“[Foxconn] could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”
A US firm can't find 3,000 people overnight because the US population is so much lower than China's is. But beyond that, Rigoni sounds like she's saying with a straight face that factory workers living in dorms is a reasonable norm. That sounds unbelievable to my American ears.
Everything described about Foxconn's setup sounds like a company town, a concept this country did away with decades ago. The US has been there and done that, and it's not likely ever to go back. I would be shocked if that concept remains viable indefinitely in China. Rising wages are already making China less of a low-cost production center, and as things improve for workers there, the company towns will go away.
That's the slow way that China's manufacturing will get disrupted though. It will almost certainly out-produce the US at some point thanks to it having nearly four times the population and therefore more capacity. It won't always be what it is today though, especially if/when the government quits keeping the currency artificially low.
However, there is a way that its manufacturing edge could get disrupted a lot more quickly, and that's with 3D printing. Primarily the technology is right now associated with rapid prototyping, but eventually it will get cost effective enough to use it to make many products on industrial scales. Injection molding is probably the first thing that would die off in that scenario.
As this TED Talk goes over, 3D printing can be used for anything from cheap, plastic pens up to high precision engine parts and medical implants. Imagine a situation where a company sets up 3D printing labs throughout the country, all pumping out different companies' products as demand rises and falls for them. A company that designs low sales volume products might never have to have inventory again, as its wares could be 3D printed nearby as customers ask.
We're a long way from that utopia, but we don't have to get to that utopia to cause serious disruption in global manufacturing. The rise of cheap Asian manufacturing came up quickly over the last 20 years, but it could drastically decline almost as quickly when 3D printing rises to its potential.
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