I'll keep this short and simple because long posts lose most people.
1. I had a share in a local company in the late 80s.
2. By the early 90s, it was no longer competitive to operate in Singapore. Labor overheads were too high. The company set up a factory in China in order to survive.
3. There was a lot of hand wringing over what to do with the Singapore plant. 200 sinkies jobs were at stake. A few were offered jobs in China but ALL declined citing family reasons for not being able to relocate.
4. To save Singapore jobs, management decided that instead of closing Singapore, the company would go high tech.. maximum automation... maximum value added high end products in order to still stay competitive.
5. To cut a long story short, The Singapore factory did not survive. It was closed in 2003 and millions of dollars had to be written off. 200 sinkies lost their jobs.
6. Moral of the story. Talk is easy. We tried various ways of making the Singapore plant competitive. Upgrading, retraining, new equipment, robot handling and assembly. We failed. We could not make it profitable. Meanwhile, the China plant was making tons of money.
7. Reasons why we failed:
- Staffing very difficult in night shift. Manufacturing needs to run continuously 7 days a week. We couldn't get enough locals who were willing to work nights and weekends.
- Could not compete with Japan, Korea in the high end segment. They simply did it better. We, as sinkies, were inferior. I admit it.