The economist has a racy title for an article about vacuum cleaners. This part caught my interest:
These days Dysons are no longer made in Wiltshire but in Malaysia.
Production was shifted because there were no longer any suppliers near
the original factory, the wage bill per person had doubled and the
local authority had refused planning permission to expand.
The decision to move abroad caused a storm, yet things have turned out just
as globalisation advocates would have hoped. Three factories in
Malaysia now make 4m vacuum cleaners a year, with all the suppliers
within a ten-mile radius, at one-third of the cost in Britain. The
Wiltshire factory has become a research and design centre; Dyson
employs more people than before, and in more highly skilled jobs.
These stories are far more common than people realize, we just don't hear about them often enough.
