AZL Visits Hong Kong And China

You know, I can understand the reasoning for manufacturing AZL products in China because labour is so much cheaper there, but I really have to ask the question, doesn't it bother anyone at AZL that these workers get garbage wages in comparison to North American workers? It's no secret that the workers in these plants are treated like slaves and they get absolutely no benefits whatsoever much left a decent living wage. I have no doubt that on your tour you only saw what they wanted you to see, and hid the bad stuff from you. That's standard procedure. The other thing is the quality control issue. There is a lot of stuff coming out of China that is junk to put it mildly. Everything from electronics, to furniture to clothing to toys and on and on it goes. We have all bought things made in China only to have them fall apart or quit working. Appliances manufactured in China are only guaranteed to work for a maximum of 5 years. Some less then that. Those same appliances manufactured here would run forever it seemed. The same holds true for AZL engines and cars. Some of us have had problems with engines or cars that I'm sure we would not be having if they were made here on this continent.
OK! So I may seem to be an alarmist to most people, but you can't deny the fact that their standards of quality can't be compared to home grown items. To sacrifice quality for quantity and price just doesn't cut it in my book. I would sooner pay more for an a GP38 if it was manufactured in North American by people who care and where high standards of quality are the rule and not the exception. But in the end I guess, how many bucks you spend to have something built, wins out over everything else. Oh for the good old days.

Btw, thank you for sharing your 'trip report ' with us Hans!

Regards, Frank

Thank you for the inside look at your production. I have always wanted to visit Hong Kong. I have done CAD work and consulting for Dragon Models and hope to see some of the kits I have worked on being manufactured someday.

While I would prefer to see your products made in the USA, I understand the need to go overseas sometimes. My own experience is that it's not a problem to find an injection molding company to run your parts. It's the prohibitively high cost to produce the tooling here that will drive up the price of the parts. There are companies all over the US hungry for the work that can provide competitive production parts. However they lack the ability to produce low cost tooling.

I do think manufactures should consider producing some of their products in the countries where they sell them. After all if all the jobs go overseas, who will have money to afford to buy the products?

Rob(A),
Ultimately you have to go with what works. I'm also an S scaler. In 2010 NASG contracted with a U.S. shop for the 2011 convention car, a RTR Sugar Beet service (drop bottom gondola with wood extensions). They also had to use a "full service" shop and chose one with S/O experience. Well, the car missed the convention in Sacramento. The initial CAD work was poor, the first test shot was poor, took a number of months to get them to agree. The CAD designer refused to work on the fixes, and another had to be located to do the fixes, the shop put the car on the back burner, has refused to correspond with the NASG people. There will probably be a need to get lawyers involved and if we're very lucky we may see the car in kit form in 2014. If this is a typical example of U.S. shops, all I can say is : nei-how-ma.

Mark