one of the many reasons I choose to not sell these

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Wyvern
Wessex Tubas
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Re: one of the many reasons I choose to not sell these

Post by Wyvern »

Ken Crawford wrote:The problem in many Chinese factories including JinBao is employee retention. These workers aren't seasoned experts that have been or plan to be building instruments for 30 years. The guy building tubas at JinBao may have been assembling toasters six months ago. And a year from now he might be making pants. So when the QA guy gets fired, the next guy with the most experience probably replaced him, and that guy probably has a whole 12 months of experience with musical instrument production.
I can tell you that most of the staff assembling Wessex have been there for the last 3 years I have been going regularly to the factory. In fact some, such as the production manager are now good friends. Even when I am not at the factory, we still regularly communicate using the WeChat app - which is like the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp.

Where there is a high staff turnover is in such areas as the polishing department. Anyone that has polished tubas knows it is a very dirty and tiring job. So not surprisingly as soon as they can find something less arduous, they do move on. It is probably no coincidence, that the number one reason Wessex rejects instruments is polishing issues, such as micro-scratching under the lacquer.
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bort
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Re: one of the many reasons I choose to not sell these

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What happens to the rejected tubas (which are otherwise fine, except for scratching under the lacquer)?
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Re: one of the many reasons I choose to not sell these

Post by bort »

Maybe they end up in 3rd world countries... like pre-printed Super Bowl Champion shirts for the losing team. :)
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Wyvern
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Re: one of the many reasons I choose to not sell these

Post by Wyvern »

bort wrote:What happens to the rejected tubas (which are otherwise fine, except for scratching under the lacquer)?
Most go to a tubas grave yard - yes there is a floor at factory with hundreds of rejected Wessex. A sad sight :cry: Only of use if we want a part for new product development.

Before you ask, we have considered selling as B-stock, but so far have not reached any conclusion on that.

What we did do the end of last factory visit, and plan to do this next one is carry out a preliminary inspection before the tubas go for lacquering or plating, to try and get finishing problems corrected, before it is too late with the final finish being applied.
bloke wrote:In most factories, the polishing people are the highest-paid, because they could easily destroy a whole bunch of other craftmens' work ~OR~ they could (as is their job) prompt people (who are very impressed by "shiny") to buy the product.
The workers in China are also the highest paid - but there is no getting away from the fact that holding a tuba up to a buffing wheel is a hard job. The workers doing such look like they have come out of a coal mine.

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