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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, its 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, its 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 Ive seen 2x4 molds that
have 8 parts, lets go with that for starters.
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2x4 bricks are in 8-part molds, yes. Id venture a guess that 1x1 molds produce
more parts per shot, and that some really large parts might even be single-part
shots. Now thats all because you want to use the full volume capacity of the
machine on parts where you know youre 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 isnt 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
couldnt 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, theres no way of knowing if theyre running those in single-part
shots or running a full 4x8 sheet at a time. Since the flat baseplates could
be cut down into whatever size you wanted, its 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. Im 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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Thatd 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) thats about 27 people (lets say 30) at any given
time at the plant. Assuming 4 shifts of full-time people, thats 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 were probably talking
about $5 to $15 million in Denmark, and maybe half that in China? But thats
just a pulled-out-of-my-ABS kind of guess.
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Since theyve been cited as having laid off more than double that amount in
production labor at a time, that cant possibly be right.
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From what Ive 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 Legos
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 (Id guess) where the REAL
savings are.
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When youve 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 theyve recently
announced that theyre going to be dropping that down to a six-month period
(which, yes, means that no more than half of the years product could ever be
shown at Toy Fair, because anything thats going to see a September release
wouldnt even have been sketched up the previous February, and would be old news
by the next).
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In lugnet.lego, David Laswell wrote:
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So, maybe a ~200 person operation all told? That sound reasonable? No clue
what wages are in Denmark vs. China-- but at a guess were probably talking
about $5 to $15 million in Denmark, and maybe half that in China? But thats
just a pulled-out-of-my-ABS kind of guess.
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Since theyve been cited as having laid off more than double that amount in
production labor at a time, that cant possibly be right.
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Yeah, it does admittedly sound low to me-- where are you getting the cite? Of
course, I guess I also didnt include packaging and shipment, either-- and
thats not necessarily just the final packaging, but shipping to other areas
to be finally packaged (assuming that those packaging facilities dont also
move to China as well).
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When youve 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,
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Huh! Whered you hear that? From what Ive heard its been anywhere from 6
months to 5 years for sets and themes (depending on how involved they are), and
usually around 3 years (IIRC I remember hearing that various things like Legends
and standalone models like the Wright Flyer or something are quicker to
production)
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but theyve recently
announced that theyre going to be dropping that down to a six-month period
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Thats awesome! (or, *should* be awesome if they dont start dropping even more
quality). Did I miss some uber-cool announcement somewhere? But anyway, thatd
allow for less time for MB to steal their designs and whatnot (which Ive heard
theyve done in the past) Hm. I wonder how long it takes MB to do a product
design?
DaveE
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In lugnet.lego, David Eaton wrote:
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Yeah, it does admittedly sound low to me-- where are you getting the cite?
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2-3-03, when 161 waged production workers in Billund were laid off, and 1500
was the number cited as being employed in the affected departments.
2-27-03, when 43 administrators were in Billund were laid off, and 2000 was the
number cited as being employed in the whole Billund organization (meaning they
have about 500 people in administrative or higher positions).
10-27-03, when they announced that one of the Swiss plants would be shut down,
and that there were 130 employees just at that one plant (and it sounds like
that was one of the plants that produced bricks).
Also 10-27-03, where they announced another 257 layoffs in Billund, primarily
in the production ranks.
3-16-04, when they announced about 500 layoffs globally, 1/3 of them from
Denmark.
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Of course, I guess I also didnt include packaging and shipment, either-- and
thats not necessarily just the final packaging, but shipping to other
areas to be finally packaged (assuming that those packaging facilities
dont also move to China as well).
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Loose bricks would be packed up and shipped to other plants (clearly, since the
Czech plant paints parts, but does not mold them), but if a given plant is
packing the sets, there is no logical reason that I can think of that they
wouldnt also be packing the cases right afterwards. As it is, while theyve
been shipping parts to Enfield to be packed locally, early runs of sets are
still shipped fully packed from Denmark to get shelves stocked right away.
After all, it saves having to wait for them to finish packing the loose bricks
that would be coming in on the same shipment, but its got to be cheaper to ship
loose bricks from Denmark and pack them here than it is to ship lots of
half-full (or much less, in the case of Spybots). If production moves to China,
labor costs drop quite a bit, so it might be cheaper to have everything packed
there and shut down all of the factories except one in Billund (for
prototyping/design purposes) and Germany (for tooling), leaving places like
Enfield as not much more than warehousing/shipping/marketing outfits.
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Huh! Whered you hear that? From what Ive heard its been anywhere from 6
months to 5 years for sets and themes (depending on how involved they are),
and usually around 3 years (IIRC I remember hearing that various things like
Legends and standalone models like the Wright Flyer or something are quicker
to production)
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<snip>
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Thats awesome! (or, *should* be awesome if they dont start dropping even
more quality). Did I miss some uber-cool announcement somewhere? But anyway,
thatd allow for less time for MB to steal their designs and whatnot (which
Ive heard theyve done in the past) Hm. I wonder how long it takes MB to do
a product design?
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If you scroll down a bit on
this page, they mention that the development time for product ideas will be cut
by about 50%. The industry standard for major toy companies has been about a
year for quite some time, but I cant find anything specifically listing
12mo/6mo timeframes. That might be something that I was told during my last Toy
Fair visit, or I might be subconsciously combining the two bits of info (I do
remember that they didnt have Han Solo ready to display with the new Millennium
Falcon, but they had his dark-blue parka hood). Well have a pretty good idea
by the end of next year, once we see exactly how much late-release product was
not shown at NY Toy Fair compared to previous years. Now that theyve switched
over to a rolling release schedule with new product coming out nearly
year-round, there have always been a couple of sets released way late in the
year that werent even mentioned at Toy Fair in February, but theyve also had
at least a couple sets scheduled for release as late as October. Never anything
from the following November/December/January, though.
I could see, though, that an idea could be bounced around for a few years before
it gets the go-ahead for full-out development, or they might be doing loose
planning well in advance of where theyre actually at (its been mentioned on a
few occassions that the BIONICLE story outline was laid out for seven books,
the second of which just began with the release of the Metru-themed sets), but
if theyve been taking 3-6 years to develop each and every set, they very well
deserve to go bankrupt, because theres no way they can keep up with market
changes with numbers like that. If a line completely flops, youd have years of
wasted development for sets that wouldnt then ever be released. And it would
take a few years to pick up the slack in product releases. Theyd be
hard-pressed to be able to release Star Wars sets before their associated
movies, since Lucas works on a three-year schedule, with designs being finalized
well into the production process.
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