Made in America

[Paul Copioli]

Oh why not, I'll chime in here. Should be fun.

First, Cory's statement here:

It's kind of disingenuous to say that China makes better stuff than America. China is obviously good at certain things and not so good at others. I fail to see any instance in which China could produce something that could not be made to the same or better quality standards as in the US. You will pay more for it, but the US (on the whole) is better at quality control and process development.

While Cory may be correct on the whole, in my experience, during the development of VEXpro we manufactured prototypes in both the US and China. We did extensive sourcing exercises to find US based suppliers for as many components as possible. In every product (note I said every product), the US suppliers could not meet my quality requirements and could not meet my delivery requirements. The FRC community would not have the quality of VEXpro gears or the VersaPlanetary gearboxes if we held ourselves to the "must be made in the USA" mantra.

Also, there is no way VEX would have been able to create the 300 VEXpro parts that teams are now using if we were required to use US manufacturing.

Now, with respect to the whole jobs argument, I can share one of three stories I have regarding the jobs debate.

In 1998, IFI started with two men working out of their garage. Now IFI has over 200 employees worldwide with about 160 of them working here in Greenville, TX. If they decided to use US manufacturing for the toy and VEX divisions, then they would not be the size company they are today. That is a fact. IFI literally has created 160 US jobs by actually out sourcing manufacturing processes that make sense.

Yep, we make a lot of our VEX and VEXpro products in China. We also design, engineer, program, test, and kit all of those products here in Texas. If you don't purchase our products because they are not "Made in the USA" (BTW, there are very strict US rules that allow you to use that sentence on a product) , then it is your loss.

Paul