New York Times Article Explores Apple's Failed Attempt to Build the Macintosh in California

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I prefer to go right to the source, but the NYT has a paywall.

New York Times Article Explores Apple's Failed Attempt to Build the Macintosh in California

Monday December 17, 2018 2:02 am PST by Tim Hardwick

The New York Times today printed an interesting article exploring how Apple co-founder Steve Jobs set up a Macintosh manufacturing plant in Fremont, California in the 1980s that failed early on into its tenure.

Titled "When Apple Was Homegrown," the piece by John Markoff offers an insight into Jobs' fascination with Henry Ford's mass automobile manufacturing in Detroit and the high-quality manufacturing capabilities of Japanese companies like Sony, and how Jobs aimed to synthesize the two cultures in a "highly automated" Mac factory.



Apple's ill-fated California Macintosh facility (Credit: Terrence McCarthy for NYT)

"Steve had deep convictions about Japanese manufacturing processes," recalled Randy Battat, who joined Apple as a young electrical engineer and oversaw the introduction of some of the company's early portable computers. "The Japanese were heralded as wizards of manufacturing. The idea was to create a factory with just-in-time delivery of zero-defect parts. It wasn't great for business."

Construction of the plant, located just across San Francisco Bay from Apple's headquarters, began in 1983. The first reporters to tour it were told that factory labor would account for 2 percent of the cost of making a Macintosh, thanks to its state-of-the-art production line. Expectations were therefore high, but the practical realities of working at the plant were markedly different.

Mr. Gassée, a French specialist in office automation, had just been promoted to president of Apple’s product division by John Sculley, then Apple's chief executive, and was responsible for the company's engineering and manufacturing work. When he first started, Mr. Gassée decided to spend two days learning how the company actually built its products by working on a factory production line.

[...]

"I embarrassed myself attaching a display to the computer bezel with a screwdriver," Mr. Gassée recalled in a recent interview. At the end of his shift, Mr. Gassée grabbed a broom and swept up the parts that had fallen off the production line. "It was really shameful," he said of the noticeably slipshod process.

Lacking the requisite schooling and subcontractors, Apple's Macintosh manufacturing in California was unable to reach the production volume that Jobs had envisioned. Eight years later, the plant was shuttered.
....

[Farmer-Rick]

1. Interesting article the domino affect of production migration in capitalism.

Once you start the mass migration of factories to overseas locations and cheap, cheap labor markets then the rest follow. Like Dominoes, the chain of suppliers and subcontractors all move overseas to take part in that sweet, sweet, cheap labor plus the tax write off...thanks RepubliCONS. Now R&D has to move too because to improve on the process, you have to be where the process is. But you know what hasn't moved to cheap labor market? SALES. The US still buys the most electronic equipment.

Don't let them con you though. You can move the process back to the US just like you moved it to cheap foreign labor markets. You just have to give the capitalist kings some kind of incentive, like the tax write offs and import tariffs. Despite the idiocy of the Traitor Trump use of tariffs, they can work to improve jobs here in the US. You just have to be smart about it like our founding fathers .

[progree]

2. Apple could have sold all those parts on Ebay and made a big profit, had Ebay been around back then

"I embarrassed myself attaching a display to the computer bezel with a screwdriver," Mr. Gassée recalled in a recent interview. At the end of his shift, Mr. Gassée grabbed a broom and swept up the parts that had fallen off the production line.