1/4" and 3/8" socket drawer nearly complete.

[badmatt]

Came to thread for sockets…

Get ratchets….

God damnit.

 

[mngundog]

I haven't seen him directly call anyone "poor" for not having the entire Snap-On catalog. If you're reading that into what he's posting than it's more your problem than his.

If I post a picture of some of my valuable things would you think I'm calling you poor because you can't, or don't want to, afford them ? How's this. (sorry for the derail) 59 Holstein steers weighing 307lbs average that ran $6.10/lb. All part of my cattle collection. Wrote a check and paid for them. No biggie. How many ratchets worth of cattle are in his picture ? If him owning that many ratchets brings him joy WHO CARES ?!?!? If the answer is YOU CARE then move on and don't care so much. It's okay if people have nice things.

That would explain the usable tax deduction comment, not many could write off those tools.

 

[Steve_P]

Japan's qc came from two American qc guys that we sent there to teach them and they took there teaching for the gospel and ran with it.

Who is guy #2? The only one I know is Deming, and I wouldn't really call him a QC guy; IMO, that's a bit of a demotion as he was much more than that, but....

 

[Steve_P]

I haven't seen that happen once. Please provide a link to it

You missed this in other threads? It was blatant. "you're poor if you buy Icon because it's not Snap On".

 

[kngelv]

I'll give you two, if you care enough to want more it's easy to look at someone's post history. I'm clearly not the only one to find the guy a bit abrasive but there's at least one on every forum.

I gotta admit that first post is pretty flippin arrogant.

James

 

[AEAdam]

Meticulous and doing things well/responsibility is in Japanese culture for a looonng time. So it is not surprising that Japanese do well in modern factory production and that they would take quality control studies (USA or wherever) to heart. It is pretty rare for a Japanese employee, even if low wage, to not give a damn. Even more rare for potential sabotage over grievances real or imagined. So they have a pretty good employee baseline to work with. Or at least they waste less time dealing with problematic cases allowing them to focus more on improving. Assuming the leaders (foreman, engineers, bosses) are good.

Where Japan fails is bosses tend to be all powerful and not questioned within the hierarchy. So a bad boss there can do tremendous damage -- likely more damage than in the USA. Not much "Hey Boss, we need to change this because ...". But when well formulated and laid out, they are impressive and efficient. For better or worse, they can also be quite stubborn. One advantage they have over us in the USA is they may be less profit fixated and look longer range. Here our companies fixate on beating money management returns consistently year-by-year or they will consider shutdown since they can make more profit with less risk in financial investments than making things. That is hard to do consistently enough to satisfy USA managers and bosses, and pushes us in a situation where less and less is being done year by year in manufacturing as companies become more services. It is hard to see where this is going not with AI tools potentially upending so much -- both in the USA, Japan, and world wide.

Interesting post. I‘ve never been to Japan, but have worked with Japanese engineers. The way they are led and communicate is really odd from my US perspective. But I feel we are a bit unique. Even Europe has what I consider strange office behaviors.

Just one observation I wanted to bring up: It sure looks like Koken is producing high quality tools. But I feel their soul is in engineering. There are a lot of tool manufacturers, most I’d wager, with no R&D, no engineering. That’s where Koken and Snap on are similar and a bit unique.

I’ll say this for Snap on: The direction of the company, its core culture, isn’t manufacturing, but finding solutions for mechanics. They are very good at bringing products to market that directly help their customers. They are customer focused, listen, and bring solutions.

I’m not sure how Koken or Nepros do it. Who they are listening to? Do their customers even have a voice? Some of their ergonomics seem to be designed for Japanese only. Who is their market? The Japanese car industry figured it out. Their lives, needs, desires can be so different from ours, that must be tricky for them to design the Sequoia. I don’t know what sort of pressure Japanese mechanics are under. Do they work flat rate? Do they complain to their tool representatives?

What so many of you hate about Snap on is also Snap On’s super power. Corporate has a very short chain to their customers. It’s not perfect, but it’s not typical in manufacturing.

I personally feel companies willing to invest in R&D deserve our support. They are special. Companies ripping off others’ R&D deserve our ire. They will inevitably hurt the industry.

 

[Upstater57]

Meticulous and doing things well/responsibility is in Japanese culture for a looonng time. So it is not surprising that Japanese do well in modern factory production and that they would take quality control studies (USA or wherever) to heart. It is pretty rare for a Japanese employee, even if low wage, to not give a damn. Even more rare for potential sabotage over grievances real or imagined. So they have a pretty good employee baseline to work with. Or at least they waste less time dealing with problematic cases allowing them to focus more on improving. Assuming the leaders (foreman, engineers, bosses) are good.

Where Japan fails is bosses tend to be all powerful and not questioned within the hierarchy. So a bad boss there can do tremendous damage -- likely more damage than in the USA. Not much "Hey Boss, we need to change this because ...". But when well formulated and laid out, they are impressive and efficient. For better or worse, they can also be quite stubborn. One advantage they have over us in the USA is they may be less profit fixated and look longer range. Here our companies fixate on beating money management returns consistently year-by-year or they will consider shutdown since they can make more profit with less risk in financial investments than making things. That is hard to do consistently enough to satisfy USA managers and bosses, and pushes us in a situation where less and less is being done year by year in manufacturing as companies become more services. It is hard to see where this is going not with AI tools potentially upending so much -- both in the USA, Japan, and world wide.

Japanese companies are less concerned about quarterly investor calls and are more focused on the future. When a Japanese CEO misses the mark, they leave and feel remorse. When an American CEO screws up, they offer to sign an NDA, take a big payout, and looks for their next job. As a result, most of our quality goes down in the quest for profits. I will qualify this by saying privately held companies in the USA are not the same as stock price driven company.

 

[lund]

Interesting post. I‘ve never been to Japan, but have worked with Japanese engineers. The way they are led and communicate is really odd from my US perspective. But I feel we are a bit unique. Even Europe has what I consider strange office behaviors.

Just one observation I wanted to bring up: It sure looks like Koken is producing high quality tools. But I feel their soul is in engineering. There are a lot of tool manufacturers, most I’d wager, with no R&D, no engineering. That’s where Koken and Snap on are similar and a bit unique.

I’ll say this for Snap on: The direction of the company, its core culture, isn’t manufacturing, but finding solutions for mechanics. They are very good at bringing products to market that directly help their customers. They are customer focused, listen, and bring solutions.

I’m not sure how Koken or Nepros do it. Who they are listening to? Do their customers even have a voice? Some of their ergonomics seem to be designed for Japanese only. Who is their market? The Japanese car industry figured it out. Their lives, needs, desires can be so different from ours, that must be tricky for them to design the Sequoia. I don’t know what sort of pressure Japanese mechanics are under. Do they work flat rate? Do they complain to their tool representatives?

What so many of you hate about Snap on is also Snap On’s super power. Corporate has a very short chain to their customers. It’s not perfect, but it’s not typical in manufacturing.

I personally feel companies willing to invest in R&D deserve our support. They are special. Companies ripping off others’ R&D deserve our ire. They will inevitably hurt the industry.

I agree on support of companies making products and doing real R&D engineering and not just hype marketing. I get really irritated with the "designed in USA" labels on simpler products. Most of that is bs. Kind of like pro basketball players saying they designed shoes for company marketing. Right, picking an emblem and color. No materials and methods analysis.

I cannot speak a lot on feedback along production lines in Japan. The communication style in Japan is different. But my sense is there may be less listening and back and forth than in the USA, but even within that restriction, they do really well and have less problems with profit fixation etc. But in the USA we have a very interesting mix that can compensate fast. People from all over contributing. For example, I am a theoretical physicist. I went to grad school at one of our larger tech schools (MIT) for a PhD. When I was there, I think out of ~40 students that cohort in theoretical physics when I was there I was one of a small handfull of students born in the USA. There were more US citizens, but from (mostly) foreign born academic families who immigrated and they may have been part educated here. There is a lot of talent brought in. We benefit from that along with the broad mix of approaches and styles. The USA has done well with that since WW2 over 80+ years. Unfortunately, that talent draw has been deteriorating rapidly from politics and the rest of the world coming up. But for many years we paid better and had more support for projects. That is the honest reason for most of our exceptionalism bringing in talent etc. Not us being intrinsically better. Nazis and communists would also do well in science when they spent. The USA would provide a welcome home (we are or were a welcoming culture) that was appreciated along with the support. Going forward AI and how to integrate with the changes looming will be important. I am not sure how that will take shape at this point. But it adds an interesting new twist on the mix and it will certainly have impact on how things are produced -- including tools and equipment.

 

[NUTTSGT]

We're done here.