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Smokey, as I have mentioned before, sadly it was Ford, GM or Chrysler that most often forced our hand in moving production from the US to Mexico when I was at Bosch, while it was the foreign companies (Toyota, Subaru and Nissan at that time) that were actually willing to pay a slightly higher price to KEEP us in South Carolina. Unfortunately, as I have seen over and over the bean counters and sales folk will sell us out from behind and basically force the manufacturing floor to become a filter for the much higher defect rates from Mexico, India or China. I've also seen numerous times where Ford would hold domestically produced product to much higher standards, then relax numerous tolerances when the product was transferred to Mexico for instance. Never mind that we could have matched the price difference with similarly reduced tolerances. And while Ford would push us for 1ppm (part per million) defect rates, they would tolerate 300ppm or so from a low cost country supplier for a 5 cent/part price cut, and figure that we would filter it for them while still complaining that our prices needed to come down. In one product we transferred, our sales group promised a 10-15% price cut to Ford in exchange for all the business for the F150, Explorer and Excursions (we had only the F150 at that point). So, we packed up our production to Mexico (well, we scrapped our entire production line in SC, and they bought all new equipment in Mexico and put an electronic sensor product in steel stamping plant that made drum and disc brakes, ended up only realizing a 3% cost reduction, but to sweeten the deal, Ford renegged on the increased volumes before that point but past the point where we could turn back. GM did the same thing years prior,where they promised a price for a high volume relay, waited until we had the production equipment on the floor then turned around and said we'll give you 98 cents/each, take it or leave it, so we ended up going from making 4 cents/each on a part we made thousands of every day (ever 2 seconds) to losing 5 cents each (a political decision by our local managers). Yeah, sign me up for an American made car any day.



So what you have told us is that the market place is a rough and tumble place, yes it is. Theoretically, we could blame consumers for Bosch's move to Mexico since consumers reneged on paying MSRP for the Ford or GM vehicles.

Running a plant at a per unit loss is not a political decision, it's economic one. Most manufactures will continue to produce at a loss to cover fixed cost.

Last edited by MACMC; 01/02/2012 1:12 PM.