An insight into chinese bike manufacture

[D O G]

debated whether this should have been in found on the net, but meh,l it involves bikes, so here it is.

Essentially it's a Telegraph article about a a British guy's attempts to build scootays in China, and their general attitude to that task....

Click me

[Alexio]

Reading that made me feel pretty good. My first chinese bike was crap too. It's a shame that so much of China and south east asia is like this, or at least that's what I experienced when I travelled around that part of the world. My parents right now are still trying to set up a business over there and constantly run in to corruption at the highest and lowest levels. And then the people they hire are competely shocked when they are fired for not pulling thier weight! And that's when they can fire them, there are laws which make it illegal to fire an employee if they've had the job 6 months already and they are just going to be replaced with someone else. It's a mad world over there.
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will never give up his CG. I look at my fuel gauge more as a progress bar than a fuel gauge.
G: With my GSXR I do often effectively use it as a scooter with a clutch in town.
ms51ves3: why does it need 500 miles? Are you teaching it how to be a piston?

[kawashima]

I hope not all Chinese companies are like this.
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[Syx]

Unfortunately I think it's more to do with the culture than the particular company - leading me to think that it's highly likely there are a lot of Chinese companies exactly like this particular one!

[Kickstart]

Hi

Afraid to me it seems like someone walked into it in style there.

Looks like he started there with this idea when he was 26, which suggests virtually no real experience before he started. He doesn't understand the language or the culture. And I would guess has little real knowledge of fully engineering a product (given that he just seems to have handed that over to the factory building it for him).

All the best

Keith
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[map]

I suspect it is a cultural thing and that they're all run like that.

I also suspect it's ripe for corruption, as in of course if you want that to happen I can do that special deal for you whilst holding hand out for cash.

That said, it does look like they saw him coming.

Of course, I'm willing to be proved wrong on any of the above.
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[Alex A]

It's not just bikes. The exact same issues have been evident for years in outsourcing electronics manufacture to China. It's a more mature industry in terms of outsourcing to China, and lessons learned apply equally to motorcycle (and car) manufacture.

The first mistake this individual made was to expect a Chinese factory, experienced in the construction of reverse engineered, sub standard quality vehicles to develop (for him) a new electric scooter fit for large scale production, of European quality standards. Just having an idea, and a concept and handing it to an inexperienced manufacturer (not a production R&D specialist), and then expecting it to arrive on budget for export is highly optimistic. And it doesn't matter whether he went to the most corrupt, poorly run factory or the most legitimate, experienced, well run factory.

If you don't have your own fully specified, thorough design and prototype that is suitable for production to budget (something you need to research, not the factory!), then the only way an enterprise like that would ever work in a sustainable manner is by accident (luck) or marketing genius.

You then need a means of quality assurance, which could be made through contract, but ideally means having a man (or men) on the inside to observe and correct the production line in accordance with your original spec. And the factory would have to agree.

You then have the danger of your designs being stolen without your consent, for sale within China and potentially subject to parallel import to your market(s) at lower prices. There's no way to prevent this happening if you're hiring the services of a factory, and so you have to lessen it's impact on your target market by differentiating your product from identical imports. This could be done either by building a strong brand image (or buy a defunct brand name) and/or to carry out some final assembly/tuning/rebuilding in the UK to improve or complete the product post production.

The only realistic way to make money from outsourcing production is to have enough to invest in the first place to ensure you can reap the benefits of cheap resources and labour. The most successful enterprises undertake full development on their products, and own and run their own factories in China and elsewhere. But in order to justify that kind of investment you need to have a product that you know will sell in sufficiently large numbers over a sufficiently long period to realise the savings against manufacturing in the UK.

As an entrepreneur without an existing business, in order to be successful you need a genuinely worthwhile (and ideally new) idea which has been fully developed and can be protected legally in terms of patent but also against imitation and parallel import. You need sufficient investment to ensure that it is produced to the required quality standards, and a large enough market to require large scale production.
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[Moonie]

"Chris" sounds like a moron with more money than sense.

Chinese workers sound like Chinese workers.
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[chris-red]

[G]

“Bright Mountain” made me think of Morning Light Mountain (a race/cloned individual in a Peter F Hamilton series which has evolved to try and destroy all other life), this would worry me from the start.

I suspect the questionable quality has going to have started from the typical communist society. Plenty of big-name western brands use factories in China and manage very acceptable quality control.

[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

Just seems like capitalism nowadays. Making the quality you can get away with for the least money.

Everyone's interested in the quick buck rather than the long term investment. Make something of good quality for slightly more money and you'll have business for years to come.
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[Wave2k]

is it just me, that when i see 'made in China' I instantly think poor quality ?
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[Alexio]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Slightly ironic that it seems it has given "Made In Hong Kong" a better reputation. When I was a kid lots of cheap toys were made in Hong Kong and were invariably pretty dire quality.

All the best

Keith
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[Ariel Badger]

If you go to the bottom of that page the AdBot has posted ads for....................Chinese bikes
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[sickpup]

Friend of mine recently did a year in China teaching English. He grew up in Hong Kong so he speaks Cantonese and Mandarin fluently. When asked about doing business over there he stated that ALL the companies are liars and thieves backed by the Government so don't even bother trying.

[Hetzer]

The chinese would have problems making a paper bag fit for purpose. They have no skill and less pride. What truly beggars belief is that their economy is booming from the sale of goods to other countries. I call them "goods", but most of what they export is trash. I've actually considered the possibility they do it deliberately out of spite, because some of the stuff I've seen goes beyond lack of skill or laziness.

The only stuff I know of coming out of china that's of decent quality is from factories with direct western supervision. Hard to believe they were once thousands of years ahead of us; now they're hundreds of years behind. We were making better stuff than they're making now back at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Bless them.
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[D O G]

I guess what suprised me most was the examples of very poor work ethic.

Previously I was under the impression that the poor quality was the result of excessive pressure to keep costs low, and produce high volumes.

The fact that it is more to do with everyone not really giving a shit was somewhat of a revolation.

Although I suppose when you've been operating under a regime where it didn't really matter how much of a shit you gave (because everyone's equal, right?), it shouldn't be too much of a suprise, but it was!

[Alex A]

[Alexio]

To be honest, if a Chinese businessman with poor language skills came to England, bought a warehouse and then hired a cheap workforce in the form of say 20 completely stereotypical chavs who were all really desperate to be employed because of the recession you'd probably find the same level of laziness and incompetence if you gave these people the responsibility of designing a profitable new motorbike. And that's even if half of them have had experience of playing around mechanically with motorbikes for long enough to understand how try and go about it and had access to order the raw materials to start to try and get things done.

It sounds a bit like a money wasting disaster waiting to happen. Although, hire a few professionals who are passionate about it and they could probably liberate the workforce and create a truly amazing factory and business model.
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will never give up his CG. I look at my fuel gauge more as a progress bar than a fuel gauge.
G: With my GSXR I do often effectively use it as a scooter with a clutch in town.
ms51ves3: why does it need 500 miles? Are you teaching it how to be a piston?

[Moonie]

Behringer?

They're shit!

The build quality of the few bits of kit of theirs I've had has been absolutely appalling, and nothing works properly!
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Don't practice it until you get it right, practice it until you don't get it wrong.
Presenting the one and only Chinkmobile

[silky666]

My sons remote control car he got for Chistmas is made by Bright Mountain
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Gaffa tape is like "the force" - it has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

[Itchy]

[Itchy]

Oddly enough the problem is yourselves in that if you want quality you have to pay for it, if you don't then no use complaining when something too cheap fails. In that all those cheapo Chinese bikes you see are 3-400 quid in China, price reflects the quality, some clever so and so thinks I know I can add 500 quid to that and export them.

Maybe you should buy those Korean Dalems instead as they are cheap and can take enourmous abuse.
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