any country's products.
Japan was not always a superior quality manufacturing country. The joke back in the '60's was, if it was cheap and nasty, it was probably made in Japan. Not even two decades later and that belief was reversed, if it was made in Japan people then considered it to be amongst the best. It was the US after the war and during occupation that introduced quality control systems to the Japanese and they took it to another level. Part of this was due to the Korean war, where the US needed good quality suppliers from Japan to provide many of the supplies for the war effort and thus set up quality assurance systems in those Japanese companies. The thing is, whatever company invests in a manufacturing partnership in China will have their own Quality Control imported from the parent company. Successful Japanese companies have excellent quality control systems and will use those systems in their operations in China to make sure their products are as good as those from Japan.
When you talk manufacturing (Nikon) lenses, much of the processes are done by machines, controlled by robots and computers. This takes the human error factor mostly out of the equation and why machines are used in most applications in a production line. Exact repeatability is not a human trait. Machines grind the lenses under instruction from a computer and may even have blanks and/or glass from Japan - I think Nikon has their own glass mixing techniques etc for some of their glass and thus do that in Japan in order to keep that a secret.
The whole point is you cannot make broad-brush statements about a country as a whole manufacturing poor quality product. That is simply a fallacy. I'll guarantee that there are Chinese made goods that are the equal or better than those made in other parts of the world and at a cheaper price!
At the end of the day, all the Nikon lenses that I have are superb. None of mine have been suffering any quality control issues, they all work, all seem to have well aligned lens elements, and none have failed. Some are made in China, some Thailand and some are Japan. They all look and feel like Nikon lenses, basically identical for feel and quality. So, why the angst? Is there some ulterior motive behind the original post?
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