I'm also VERY confused on where the problem of quality is actualy 'housed'. It's my understanding that labor cost is next to nothing in India....is there a reason why they work so FAST? Cheap labor *should* mean there could be more time spent in getting it right. Instead what we find is machining steps done at double the normal feeds and cut with dull tools and parts banged together with a hammer because the machinist saved a minute and did it all in one pass. Is there nobody available that knows how parts *should* be made?? An out of round crank pin means the engine is USELESS... so why make out of round crank pins?? Chattering crank grinders make the crank useless....why not balance the wheel??? OR fire the idiot that can't remember to check it!
if you want to re-create the indian listeroid experience in the USA, I suggest the following steps.
1/ head down south somewhere were it is hot a dry and dusty, or hot and muddy when it rains.
2/ build a tin shed for 250 bucks from scrap lumber and scrap corrugated iron on cheap land in the middle of nowhere that no-on else wants because it has no amenities or services.
3/ outfit it with a forge, coubple of lathes, mill, couple of grinder and a borer,and tooling, you have to do this for 1000 bucks total, so if your lathe only has 2 speeds left (too fast and too slow for any job you throw at it) and play / backlash on all the axis, and won't do better than 5 thou no matter what, tough.
4/ go to your local pound me in the ass penitentiary and hire the chain gang, preferably the ones with no education of any kind.
I could come along and offer you a five year old well maintained CNC lathe at a bargain price, you don't have an enviornment in which to do anything but destroy it, you don't have "work" (metal to be machined) of uniform enough quality to do anything but destroy it, you don't have staff good enough to do anuthing but destroy it, and in any event it still costs ten times what youe entire shop does.
I know england, so I know where the great engineering centres were, and I know the history and culture, dursley where listers come from is close to lots of other "home bases" of lots of other world reknowned engineering firms, in the old days it had the walleys for the water power.
swindon was the greatest railway engineering centre the world ever saw, and so on and so forth.
if you asked me about a diesel engine manufacturer in honiton I'd laugh at you, there "might" be a new shop set up with the latest equipment, but it's still a dumb place to set up because there are no local suppliers for your raw materials.
In the states you can do the same thing
India might as well be china or the moon, unless you've been there and spend three or four years travelling and absorbing the culture, you have no idea if you are buying a yacht made in idaho or potato chips made in grand banks.
ain't no good telling the very very very few and small proportion of indian manufacturers you know of what they need to do, if what you are telling them amounts to hotater building a 500 megawatt geothermal power plant in his back yard.... first, spend 5 million bucks on a good road, then build a township for the workforce you need to build a run it, then build a sewerage and water plant, and refuse, etc and the beat goes on.
the indians that you are in touch with are building the best engines they can.
indian iron ore is found in Bihar and Orissa, unless your factories are located there then it is too expensive to ship, so they will use scrap.
in the north there is plenty of hydroelectric and nuclear power, but it is bloody expensive, if the factories are in the south there is plenty of coal or varying quality, but wood and cow chips are cheaper so they will be used wherever possible, wood / cow chip / coal furnaces melting recycled scrap for cast iron won't get you quality no how, but if it is literally all you can afford.....
Hell, I've lived and worked abroad, you have to ship in and build EVERYTHING from scratch, logistics is a nightmare, there are no metalled roads to speak of, there is no water supply, there is no power supply, there is no telephone lines, you *can* just build stuff like power stations in the middle of this, hell, Enron did, and despite spending billions on it (their indian power station) it never generated or sold a single watt of electricity, because nobody could afford the Kwh rate they'd have had to charge....
the indians are doing their best, and in reality many of them are working minor miracles
most of you / us in the western world simply have no idea....
try drilling a hole in wood when there is no walmart, if you've got a brain you can go right back to a hot poker, if you ALREADY have a machine shop you can make a brace and bit...
4 axis mill is one of the very very very few machines that can actually make itself, given an unlimited supply of tooling, lubricants, power and raw stock....
