Subject:
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Re: MADE IN CHINA?!?!!?!?! that's IT Lego Re: Lego changes CEO...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego, lugnet.general
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Date:
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Fri, 22 Oct 2004 19:35:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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6523 times
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In lugnet.lego, David Eaton wrote:
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In lugnet.lego, James Powell wrote:
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Meaning that the total on the floor people in a plant is
like 8-10 at a time, plus service people. (Probably another 8-10 people).
Given a 1 min mold cycle, and 8 pieces a mold, that gives you:
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Supposedly, it’s around 7 seconds to cool and eject a new element from the
mold (obviously differs according to piece size, etc). So if you count
injection time, it’s probably around 10 seconds or so? And I believe the
number of elements produced per year is supposedly about 20 billion? Hmm. How
many parts get squeezed off in a single mold? I know I’ve seen 2x4 molds that
have 8 parts, let’s go with that for starters.
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2x4 bricks are in 8-part molds, yes. I’d venture a guess that 1x1 molds produce
more parts per shot, and that some really large parts might even be single-part
shots. Now that’s all because you want to use the full volume capacity of the
machine on parts where you know you’re going to have to tool up new molds on a
regular basis. For limited production parts, you want to minimize the amount of
wasted tooling work, so you cut down the shot size as much as you can while
still having a reasonable expectation of meeting the minimum required quantity.
The BIONICLE Vahi mask, which isn’t very big, was limited to a 2-part shot
because it was intended to be packed with expensive video games, not included in
fast-selling sets. Most of the other Kanohi were produced in 4-shot molds,
while the smaller Krana and Kraata were produced in 8-shot molds like the 2x4
bricks.
A few parts, like baseplates, are thermoformed instead of injection-molded.
Whether they are vacuum-formed, pressure-formed, or a combination of the two I
couldn’t say, but if you look inside the taller raised baseplates you can see
the distinctive freeze-lines that result when the part has only touched a mold
surface on one side. Since there are no mold numbers showing on the outside of
the part, there’s no way of knowing if they’re running those in single-part
shots or running a full 4’x8’ sheet at a time. Since the flat baseplates could
be cut down into whatever size you wanted, it’s probably a safe bet that those,
at least, used to be run in 2.5’ increments (the minimum size to give you the
option of either 48x48 X-Large or 32x32 Large plates) and then just chopped up
into whatever size they want with a press. I’m not so sure newer baseplates are
produced the same way. If you look at the corners, they have round corners
instead of just having the tips knocked off at 45 degrees, the top edge is
radiused, and they actually have mold info stamped into the bottom
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That’d be 6,944,444 hours per machine per year meaning roughly 800 molding
machines going non-stop, not including time to switch molds and to switch
color batches. So assuming 2 people per 30 machines (adding 1 to help fudge
the mold/color switching) that’s about 27 people (let’s say 30) at any given
time at the plant. Assuming 4 shifts of full-time people, that’s a total crew
of 120, probably more, plus other staff for the facility itself (executive,
security, janitorial, etc).
So, maybe a ~200 person operation all told? That sound reasonable? No clue
what wages are in Denmark vs. China-- but at a guess we’re probably talking
about $5 to $15 million in Denmark, and maybe half that in China? But that’s
just a pulled-out-of-my-ABS kind of guess.
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Since they’ve been cited as having laid off more than double that amount in
production labor at a time, that can’t possibly be right.
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From what I’ve heard, Lego sounds sort of top-heavy. Probably part of why
MegaBloks can compete so well-- a top-heavy company has lots of executive
chains and processes to go through to get a final product. And Lego’s
attention to detail and struggle to be “the best” only make it slower.
MegaBloks by comparison probably has a MUCH faster turnaround time for new
products, and less attention to quality, which is (I’d guess) where the REAL
savings are.
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When you’ve got cheaper design, cheaper raw materials, and cheaper labor, you
can sell less product and still make a lot more profit. TLC has been running
with a comfortable 1-year turnaround on new themes/sets, but they’ve recently
announced that they’re going to be dropping that down to a six-month period
(which, yes, means that no more than half of the year’s product could ever be
shown at Toy Fair, because anything that’s going to see a September release
wouldn’t even have been sketched up the previous February, and would be old news
by the next).
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