Asian Small Bikes...what do they cost to build? | Page 2 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Asian Small Bikes...what do they cost to build?

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CafeRay said:
I guess you haven't heard of ISO standards. Most manufacturers in Canada/US use them. When you see "ISO 9001" on the side of building, it means they are certified to manufacturing and management standards. This is a third party company. It is very common, and now the norm.
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They also have a standard to screw over customers. Any time I've had a problem with a supplier, it's been with an ISO 9001 company, no exceptions. IMO, no better than a fake sticker.

"Besides, in modern manufacturing, quality issues are typically found at the design stage, not the actual manufacturing stage, as skilled labor is pretty much out of the equation in making automotive products..."

LOL. You do know there are companies that specialize in batch-testing components for automakers when duds show up on the assembly line? No design flaws, just enormous pressure to make things just in time.

Or that one of my customer's first jobs at Honda Canada was forklifting out unibodies for recycling when the welding robots had "special moments"? Never mind about the industry I work in. The default mode is screwup and your job is to hammer away until it's NOT screwed up.

Also, Taiwan is China? You're on a roll, dear boy.
 
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Flywheel said:
Also, Taiwan is China? You're on a roll, dear boy.
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Taiwan ([SUP]i[/SUP]/ˌtaɪˈwɑːn/ Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below), officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a sovereign state in East Asia. The Republic of China, originally based in mainland China, now governs the island of Taiwan, which makes up over 99% of its territory,[SUP][f][/SUP] as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands. Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. Taipei is the seat of the central government.[SUP][2][/SUP] New Taipei, encompassing the metropolitan area surrounding Taipei proper, is the most populous city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan

Remember, righty-tighty, lefty-loosy.
 
Flywheel said:
Or that one of my customer's first jobs at Honda Canada was forklifting out unibodies for recycling when the welding robots had "special moments"? Never mind about the industry I work in. The default mode is screwup and your job is to hammer away until it's NOT screwed up.

Also, Taiwan is China? You're on a roll, dear boy.
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And that, sirs, is why manufacturing in Ontario has been on a steady decline.
 
CafeRay said:
And that, sirs, is why manufacturing in Ontario has been on a steady decline.
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If you think that doesn't happen everywhere ... you don't work in manufacturing.

At least the good-name-brand manufacturers catch when they screw up (most of the time) and fix the problem rather than just sending them down the line with misaligned parts or missing welds ...
 
mxs said:
Bingo ....

On top of that, I have some experience in dealing with third party certification companies, reputable ones and have to say they left me at times wondering .... in another words, I always thought it as a gross conflict of interest to pay a company large some to do your audit. Do you think they would get the same contract next year, if they didn't pass the audited subject? They always pointed out only the cosmetic crap which costs nothing to fix .... that was not in manufacturing, but rather service oriented company though.
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I AM a third party certification company. I get paid to tell it like it is, without sugarcoating it.

I've had a couple of, shall we say, "interesting" proposals from a couple of companies. I turned them down. It's not in my long-term interest to have anything to do with that sort of thing. There are a couple of companies that are on my "do not deal with" list because I don't like the way they do things. It's not in my long-term interest to deal with them, either. And yes, I have told a couple of regular customers (verbally) what to watch out for when they were entertaining the possibility of buying some equipment from them. They ended up seeing what was going on, and not doing it. The vast majority of the companies that I deal with want to do things right the best they can (which is not always easy).

I've also told a customer that it was going to cost $150,000 to fix their screw-up. I explained why, and pointed to the exact clauses that they screwed up on, and explained how there was no way around it. They still deal with me.

FWIW any piece of industrial equipment that comes in from China gets extra scrutiny. I would say that it is uncommon that they can get through what I do, and what the Electrical Safety Authority does, without a strip-down and complete re-wire.
 
ISO has become an awesome marketing company, like FSC and MADD. I write compliance papers for the companies I supply, tell them great things about our inventory controls and sourcing. The controls at various levels of processing. Mostly they want the cheque.
 
Brian P said:
I AM a third party certification company. I get paid to tell it like it is, without sugarcoating it.
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I wish everyone was like you ... things are whole lot different once you are a large international company giving a multi-year contract to another international auditing body to do all of their audits worldwide .... we are talking big bucks.

I sometimes couldn't even get the auditor to raise points I was genuinely concerned about and thought he could help me to push for things I couldn't get normally approved. He agreed verbally, but his final report was a bit different tone .....

Perhaps there's a dramatic difference when safety and lives are at stake (like in your case), but I will keep my glass half empty for now on this subject ....
 
In many developing countries of Asia two wheeler is being considered as an economical mode of transportation .People there buy two wheeler for commuting purpose not for an fun weekend ride .So no doubt manufacturers there are exploiting this by flooding market with many sub standard products .
 
Substandard is a broad brush, we buy an 80cc dirt bike from CTC and expect it to hold together like a Honda XR80 which is almost indestructible and then find CTC has no mechanics in house and all the third party service depots they use will fix a Toro mower or yardworks blower but will not touch a dirt bike because it will be punished and back in a week.
Buddy in a third world has bought the transport of his dreams, he wont walk 3kms to work now and will make ok repairs and if it gets cabbaged together over the years with mismatched components it means he wont walk to work. Its like the street bicycle mechanics in China, in the cities there is one every three city blocks, armed with used parts, a hammer and a chain tool. It works there.
Same issue when the British started selling bikes into America, nobody in Britain was riding 200 miles at 70mph. Were the bikes substandard (whole other story) or just the wrong product for the market?
 
unL33T said:
Pretty sure most VW and Audi parts are made in China these days, as well.
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I just bought a new to me used car. I looked at many Audi's and I was appalled at the high percentage of cars that had crappy scratched and weird bubbly interior buttons . Specifically many of the centre console buttons or window ones, even on the 2 05 A6's I looked at.
 
LoneRonin said:
I just bought a new to me used car. I looked at many Audi's and I was appalled at the high percentage of cars that had crappy scratched and weird bubbly interior buttons . Specifically many of the centre console buttons or window ones, even on the 2 05 A6's I looked at.
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Known common problem with their soft touch coating. It's real nice when new but is not durable at all.
 
unL33T said:
Known common problem with their soft touch coating. It's real nice when new but is not durable at all.
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That explains it. They make them all fancy and nice but its pointless when it doesn't last. My 2000 Accord dash was still looking mint when I sold it at 300k
 
CafeRay said:
Taiwan ([SUP]i[/SUP]/ˌtaɪˈwɑːn/ Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below), officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a sovereign state in East Asia. The Republic of China, originally based in mainland China, now governs the island of Taiwan, which makes up over 99% of its territory,[SUP][f][/SUP] as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands. Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. Taipei is the seat of the central government.[SUP][2][/SUP] New Taipei, encompassing the metropolitan area surrounding Taipei proper, is the most populous city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan

Remember, righty-tighty, lefty-loosy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan,_China depends how you see it i guess...
 
LoneRonin said:
That explains it. They make them all fancy and nice but its pointless when it doesn't last. My 2000 Accord dash was still looking mint when I sold it at 300k
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Yeah I'm surprised is still an issue since it's been a problem since at least their 1999 models.
 
Whatever the political arguments might be, Taiwan and China are de facto separate countries at the moment and have been so for several decades. Culturally, they are similar, but don't think for a moment they're identical.

In terms of manufacturing expertise, average quality, and pride of work, Taiwan is far more comparable to Korea than mainland China.
 
unL33T said:
ISO pretty much just means you're good at bullshitting and don't mind paying your employees to do buttloads of extra documentation.
Basically it's just say what you do and make some records to prove it. It's easy to fudge the records and on top of that if you say you make crap, and then make crap, you'll still get ISO. Not that there's anything much better.


.
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IMO ISO is documentation, not quality. You can ISO a parachute made out of toilet paper as long as you say it is toilet paper not silk / nylon.

You can tack weld together a trailer frame and it's OK if the three tack welds shown on the drawing end up on the frame.
 
Brian P said:
Sure, but a Chinese company without western oversight will just print a label saying that it meets whatever standard that their foreign customer wants, without actually taking the underlying actions that the standard specifies.
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This is like my buddy claiming the $35 NHL/NFL/MLB jerseys we've bought CAN'T be knockoffs because they had the hologram on the tag and made in canada/usa sewn onto the label. Lol
 
nobbie48 said:
IMO ISO is documentation, not quality. You can ISO a parachute made out of toilet paper as long as you say it is toilet paper not silk / nylon.

You can tack weld together a trailer frame and it's OK if the three tack welds shown on the drawing end up on the frame.
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Exactly. It has little to do with quality but people seem to think it does.
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