Horrors of their first budget.

[vetran]

were you EVER a contractor??

Yes I was a contractor over a number of years I had 4 clients (mainly concurrent) and a few subcontractors. Of course being outside IR35 I was an employee of my limited then as well.

My largest end client on-shored our (multiple contractors) function with an Indian outsourcer to pay less in India having an Indian subsidiary, this made sure they paid little tax in the UK. This drives my dislike of the UK's flawed visa based workers policy.

Shortly after this change while I was looking for another major contract the country manager of this employer phoned me up and offered me a job with great pay and challenges (we had worked together previously).

I was taking over from one of the big 5 and hiring a team to provide a better service. I stayed there for nearly two decades. Ironically as I left they offshored some of my work to Germany and the rest to India. Apparently the service worsened.

As an employed IT manager I managed multiple sites (sales, service and manufacturing) and people internationally. I also advised other sites on their systems, data and IT hence the varied experience. Frequently the systems used for manufacturing were wild cards that needed properly managing to be safe on the network.

Yes when I was a contractor I smoked.

[dsc]

CNC customising wood / plastic stocks maybe, but for metal barrel or moving parts its likely they will be cast and machined in volume. The tolerances on barrels are very exact.

For a plastic stock then they will be cast and maybe engraved via CNC.

even a modern CNC can take ages so for volume it is not great.

The completely CNC created gun is being used to avoid legal oversight which is not really going to make it the backbone of industry.

A 3d printed low volume mold can cost $100 a conventional machined metal one a few thousand $ and can then create thousands or millions of parts. Its been a while since I cast and machined metal but it is hardly fast using cnc will probably speed it up and make it cheaper.

The machine $50,000.

good guide here:

https://formlabs.com/uk/blog/injecti...SCu5FNtfoauShA

You can CNC machine barrels if you like as well, but there's heaps of parts in the fire control group / bolt etc. that can and are CNC machine. Just see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoK3Po1mfy8

Moulds have their place, but for precision stuff CNCs win hands down. The issue is of course cost, modern machining centers are crazy money, so you really need to have a massive order intake to purchase them and I'm not so sure it's very cost effective in the UK.

[sadkingbilly]

Yes I was a contractor over a number of years I had 4 clients (mainly concurrent) and a few subcontractors. Of course being outside IR35 I was an employee of my limited then as well.

My largest end client on-shored our (multiple contractors) function with an Indian outsourcer to pay less in India having an Indian subsidiary, this made sure they paid little tax in the UK. This drives my dislike of the UK's flawed visa based workers policy.

Shortly after this change while I was looking for another major contract the country manager of this employer phoned me up and offered me a job with great pay and challenges (we had worked together previously).

I was taking over from one of the big 5 and hiring a team to provide a better service. I stayed there for nearly two decades. Ironically as I left they offshored some of my work to Germany and the rest to India. Apparently the service worsened.

As an employed IT manager I managed multiple sites (sales, service and manufacturing) and people internationally. I also advised other sites on their systems, data and IT hence the varied experience. Frequently the systems used for manufacturing were wild cards that needed properly managing to be safe on the network.

Yes when I was a contractor I smoked.

so 30, 40 years ago?

[vetran]

so 30, 40 years ago?

no

[sadkingbilly]

no

so - permy for two decades before current perm stint of ? 10years? to date. = 30 years ago.
(sorry, you sound like some kind of '#manager', so technical stuff like arithmetic WILL be beyond your feeble little ganglion.

[vetran]

comprehension beyond me.

FTFY

[edison]

On the subject of automation. The Japanese baby boom started 20 years before ours, so their population peeked earlier. Manfacturing was huge in Japan which is why they were so wealthy and powerful up to the 80s. But their country is far more politically unified than the UK, they basically have 1 party in power for long periods of time, and near zero immigration. This meant that they could implement long term plans as their working population peaked in size, and they automated massively. The Seiko watch I am wearing is one of something like 30,000 made every day on a production line that it close to 100% automated for example. Amazing what you can do when you have the money, brains, and dedication to doing it, but above all the political unity that enables a country to keep going after the same idea for long stretches of time.

There are a lot of similarities with the UK and Germany, in terms of our demographics to what happened to Japan 20 or 30 years ago. We still have wealth, and brains. Somehow I just cannot see us having the ability to keep our tulip together politically in the same way. For one thing, we seem to be going down the path of immigration to fill out the demographics.

Japan was heavily geared towards manufacturing and particularly exporting in the 70s and 80s. It seems to have finally shifted more towards services as China started to dominate a lot of manufacturing. Will be interesting to see how Japan fares in the next 10-20 years as the proportion of elderly people continues to rise.

I spent 10 days there a few years ago and was slightly surprised how everything still looked in good shape unlike the decrepit UK. Japan is one of the most homogenous societies in the world but I wonder how long the demographics can keep immigration at very low levels?

[willendure]

Japan was heavily geared towards manufacturing and particularly exporting in the 70s and 80s. It seems to have finally shifted more towards services as China started to dominate a lot of manufacturing. Will be interesting to see how Japan fares in the next 10-20 years as the proportion of elderly people continues to rise.

I spent 10 days there a few years ago and was slightly surprised how everything still looked in good shape unlike the decrepit UK. Japan is one of the most homogenous societies in the world but I wonder how long the demographics can keep immigration at very low levels?

The can keep immigration low as long as they like - its a choice, same as it is for us. If the population has wealth and is shrinking that concentrates the wealth into fewer hands, so actually it works out pretty well for the natives to own their own country.

Japan off-shored a lot of manufacturing, but combined that with automation and retaining ownership of the off shored industries. So they still make quite a bit, particularly high end stuff, and still profit from it.

[sadkingbilly]

FTFY

like i said: so - permy for two decades before current perm stint of ? 10years? to date. = 30 years ago.
(sorry, you sound like some kind of '#manager', so technical stuff like arithmetic WILL be beyond your feeble little ganglion.

[NigelJK]

IIRC 5% of the profit for an item comes from the manufacturing of it.