...if the customer and supplier have not specifically agreed what constitutes "working perfectly" versus "wrong" (and how to demonstrate compliance or not), the gizmo has a very low likelihood of meeting both parties expectations. This is the core of the problems with China...
One thing I have noticed is that devices like USB to RS-232 adapters made in China will mostly work, but not everything works. For example BREAK might not work properly. And that is something which is in the EIA RS-232 (or whatever) standard.
So are they reading this and not understanding what they are reading?
Or not bothering to get the standards, read them, and test?
Or they just don't care? Or something else?
Back in the 1980's I worked with RS-232 quite a bit. Every piece of equipment I used worked to the specs of the standard as it should. And if something didn't, the company (U.S.) would be quite embarrassed and would immediately fix the problem. Send out new firmware or whatever was needed. Free.
Back to the USB to RS-232 adapters, I bought one of these from an office supply store recently. It was not working properly. Nowhere on the product did it have a web site, phone, or address to contact for support or to report problems. So when I returned it, I included a letter detailing what was wrong with the product. I asked the salesperson if she could send that to their distributor so they could fix their product. She didn't seem very interested in doing that! But said she would ask her manager if they could...
So talk about sorry communications!
(FYI the USB to RS-232 adapters sold by Parallax work perfectly in all respects including BREAK. And 1/2 the price of the adaptor I bought at the office supply.)
An interesting observation about communication abilities... I used to work for a security alarm company. Many of our residential customers were quite wealthy. And they all had one thing in common. That is *excellent* oral and written communication skills. If they were happy, they let you know in detail what you did right. If they were not happy, they let you know in detail what they were displeased with. I don't know if that is the cause or effect of being wealthy? I suspect cause...
One thing I have noticed is that devices like USB to RS-232 adapters made in China will mostly work, but not everything works. For example BREAK might not work properly. And that is something which is in the EIA RS-232 (or whatever) standard.
So are they reading this and not understanding what they are reading?
Or not bothering to get the standards, read them, and test?
Or they just don't care? Or something else?
Back in the 1980's I worked with RS-232 quite a bit. Every piece of equipment I used worked to the specs of the standard as it should. And if something didn't, the company (U.S.) would be quite embarrassed and would immediately fix the problem. Send out new firmware or whatever was needed. Free.
Back to the USB to RS-232 adapters, I bought one of these from an office supply store recently. It was not working properly. Nowhere on the product did it have a web site, phone, or address to contact for support or to report problems. So when I returned it, I included a letter detailing what was wrong with the product. I asked the salesperson if she could send that to their distributor so they could fix their product. She didn't seem very interested in doing that! But said she would ask her manager if they could...
So talk about sorry communications!
(FYI the USB to RS-232 adapters sold by Parallax work perfectly in all respects including BREAK. And 1/2 the price of the adaptor I bought at the office supply.)
An interesting observation about communication abilities... I used to work for a security alarm company. Many of our residential customers were quite wealthy. And they all had one thing in common. That is *excellent* oral and written communication skills. If they were happy, they let you know in detail what you did right. If they were not happy, they let you know in detail what they were displeased with. I don't know if that is the cause or effect of being wealthy? I suspect cause...
Hello!
Bill the adapters two actual working parts, which are the two ICs, the one made by FTDI and the one made by Maxim, they've got fab houses in Taiwan and Indonesia respectively. And I've worked with the techsupport squads for both. For Maxim I needed to discuss the whichness of what concerning a Max237 part, like how is it wired to directly support the RS232E standard, and why does the datasheet not contain the methods, when TI does for their equivalent device, (and that one does need two supplies.) the woman I spoke to had an Asian accent, was extremely polite, and got back to me by e-mail later that day. the response was more of "Because it just does Mr Levine".
The one time it was not like that was when it concerned a now discontinued part, from the same company of course, it was two individuals and they sounded like teenagers posing as interns doing that job over the summer. They were rude as you can get over the phone without the person they were speaking with (me) saying something worse back and hanging up.
And incidentally Ken concerning that very same adapter, look at the datasheet's applications notes, inside them you'll find that your adapter was assembled exactly like one of them.
Most of our electronics are made there, this computer, my iPod, and the rest. Apple takes things seriously, as does Dell. The stories we hear about life over there, it may be changing.
For example BREAK might not work properly. And that is something which is in the EIA RS-232 (or whatever) standard.
One thing about RS-232 "standard". It comes from the "olden days" when "standard" meant more like "we tend to do it this way" rather than "did it exactly this way and it is guaranteed to work this way". There are a whole bunch of things defined, and a whole bunch of options. Many of the options can be in conflict. Example, I worked at a printer company that claimed to support communication over RS-232. Customers would complain that their printer would not work with their set-up, and we would change the product. Shortly after, other customers would complain that their stopped working after the "fix". Turns out some folks needed custom cables due to a different hardware configuration, or they needed hardware flow control, or needed software flow control, or some bizarre combination. Eventually the few customers with the strangest configurations were treated as "custom" and the product conformed to the most common configuration found in the field.
Point is that the company DID NOT check the RS-232 definition before making the claim of compliance, and did not limit the claim to that most commonly found in the field. So they felt they were now obligated to support every configuration "out of the box". They also changed the product every time a customer called, rather than first checking if the product performed "as specified", since they felt it was too time consuming to formally specify the product function, and too limiting to conform to such a specification. These guys spent tons of money "keeping customers happy" chasing "bugs" when they could have eliminated all the problems and made the customers happier (by eliminating the issues in the first place).
Why would we pay $6 for a Boe-Bot chassis here when they're a third of the price in China and the quality is the same or better?
Having run a machine shop for several years (not anymore, couldn't afford it), I can say that you have found the real cost of operating in china.
I had a customer who "makes" a product in the US, source a core component from chaiwan and the first batch had a 72% reject rate. The imported part cost less than half the domestic part, and it wasn't a cheap part either.
They had 50 widgets to build, but couldn't build 50 widgets because 72% of them were rejected. What do you think this did to their production schedule?
Paying a shop down the street to make Boe-Bot chassis' for $6, having them in less than 2 weeks, getting constructive feedback on how you might change the design to make it less expensive, and having a good relationship that affords a few "hey, couldya do this for me right now?" or "hey, couldya send me a dozen prototype widgets in 3 days?", is priceless.
If you really evaluate your vendors, you may find that the $3 extra you pay allows you to receive payment 20-30 days earlier on an order, provides you valuable engineering expertise that you would have to pay another engineer $$$ to have, or a flexible relationship that allows you to prototype something weeks earlier and allows you to put a design into production 3 months sooner.
Anyway I learned it is rude in some cultures to point out what is wrong with someone or something, so perhaps they were being polite?
Then in China the language is very extensive and complex. I've read that even after a lifetime of living there, people still do not know the language. So perhaps they just give up trying to communicate exactly what they want to say? Maybe just the general idea is an acceptable communication?
Anyway I have had trouble "communicating".
I am not surprised.
According to traditional Chinese custom, to point out something wrong, or that someone did something wrong, is ultimately rude and condescending. The Chinese use the term, "Keep Face," which means they must look good at all times.
The language is inherently indirect. (consider it like Politician talk) It is true, in communicating, especially in the case of technology, only the general idea is propagated. Even Chinese people often don't know what other Chinese people are saying. Reading Chinese characters is all about interpretating the concatenations and prefix and suffix of symbols with multiple meanings.
However, when it comes to family, Chinese is the most accurate and specific language on the Earth!
In technology, the language needs some help. I had a very strange humidifier and I had the manual translated to English so I could understand many controls with Chinese symbols. With the translation, I remember laughing. It was something like this:
Find knob on the machine turn it. Set other knob turning. Use front. Begin look for a place with reading. Use it. Use other knob later. Has wide side. Use for feeling comfort...
According to traditional Chinese custom, to point out something wrong, or that someone did something wrong, is ultimately rude and condescending. The Chinese use the term, "Keep Face," which means they must look good at all times.
The language is inherently indirect. (consider it like Politician talk) It is true, in communicating, especially in the case of technology, only the general idea is propagated. Even Chinese people often don't know what other Chinese people are saying. Reading Chinese characters is all about interpretating the concatenations and prefix and suffix of symbols with multiple meanings.
However, when it comes to family, Chinese is the most accurate and specific language on the Earth!
In technology, the language needs some help. I had a very strange humidifier and I had the manual translated to English so I could understand many controls with Chinese symbols. With the translation, I remember laughing. It was something like this:
Find knob on the machine turn it. Set other knob turning. Use front. Begin look for a place with reading. Use it. Use other knob later. Has wide side. Use for feeling comfort...
I agree on that. "Keep face" and "Be Strict" are things in the Chinese community.
You know, in China, there are many, many dialects. It is not surprising that one Chinese will sound foreign to another Chinese due to the dialect. My mother can speak Hokkien and Cantonese, but I can only speak Cantonese to her as my Hokkien is very, very limited. In SE Asia, many Chinese (or descent) can actually speak more than one Chinese language/dialect. Some of them can speak three or four Chinese dialects too. I could not comprehend Mandarin well, but I can guess the meanings by the sound (some of them sound similar to one dialect).
Meanwhile, I know China's been giving cheap labour and giving them overtimes. In short, they are overworked and underpaid. I read it in a Time magazine - workers there are often too tired.
In my opinion, I think it's just economical evolution. At one time we produced the most goods at very low costs right here in America. It's the production of those goods and the abundance of jobs that dictated higher salaries and benefits as a means of enticing workers to choose one employer over another. It's only a matter of time before the country producing the most jobs encounters the same balance in employable people vs available positions and then they too will experience the cost increases in finding suitable personnel. There is a reason why the lowest labor costs are in the highest populated countries (China & India). This will most likely continue for the remainder of time. The person needing the job the worst (most desperate) will always be willing to do it cheaper. So, even when China reaches their balancing point, they too will be in our position and some other developing nation will get the jobs. The only real way for us Americans to stay gainfully employed is to stay ahead of the rest of the world in new ideas. I saw someone mention Steve Jobs earlier in this post and he is a great example of someone that led by vision and simply stayed ahead of the curve. He constantly took the lead. The whole economy and jobs thing is not unlike a drug manufacturer. When they invent a new drug, they reap 100% of the benefits from it's sale for several years until it is copied and it's patent release to it's competitors and the price falls. We have to constantly reinvent in order to keep the jobs.
...According to traditional Chinese custom, to point out something wrong, or that someone did something wrong, is ultimately rude and condescending. The Chinese use the term, "Keep Face," which means they must look good at all times...
Well I would hate to work at say an automobile repair shop in China, if all the customers brought in their cars for repair, but did not say specifically what was not working!
It is necessary sometimes, with intermittent problems, for the customer to tell you specifically what is wrong...
So how do you get them to tell you specifically what is wrong?
Language and culture barriers are very much in the way and in some cases exploited by the shrewd. It used to be that when a buyer or quality control person visited Taiwan, he would be wined and dined every night so that he couldn't get to the point of his visit.
This 'keeping face' issue gets rather absurd. For instance, I have been going to the Dermatology Department of a major teaching hospital here and the doctor diagnoses my complaints and then the actual treatment is delegated to a resident MD. While the other departments are excellent in this hospital, the Dermatology Department has a real problem with communication and I suspect it is due to attempting to save face. This week I am stuck with having to go back and ask why the resident doctor only removed half the stitches from my back where two moles were removed. It will be a very uncomfortable moment, but saving face really is rather useless in critical quality assurance. Stories about Taiwan's nuclear reactors came up after the Japan fiasco and it seems that an American contractor to clean the holding tanks for spent fuel had pulled out due to the fact that the local culture was dumping all and everything in the bottom of the holding tanks because radioactivity is culturally considered dirty. There was far more debris than normal, including things like broken chairs. The contractor didn't have enough manpower to complete the clean up as the divers were limited to a certain amount of radioactive exposure time.
Germany and Japan, regardless of their ideologies in WWII, certainly still find a way toward excellence regardless of saving face. This is something that any vibrant economy needs.
Regarding Chinese stainless steel or any steel, much of the world will not use it at any price due to lack of good quality control. Documents really don't matter as they can be filled out proforma and delivery accepted without getting what you want. US, Europe, and Korea have better track records for delivering to spec.
I'm very impressed with the responses to my question, especially Ken's detailed explanation of doing business with China. I very much appreciate the insights everyone has provided on this and I'm grateful that you've all maintained a non-politcal perspective in your replies. Thanks to all!
EA - thanks for starting this thread; I've enjoyed the insight from all involved.
...The only real way for us Americans to stay gainfully employed is to stay ahead of the rest of the world in new ideas. I saw someone mention Steve Jobs earlier in this post and he is a great example of someone that led by vision and simply stayed ahead of the curve... We have to constantly reinvent in order to keep the jobs.
I wholeheartedly agree that we must push the education system to help kids become better innovators, inventors, etc. But I wonder about this concept of turning the entire population of a nation into inventors and entrepreneurs. For example, a fair percentage of people with whom I went to high school could barely reason their way out of a paper bag. While some could invent something of interest to the market, others could not, though they were quite good at throwing footballs, hitting balls with sticks, tossing balls through hoops, or mopping floors. But football-throwing jobs and floor-mopping jobs can only be won if there are factories nearby that need footballs thrown or floors mopped. And without those factories, I'm not sure what those kids would do for a living. What happens to the other 85% of a society that doesn't seem capable of creating anything new yet is perfectly fine building something if given detailed instructions and free coffee in the break room?
More innovation taught in education. May I mention that T. A. Edison said innovation was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. What we need is a system where students are taught to take on tasks and diligently complete them.
Regarding Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and others - it doesn't help that some of most rewarded businessmen in the last 25 years dropped out of college. American has gotten to a point that creation of wealth is done more often by sports figures and rap artist than hard working folk that create a new industrial base that contributes to more jobs and a better standard of living.
I am all for revitalizing America, but I don't think many businessmen that prospered in the last 25 years have much to contribute to doing so as they were all for downsizing and exporting jobs.
I don't think innovation can be taught, but I think it's possible to create an environment that fosters its development. My K-12 education used what I would call the "push" method, and it's probably what predominates today. In the push method, students are given information and training without a motive for learning it except, as my sixth-grade teacher put it, "to avoid a life of ditch-digging." At some point in the K-12 years, there needs to be a bridge to more of a "pull" method, where students choose an objective beyond their current abilities that interests them and learn what they need to to meet that objective. This is the method my friends and I used to make gunpowder rockets. It wasn't taught in school, but we learned a heckuva lot in the process and enjoyed every minute of it. It wasn't until pursuing various independent studies in college that the pull method was formally sanctioned. But I believe it should be instituted much sooner than that if we want to turn out generations of innovators.
Well @Phil, you did it. ( Post#44 ). After lurking here in the swampy shadow of all of those foras for some month, you got me to dive up.
YES, you hit the nail. Teaching is about awakening(*?*) someones imagination where he/she can go to.
Not only about delivering Facts.
It took me some years to understand that, we need way more teachers to get this important difference in their daily routine. China or not - it is about willingness to learn and adapt, not about fixed - "You need to know that" - things.
We [all?] here in America need to understand: It is that lazyness which got us here. We are not 'hungry' anymore, but the rest of the world is.
Without Innovators we are doomed. But then we have to incourage(*?*) people to think 'out of the bin' not to hinder(*?*) them and that is not happening.
I lived in Germany until 2005 so 'we' is not just 'we americans' like I feel now, but also 'we germans' or other groups in the 'First World' (Europa) or 'Second World' (USA).
The truth is - 'they' are coming and we will have to face this:
The Internet will be pretty soon availeble(*?*) for ALL of us. To ALL of those 7 Millions of Millions of people living in this world.
And 'we' in Europa and USA are just 240 millions each... so half a million compared to all of the other 6.5 Millions of Millions of people in th world.
By now we have the advantage of knowlege, if even. But for how long ?
Now , the main internet is English. But for how long ?
I ordered a Samsung ARM Board to play with. Yes $40 or so. Got Linux and Windows on CD. and lots of pdf's and programs, source and tools ALL OF IT THERE.
But all of it in Chinese. Sure, why not ? About 8 out of 10 people in the world read, write and speak chinese.
so my question is to all of you
how to learn chinese if you already have hit your 50' birthday ?
because it is happening now, not in a couple of years ...
And to make this clear - 'us' and 'them' is an illusion - we all are the same.
Mike
Ah, I forgot ... welcome to Mike, Foras (Forums ?, Foras ?, I stick to latin, can't be wrong...)
p.s.
(*?*) I guess it is written like that ... sorry for my english, i am still learning my second language ...
I What happens to the other 85% of a society that doesn't seem capable of creating anything new yet is perfectly fine building something if given detailed instructions and free coffee in the break room?
I very much agree with you on the 85% thing. That fact will never fluctuate more than a few percentage point either way. It's simply human nature to follow rather than lead. I was more trying to say that, in a large part, we Americans rest on our laurels until forced to do otherwise. We discover, invent, design, and build it and then go sit in the bank parking lot for as long as the money stream keeps coming. e.g. the auto manufacturers, the space shuttle program, bad bank loaning practices, Montgomery Wards and all kinds of others across many industries that stuck with the status-quo until it was too late. Just this alone has cost us millions and millions of jobs. The old saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it" should end with "but continually improve it" I'm not saying we all have to be inventors, I'm saying those that are capable and do invent need to continually do so. Heck, our auto manufacturers (and everyone else for that matter) have known electric vehicles were gonna be a large part of the future for decades and haven't acted on it. Chevy beat the same dead horse for so long that they are now years behind the competition. The goofballs with the power are completely giving away the space programs to other countries. I won't go into my feeling about the oil industry and how many jobs we could have right here at home because that may be going too political. It's just that we are not leading the world like we used to do and I feel (fear) that it may be a product of our overabundance of wealth that creates the lack of desire to do any better. This is what I'm calling economical evolution. For some reason when we are in the lead, I think us humans simply lose the tenacity of the underdog.
That's sort of all over the place but I was trying not to write a book......:)
... there needs to be a bridge to more of a "pull" method, where students choose an objective beyond their current abilities that interests them and learn what they need to to meet that objective....
Yes, I agree that the pull method works probably better than others. In fact, I'm very much a product of pull vs. push. Forget about school, the pull used to be things like the conquest of space, exploration of the ocean depths, various and sundry pyrotechnics (where the heck were my parents when we were cratering far yonder pastures?). Later on, the pull was trying to grok the secrets of the universe. Nowadays, however, I'm not sure how to get the kids out of the effing Faceblech and Thumb-tapping Twitterverse. I wasn't so "hungry" for amenities as a kid, but I sure wanted to get my hands on rockets and submarines and telescopes and high voltage generators and vacuum pumps and practically anything with the words "high-altitude" attached to it and... and... and....
I received the above book, "Poorly Made in China", and have been reading it.
As it turns out, they intentionally make things with defects and refuse to do anything to correct the defects when these are pointed out to them! They know all about these defects, actually change things in products to make more money [during production], and think their customers will not notice.
The problem as I see it, is that companies having products manufactured in China are putting "all their eggs in one basket"! That is they commit to having entire runs of certain products made in China, then are stuck having to beg and plead with them to improve quality.
I think the only solution to this China quality problem is to "Hit them over the head with a bat"! That is have half your product made elsewhere like India, Mexico, South America, or anywhere but China. Then when they lower quality and ship defective products... Simply say "We no longer need your services for that product". And shift full production for that product to the other country (or a major portion of the production until they decide to fix their quality problems).
THEN I assure you, they will see the light and improve quality.
I agree on that. "Keep face" and "Be Strict" are things in the Chinese community. You know, in China, there are many, many dialects. It is not surprising that one Chinese will sound foreign to another Chinese due to the dialect. My mother can speak Hokkien and Cantonese, but I can only speak Cantonese to her as my Hokkien is very, very limited. In SE Asia, many Chinese (or descent) can actually speak more than one Chinese language/dialect. Some of them can speak three or four Chinese dialects too. I could not comprehend Mandarin well, but I can guess the meanings by the sound (some of them sound similar to one dialect). Meanwhile, I know China's been giving cheap labour and giving them overtimes. In short, they are overworked and underpaid. I read it in a Time magazine - workers there are often too tired.
That's very true, there are many dialects in China and even in the same city. Several times I ventured out to other parts of Beijing and found communities that speak not only different dialects but speak different Chinese languages and have different cultures. To me, it's like going to a different country, all within one city! My Chinese friend speaks "Hokka" and we overlap with Mandarin and English. His girlfriend speaks Cantonese and overlaps with Hokka, and English. Then... taxi drivers have languages many people don't know... it's all very interesting and fascinating to those studying languages and working in communicatons. Some of the languages several thousand years old are still found in China. The rich history is remarkable. It can help businesses doing commodity exchange with China to know some Chinese language, and knowing the aforementioned culture can be as helpful as knowing the language.
As it turns out, they intentionally make things with defects and refuse to do anything to correct the defects when these are pointed out to them! They know all about these defects, actually change things in products to make more money [during production], and think their customers will not notice.
Watch out for lots of fake things. Fake can be good if you like dance and want to see MJ impersonation. Fake can be bad if you buy a processor chip and there's nothing inside it.
There was a company in the field of engineering that's neither Chinese nor American. They designed and programmed their product to fail after a certain number of months. Then they went in like heros, earned the service money and business, and sold the expensive service contract. Word got out about what they were doing and now they're history.
In countries and cities with the largest population, there are many more people trading and doing business. A store down the street may cheat, and the customer will never go there again. But, with such a huge population density, there is always another person who will go there and buy, and the company stays in business. In the USA there are fewer people and a cheating company eventually is forced out of business due to lack of customers.
...In the USA there are fewer people and a cheating company eventually is forced out of business due to lack of customers.
In the US, there is also freedom of the press, which allows news organizations to expose and make a mockery of sleazy practitioners. There are also anti-fraud laws, which sometimes actually get enforced. The US also has the freedom to peaceably assemble, and, believe it or not, I've see people march around with picket signs in front of businesses that have ripped them off.
There was a company in the field of engineering that's neither Chinese nor American. They designed and programmed their product to fail after a certain number of months. Then they went in like heros, earned the service money and business, and sold the expensive service contract. Word got out about what they were doing and now they're history.
I agree 100%, if you do it right the first time we want have this problem.
I finished reading it last night. It's an excellent book written by somebody who was perfectly positioned to shed light on what's happening. It's not the China-bashing tirade I somewhat feared it would be. Instead, it's a very thoughtful, entertaining, insightful look into the cultural perspectives that cause so many problems between the importers in "first market" economies and their manufacturers in China, who are operating under a very different paradigm for success. This book was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to find when I started this thread. Thanks, Phil. And thanks again to everyone here who has added their comments.
Since reading that book, I've done some poking around on the internet and it seems they have been manufacturing unsafe 120 volt electrical products, with smaller gauge wire than listed on the package, and forged Underwriters Laboratories stickers!
So basically any extension cord, power strip, surge protector, or electrical appliance we may have purchased in the last 10 years could have an undersized power cord and could be a fire hazard. And the UL label being phony, the product never being tested for safety!
I bought the Kindle book yesterday via my Chinese made iPhone so I can read it on my Chinese made iPad. I fell asleep last night before I got a chance to start reading but it looks very interesting.
I finished the book yesterday. It certainly gives a perspective most of us do not realize exists. Good book in my opinion.
I was in China over 20 years ago and I experienced the same kind of customers won't mind if we switch this for that and cost go up! as the author describes. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing it's a cultural thing and not something people there have picked up over the years of dealing with foreigners. It's hard to imagine how that general business model/attitude can continue to expand. I think the western business model is based on real mutual cooperation: we work together and we'll all get rich. But this Chinese industrial attitude seems to result in every factory owner aspiring to be a little emperor. Of course, I've known plenty of egomaniac US business men and women who've aspired to be emperors of their own, but they've always kept their impulses in check when it comes to customer relations, even when they gained "the upper hand." And US businesses always have the threat of legal action if they don't fulfill the terms of a contract. From what the author indicates, there's still no legal recourse if a manufacturer decides to stray from the agreement.
I've started reading another book on business in China, Walmart in China. This one is about Walmart's relationship with Chinese Manufacturing and thus far appears to be an eyeopening read. My interest in the topic was piqued by this thread and in particularly by reading Poorly Made in China.
I will comment further as I read more. It is defiantly a slower read than the other.
Comments
One thing I have noticed is that devices like USB to RS-232 adapters made in China will mostly work, but not everything works. For example BREAK might not work properly. And that is something which is in the EIA RS-232 (or whatever) standard.
So are they reading this and not understanding what they are reading?
Or not bothering to get the standards, read them, and test?
Or they just don't care? Or something else?
Back in the 1980's I worked with RS-232 quite a bit. Every piece of equipment I used worked to the specs of the standard as it should. And if something didn't, the company (U.S.) would be quite embarrassed and would immediately fix the problem. Send out new firmware or whatever was needed. Free.
Back to the USB to RS-232 adapters, I bought one of these from an office supply store recently. It was not working properly. Nowhere on the product did it have a web site, phone, or address to contact for support or to report problems. So when I returned it, I included a letter detailing what was wrong with the product. I asked the salesperson if she could send that to their distributor so they could fix their product. She didn't seem very interested in doing that! But said she would ask her manager if they could...
So talk about sorry communications!
(FYI the USB to RS-232 adapters sold by Parallax work perfectly in all respects including BREAK. And 1/2 the price of the adaptor I bought at the office supply.)
An interesting observation about communication abilities... I used to work for a security alarm company. Many of our residential customers were quite wealthy. And they all had one thing in common. That is *excellent* oral and written communication skills. If they were happy, they let you know in detail what you did right. If they were not happy, they let you know in detail what they were displeased with. I don't know if that is the cause or effect of being wealthy? I suspect cause...
Hello!
Bill the adapters two actual working parts, which are the two ICs, the one made by FTDI and the one made by Maxim, they've got fab houses in Taiwan and Indonesia respectively. And I've worked with the techsupport squads for both. For Maxim I needed to discuss the whichness of what concerning a Max237 part, like how is it wired to directly support the RS232E standard, and why does the datasheet not contain the methods, when TI does for their equivalent device, (and that one does need two supplies.) the woman I spoke to had an Asian accent, was extremely polite, and got back to me by e-mail later that day. the response was more of "Because it just does Mr Levine".
The one time it was not like that was when it concerned a now discontinued part, from the same company of course, it was two individuals and they sounded like teenagers posing as interns doing that job over the summer. They were rude as you can get over the phone without the person they were speaking with (me) saying something worse back and hanging up.
And incidentally Ken concerning that very same adapter, look at the datasheet's applications notes, inside them you'll find that your adapter was assembled exactly like one of them.
Most of our electronics are made there, this computer, my iPod, and the rest. Apple takes things seriously, as does Dell. The stories we hear about life over there, it may be changing.
One thing about RS-232 "standard". It comes from the "olden days" when "standard" meant more like "we tend to do it this way" rather than "did it exactly this way and it is guaranteed to work this way". There are a whole bunch of things defined, and a whole bunch of options. Many of the options can be in conflict. Example, I worked at a printer company that claimed to support communication over RS-232. Customers would complain that their printer would not work with their set-up, and we would change the product. Shortly after, other customers would complain that their stopped working after the "fix". Turns out some folks needed custom cables due to a different hardware configuration, or they needed hardware flow control, or needed software flow control, or some bizarre combination. Eventually the few customers with the strangest configurations were treated as "custom" and the product conformed to the most common configuration found in the field.
Point is that the company DID NOT check the RS-232 definition before making the claim of compliance, and did not limit the claim to that most commonly found in the field. So they felt they were now obligated to support every configuration "out of the box". They also changed the product every time a customer called, rather than first checking if the product performed "as specified", since they felt it was too time consuming to formally specify the product function, and too limiting to conform to such a specification. These guys spent tons of money "keeping customers happy" chasing "bugs" when they could have eliminated all the problems and made the customers happier (by eliminating the issues in the first place).
Having run a machine shop for several years (not anymore, couldn't afford it), I can say that you have found the real cost of operating in china.
I had a customer who "makes" a product in the US, source a core component from chaiwan and the first batch had a 72% reject rate. The imported part cost less than half the domestic part, and it wasn't a cheap part either.
They had 50 widgets to build, but couldn't build 50 widgets because 72% of them were rejected. What do you think this did to their production schedule?
Paying a shop down the street to make Boe-Bot chassis' for $6, having them in less than 2 weeks, getting constructive feedback on how you might change the design to make it less expensive, and having a good relationship that affords a few "hey, couldya do this for me right now?" or "hey, couldya send me a dozen prototype widgets in 3 days?", is priceless.
If you really evaluate your vendors, you may find that the $3 extra you pay allows you to receive payment 20-30 days earlier on an order, provides you valuable engineering expertise that you would have to pay another engineer $$$ to have, or a flexible relationship that allows you to prototype something weeks earlier and allows you to put a design into production 3 months sooner.
I am not surprised.
According to traditional Chinese custom, to point out something wrong, or that someone did something wrong, is ultimately rude and condescending. The Chinese use the term, "Keep Face," which means they must look good at all times.
The language is inherently indirect. (consider it like Politician talk) It is true, in communicating, especially in the case of technology, only the general idea is propagated. Even Chinese people often don't know what other Chinese people are saying. Reading Chinese characters is all about interpretating the concatenations and prefix and suffix of symbols with multiple meanings.
However, when it comes to family, Chinese is the most accurate and specific language on the Earth!
In technology, the language needs some help. I had a very strange humidifier and I had the manual translated to English so I could understand many controls with Chinese symbols. With the translation, I remember laughing. It was something like this:
Find knob on the machine turn it. Set other knob turning. Use front. Begin look for a place with reading. Use it. Use other knob later. Has wide side. Use for feeling comfort...
I agree on that. "Keep face" and "Be Strict" are things in the Chinese community.
You know, in China, there are many, many dialects. It is not surprising that one Chinese will sound foreign to another Chinese due to the dialect. My mother can speak Hokkien and Cantonese, but I can only speak Cantonese to her as my Hokkien is very, very limited. In SE Asia, many Chinese (or descent) can actually speak more than one Chinese language/dialect. Some of them can speak three or four Chinese dialects too. I could not comprehend Mandarin well, but I can guess the meanings by the sound (some of them sound similar to one dialect).
Meanwhile, I know China's been giving cheap labour and giving them overtimes. In short, they are overworked and underpaid. I read it in a Time magazine - workers there are often too tired.
Well I would hate to work at say an automobile repair shop in China, if all the customers brought in their cars for repair, but did not say specifically what was not working!
It is necessary sometimes, with intermittent problems, for the customer to tell you specifically what is wrong...
So how do you get them to tell you specifically what is wrong?
This 'keeping face' issue gets rather absurd. For instance, I have been going to the Dermatology Department of a major teaching hospital here and the doctor diagnoses my complaints and then the actual treatment is delegated to a resident MD. While the other departments are excellent in this hospital, the Dermatology Department has a real problem with communication and I suspect it is due to attempting to save face. This week I am stuck with having to go back and ask why the resident doctor only removed half the stitches from my back where two moles were removed. It will be a very uncomfortable moment, but saving face really is rather useless in critical quality assurance. Stories about Taiwan's nuclear reactors came up after the Japan fiasco and it seems that an American contractor to clean the holding tanks for spent fuel had pulled out due to the fact that the local culture was dumping all and everything in the bottom of the holding tanks because radioactivity is culturally considered dirty. There was far more debris than normal, including things like broken chairs. The contractor didn't have enough manpower to complete the clean up as the divers were limited to a certain amount of radioactive exposure time.
Germany and Japan, regardless of their ideologies in WWII, certainly still find a way toward excellence regardless of saving face. This is something that any vibrant economy needs.
Regarding Chinese stainless steel or any steel, much of the world will not use it at any price due to lack of good quality control. Documents really don't matter as they can be filled out proforma and delivery accepted without getting what you want. US, Europe, and Korea have better track records for delivering to spec.
EA - thanks for starting this thread; I've enjoyed the insight from all involved.
I wholeheartedly agree that we must push the education system to help kids become better innovators, inventors, etc. But I wonder about this concept of turning the entire population of a nation into inventors and entrepreneurs. For example, a fair percentage of people with whom I went to high school could barely reason their way out of a paper bag. While some could invent something of interest to the market, others could not, though they were quite good at throwing footballs, hitting balls with sticks, tossing balls through hoops, or mopping floors. But football-throwing jobs and floor-mopping jobs can only be won if there are factories nearby that need footballs thrown or floors mopped. And without those factories, I'm not sure what those kids would do for a living. What happens to the other 85% of a society that doesn't seem capable of creating anything new yet is perfectly fine building something if given detailed instructions and free coffee in the break room?
Regarding Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and others - it doesn't help that some of most rewarded businessmen in the last 25 years dropped out of college. American has gotten to a point that creation of wealth is done more often by sports figures and rap artist than hard working folk that create a new industrial base that contributes to more jobs and a better standard of living.
I am all for revitalizing America, but I don't think many businessmen that prospered in the last 25 years have much to contribute to doing so as they were all for downsizing and exporting jobs.
-Phil
YES, you hit the nail. Teaching is about awakening(*?*) someones imagination where he/she can go to.
Not only about delivering Facts.
It took me some years to understand that, we need way more teachers to get this important difference in their daily routine. China or not - it is about willingness to learn and adapt, not about fixed - "You need to know that" - things.
We [all?] here in America need to understand: It is that lazyness which got us here. We are not 'hungry' anymore, but the rest of the world is.
Without Innovators we are doomed. But then we have to incourage(*?*) people to think 'out of the bin' not to hinder(*?*) them and that is not happening.
I lived in Germany until 2005 so 'we' is not just 'we americans' like I feel now, but also 'we germans' or other groups in the 'First World' (Europa) or 'Second World' (USA).
The truth is - 'they' are coming and we will have to face this:
The Internet will be pretty soon availeble(*?*) for ALL of us. To ALL of those 7 Millions of Millions of people living in this world.
And 'we' in Europa and USA are just 240 millions each... so half a million compared to all of the other 6.5 Millions of Millions of people in th world.
By now we have the advantage of knowlege, if even. But for how long ?
Now , the main internet is English. But for how long ?
I ordered a Samsung ARM Board to play with. Yes $40 or so. Got Linux and Windows on CD. and lots of pdf's and programs, source and tools ALL OF IT THERE.
But all of it in Chinese. Sure, why not ? About 8 out of 10 people in the world read, write and speak chinese.
so my question is to all of you
how to learn chinese if you already have hit your 50' birthday ?
because it is happening now, not in a couple of years ...
And to make this clear - 'us' and 'them' is an illusion - we all are the same.
Mike
Ah, I forgot ... welcome to Mike, Foras (Forums ?, Foras ?, I stick to latin, can't be wrong...)
p.s.
(*?*) I guess it is written like that ... sorry for my english, i am still learning my second language ...
I very much agree with you on the 85% thing. That fact will never fluctuate more than a few percentage point either way. It's simply human nature to follow rather than lead. I was more trying to say that, in a large part, we Americans rest on our laurels until forced to do otherwise. We discover, invent, design, and build it and then go sit in the bank parking lot for as long as the money stream keeps coming. e.g. the auto manufacturers, the space shuttle program, bad bank loaning practices, Montgomery Wards and all kinds of others across many industries that stuck with the status-quo until it was too late. Just this alone has cost us millions and millions of jobs. The old saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it" should end with "but continually improve it" I'm not saying we all have to be inventors, I'm saying those that are capable and do invent need to continually do so. Heck, our auto manufacturers (and everyone else for that matter) have known electric vehicles were gonna be a large part of the future for decades and haven't acted on it. Chevy beat the same dead horse for so long that they are now years behind the competition. The goofballs with the power are completely giving away the space programs to other countries. I won't go into my feeling about the oil industry and how many jobs we could have right here at home because that may be going too political. It's just that we are not leading the world like we used to do and I feel (fear) that it may be a product of our overabundance of wealth that creates the lack of desire to do any better. This is what I'm calling economical evolution. For some reason when we are in the lead, I think us humans simply lose the tenacity of the underdog.
That's sort of all over the place but I was trying not to write a book......:)
Yes, I agree that the pull method works probably better than others. In fact, I'm very much a product of pull vs. push. Forget about school, the pull used to be things like the conquest of space, exploration of the ocean depths, various and sundry pyrotechnics (where the heck were my parents when we were cratering far yonder pastures?). Later on, the pull was trying to grok the secrets of the universe. Nowadays, however, I'm not sure how to get the kids out of the effing Faceblech and Thumb-tapping Twitterverse. I wasn't so "hungry" for amenities as a kid, but I sure wanted to get my hands on rockets and submarines and telescopes and high voltage generators and vacuum pumps and practically anything with the words "high-altitude" attached to it and... and... and....
But what works now?
I received the above book, "Poorly Made in China", and have been reading it.
As it turns out, they intentionally make things with defects and refuse to do anything to correct the defects when these are pointed out to them! They know all about these defects, actually change things in products to make more money [during production], and think their customers will not notice.
The problem as I see it, is that companies having products manufactured in China are putting "all their eggs in one basket"! That is they commit to having entire runs of certain products made in China, then are stuck having to beg and plead with them to improve quality.
I think the only solution to this China quality problem is to "Hit them over the head with a bat"! That is have half your product made elsewhere like India, Mexico, South America, or anywhere but China. Then when they lower quality and ship defective products... Simply say "We no longer need your services for that product". And shift full production for that product to the other country (or a major portion of the production until they decide to fix their quality problems).
THEN I assure you, they will see the light and improve quality.
Watch out for lots of fake things. Fake can be good if you like dance and want to see MJ impersonation. Fake can be bad if you buy a processor chip and there's nothing inside it.
There was a company in the field of engineering that's neither Chinese nor American. They designed and programmed their product to fail after a certain number of months. Then they went in like heros, earned the service money and business, and sold the expensive service contract. Word got out about what they were doing and now they're history.
In countries and cities with the largest population, there are many more people trading and doing business. A store down the street may cheat, and the customer will never go there again. But, with such a huge population density, there is always another person who will go there and buy, and the company stays in business. In the USA there are fewer people and a cheating company eventually is forced out of business due to lack of customers.
In the US, there is also freedom of the press, which allows news organizations to expose and make a mockery of sleazy practitioners. There are also anti-fraud laws, which sometimes actually get enforced. The US also has the freedom to peaceably assemble, and, believe it or not, I've see people march around with picket signs in front of businesses that have ripped them off.
I finished reading it last night. It's an excellent book written by somebody who was perfectly positioned to shed light on what's happening. It's not the China-bashing tirade I somewhat feared it would be. Instead, it's a very thoughtful, entertaining, insightful look into the cultural perspectives that cause so many problems between the importers in "first market" economies and their manufacturers in China, who are operating under a very different paradigm for success. This book was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to find when I started this thread. Thanks, Phil. And thanks again to everyone here who has added their comments.
So basically any extension cord, power strip, surge protector, or electrical appliance we may have purchased in the last 10 years could have an undersized power cord and could be a fire hazard. And the UL label being phony, the product never being tested for safety!
Following is an example of one such product. It looks just like all the others with the correct size wire!
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml10/10184.html
Another...
http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/PRHTML98/98160.html
Paul
I was in China over 20 years ago and I experienced the same kind of customers won't mind if we switch this for that and cost go up! as the author describes. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing it's a cultural thing and not something people there have picked up over the years of dealing with foreigners. It's hard to imagine how that general business model/attitude can continue to expand. I think the western business model is based on real mutual cooperation: we work together and we'll all get rich. But this Chinese industrial attitude seems to result in every factory owner aspiring to be a little emperor. Of course, I've known plenty of egomaniac US business men and women who've aspired to be emperors of their own, but they've always kept their impulses in check when it comes to customer relations, even when they gained "the upper hand." And US businesses always have the threat of legal action if they don't fulfill the terms of a contract. From what the author indicates, there's still no legal recourse if a manufacturer decides to stray from the agreement.
I will comment further as I read more. It is defiantly a slower read than the other.
Paul