Originally Posted By: Spazdog
We saw that with Zastava/Yugo. Malcolm Bricklin went into Yugoslavia and set up some basic quality control. The initial Yugo GVs weren't that bad for being an out of date Fiat made with Eastern European materials. But then the West started to consume them in great numbers. (something like 1500 of them were sold in one day) There was no incentive for the factory workers to work harder, longer, and with any consistancy, No bonuses. No overtime. The quality slipped and you've got hundreds of Yugo jokes.
I just read Jason Vuic's excellent book about the Yugo. The problem was that since Yugoslavia was a communist economy, they weren't allowed to pay for overtime or bonuses for productive employees. That just wasn't their way of doing things. Quality wasn't any worse towards the end than on day #1. Yugo in America failed because Bricklin ran the company to the ground by shoveling as much money into his own pockets as he could and dumping the rest on trying to develop a US-spec Mitsubishi knockoff in Malaysia.
The problem with Chinese products seems to be this: Building quality products isn't cheap, even if you build them in China. Skilled employees like to get paid, and QC costs money. But if you want to build cheap junk, you can get a some really CHEAP junk made over there.
