Quote:
Originally Posted by afwares
This is where we disagree, and this is why you accused me of xenophobia.
You're assuming:
The robots are all the same + The parts are all the same + The people all receive the same training = Cars will be exactly the same and anyone who thinks otherwise must be a xenophobe.
The problem is that the parts are not the same. The driveline will be the same of course, as the engine and transmission will likely be shipped in from Germany or Austria or wherever those are produced. But for everything else, an entirely new supplier network will be established and cultivated from the region surrounding the new plant.
Thousands of ancillary parts, from brackets to hoses to harnesses to switches will all be sourced from new companies. Items that used to come from long-standing partners in Croatia or Hungary or wherever will now be sourced from new providers in Ecuador or Venezuela or wherever. They will be specified to be exactly the same, of course, and in a perfect world a batch of 10,000 side-view-mirror motor switches would have the same 6-sigma quality whether they came from Ecuador or Hungary. But it's not a perfect world, and as governments and socioeconomic systems and labor laws and worker attitudes are different from country to country it's very difficult to eliminate variation, whether it's variation in worker dedication or variation in the failure rate of a window switch. It's entirely possible that an M2 made in Mexico ends up BETTER than one made in Germany, but where you believe it's asinine to think they would be different other people believe that differences are guaranteed and it's only a question of whether the differences are negligible - i.e. a difference in the color of a bracket in the trunk that you'll never even notice - vs. differences that are critical to the reliability of the car - i.e. a difference in the chemical composition of hoses that fail prematurely at low temperature.
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Yeah but doesn't BMW follow specific guides and standards for the production of their vehicles?
There's a lot of testing and benchmarking for production quality. They employee thousands of people responsible just for this.
If a new supplier yields low quality products then someone at BMW specialised in the specific component will notice and flag it. It starts with trial batches, goes through different phases of evaluation and then gets approved.
Even the plants will be built and organised according to pre-existing blueprints. There might be some variation in the manufacturing line setup but it still solely will use pre-approved BMW machinery and standards.
Labour is the only variable that could influence the production but BMW doesn't have low standards of employment. Working at BMW, wherever in the world, is a good job for any career mechanic. I'd argue that because wages are so low in Mexico, there's much more competition to work for BMW and there's a good chance you'd get better and more motivated workers.
BMW is the 10th biggest car corporation with more than a hundred years of experience. It's also one of the most profitable manufacturers. You really think they don't know what they're doing?