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mipacu427 t1_iwk0r3u wrote

Reply to comment by Just_Discussion6287 in Apple will begin sourcing chips from a plant in Arizona and from Europe in a major supply chain shift away from China, CEO Tim Cook told employees by flyingdutchgirll

I disagree that "it doesn't matter where they are built". Even at heavily autonomous factories, skilled workers will be needed to maintain the machines, program the computers, maintain the facility, etc. Not to mention the logistics of shipping in materials, warehousing, and shipping out finished products.

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IamChuckleseu t1_iwko2m0 wrote

Way more important than that is general safety of business. You can buy skilled workers if you have none (and China does not even have that many people on the top, they have more of a high skilled low and medium jobs workforce rather than high skilled job one). Either way you can not buy safe environment for your business where ruling dictator just does not wake up one day and steal all your stuff.

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Just_Discussion6287 t1_iwkugcm wrote

"More jobs in shipping these products to the rest of the world than building them these days."

Maintaining a series of machines is a lot less laborious. My example in the sony factory, there are only 4 employees that handle those roles. Compared to the 1,000s that you would expect. There's just not a lot of roles to carry on.

Think about the PS2, that required chip designers(Which is now AMD outsourced), more marketers, every part of the supply chain was larger included used games sales. Sony had 2x the employees in 2009 than it did in 2022. And half the revenue.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-secret-weapon-a-nearly-all-automated-factory

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