Cross-eyed in Mysore...

We had the morning off yesterday so all of us took the time to catch up on sleep. Sleep has been one of those precious luxuries that doesn’t come easily here in Mysore. It seems like every time I am about to drift off into blissful rest, something or somebody wakes me up. On the plane trip over here, it was the airline attendants. It felt like they fed us every hour on the hour. And here at the fabulous Ginger hotel where the walls are only slightly thicker than double ply toilet paper, you are lucky if 15 minutes go by without housekeeping knocking on your door, children screaming down the hallway, or generally obnoxious residents having a loud conversation between rooms with their doors propped open.

Speaking of which, has anybody else noticed that when 2 locals engage in conversation here in India, it sounds like they are about to get into a boxing match?

Yesterday afternoon, we were able to take a visit of the AT&S plant in Mysore. AT&S manufactures PCB boards for devices such as cell phones and computer hardware. Upon arrival at the facility (where the majority of the 16 students were tired, sleepy, and crabby) we were filtered into a break room so that they could locate the staff that would be giving us the tour. I will be forever grateful to Rajiv and Al for deciding NOT to have us attend the classroom portion of the tour, which I’m sure is about as interesting as watching water boil.

After a 10 minute power nap (and wiping the drool off of my shoes), we were off on our tour to visit the magical world of copper plates and epoxy resin. For the most part, the facility contained most everything that I would have expected from a PCB board manufacturer. Mechanical presses, drills, CAD equipment, chemical etching stations, etc. After 30 minutes or so, our group reached the tail end of the board manufacturing process: quality control.

Two words immediately crossed my mind as I stared at the dozens of workers manually counting and inspecting the finished products with nothing more than a magnifying glass: cheap labor. Here is the difference from businesses in India and those of the United States. Here is the reason why so many jobs are being outsourced to India. Here is the reason why many of our products cannot compete competitively from a cost perspective with similar products in India.

I was appalled when I heard about the $4 shop rates in Automotive Axles and TVS and how labor contributed for only 4% of the overall cost of the finished product. But here it was, staring me in the face as board after board went through a painstaking process of manual inspection that would have made most of us cross-eyed after the first few hours. Can you imagine staring at circuits no larger than a few grains of sand through a magnifying glass for 6 days, 8 hours a day, for no more than $200 a month? It is a reality here in Mysore and the rest of India.