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A comment on No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does. Parent comment

Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by MengerSponge on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:32AM (#34273130)
Related: a lot of drug shortages right now are driven by shortages of package inserts. That page of printed instructions, warnings, etc is often sourced from China, so even if the drug is manufactured in America, and the delivery device is manufactured in Europe or Mexico or something, you can't sell it without that folded packet of finely printed paper that basically nobody reads.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by richardw on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:50AM (#34273275)
Friend works for a company who does various networking things. They’re losing big long-term contracts because the super-enterprise RJ45 network jacks they sell aren’t available.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by laobiz on Friday January 06, 2023 @07:05AM (#34273791)
Where is the benefit in super-enterprise rj45 connectors?
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by rippercushions on Friday January 06, 2023 @08:05AM (#34274182)
They are demanded by the people ticking boxes at the kind of super-enterprises that buy super-enterprise rj45 connectors.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by ThePowerOfFuet on Friday January 06, 2023 @10:53AM (#34276101)
> Where is the benefit in super-enterprise rj45 connectors?

They're super.

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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by elzbardico on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:38PM (#34282335)
And more importantly, they are enterprise!
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by richardw on Friday January 06, 2023 @04:48PM (#34281703)
It’s obviously ludicrous and I can’t remember the specifics except it seemed very different from my efforts at crimping a cable.

A brief search alerts me to the presence of Cat 6A to Cat 8 shielded pass-through design with triple prong gold plated contacts, supporting POE++. Does your connector have integrated magnetics? Led indicators? Are they ruggedised? No? You’re losing out.

Here you go:

https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/selecting-the-...

https://www.cuidevices.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-rj45-c...

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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by vkazanov on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:56AM (#34273322)
You're doing something VERY wrong if you don't read whatever is written on your pill's instructions!
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by H8crilA on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:59AM (#34273345)
Kind of yes, but you usually either a) get instructions from the doctor, or b) have already read the instructions for this drug before.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by csunbird on Friday January 06, 2023 @06:42AM (#34273649)
It depends on the medicine! For example, I have a medicine that I take regularly, and to reduce the amount of doctor visits, my doctor just prescribes me several months of medicine in one giant box.

The box contains smaller boxes of the medicine and they all come with the same description paper - all 30 boxes! I have read that paper 100 times already, there is no need for me to read it anymore.

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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by elzbardico on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:37PM (#34282326)
Medicine inserts were my reading material at the bathroom before smartphones were invented.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by laci37 on Friday January 06, 2023 @07:06AM (#34273795)
Most people take familiar medcine. I won't read the instructions in the n+1th pack of ibuprofen I'm buying.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by MengerSponge on Friday January 06, 2023 @07:44AM (#34274042)
Instructions? Sure. But those inserts also can include lots of information on pharmacokinetics and far more technical details about the drug's method of action.

I need to know when/how to take the drug, for how long, and what side-effects to look out for. Basically the rest is irrelevant to me.

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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by DocSportello on Friday January 06, 2023 @06:02AM (#34273364)
Honest question: is it really so hard to manufacture these inserts in the US?
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by WJW on Friday January 06, 2023 @06:44AM (#34273659)
It's not hard but it's much cheaper to do it abroad, even after factoring in shipping.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by Cthulhu_ on Friday January 06, 2023 @08:13AM (#34274227)
Last or year-before-last's container shortage + Evergrande shook that one up though.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by MengerSponge on Friday January 06, 2023 @07:40AM (#34274016)
No, not really. But the margins aren't great, and you've got to allocate the manufacturing capacity to make the paper, which takes time.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by elzbardico on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:39PM (#34282346)
Once you did the initial capital investment, no.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by codeflo on Friday January 06, 2023 @06:13AM (#34273457)
That sounds like the easiest thing in the world to source elsewhere on short notice. High-quality printing services exist literally everywhere in the world. What am I missing?
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by user-extended on Friday January 06, 2023 @06:32AM (#34273581)
It's not as cheap as the stockholders want it to be in the US.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by gorjusborg on Friday January 06, 2023 @06:50AM (#34273712)
Probably true.

Better to keep profit margins up than actually make revenue.

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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by Dalewyn on Friday January 06, 2023 @06:14AM (#34273465)
To make a completely uneducated guess, probably recertifications from a change in bill of materials? These are medical drugs we're talking about.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by HeyLaughingBoy on Friday January 06, 2023 @08:01AM (#34274159)
A change like that shouldn't be a big deal. A meeting to decide whether or not it constitutes a Design Change (it doesn't!) and if the new insert needs to be Validated again (likely not) and you're pretty much done from a Compliance standpoint and on to Vendor Qualification.

My guess is that the problem is more likely to be finding a vendor that can print/cut to your specification at the scale you need and, critically, who can produce it on your schedule. Any capable printer is likely already booked solid for months.

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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by bombcar on Friday January 06, 2023 @08:17AM (#34274265)
If it was a real problem I dare say they could ship with loose leaf pages detailing everything nobody reads.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by HeyLaughingBoy on Friday January 06, 2023 @08:22AM (#34274293)
Assuming they fit into the existing manufacturing process, sure. But that still doesn't solve the problem of finding a printer to print those millions of pages.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by MengerSponge on Friday January 06, 2023 @07:42AM (#34274032)
It sounds like it should be easy? Do you remember the TP shortage of 2020? That also sounded easy.

The scale makes it hard.

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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by marcosdumay on Friday January 06, 2023 @11:21AM (#34276613)
What makes you think toilet paper manufacture is equivalent to printing?
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by klyrs on Friday January 06, 2023 @11:57AM (#34277269)
It involves a supply of specialty paper.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by MengerSponge on Friday January 06, 2023 @12:58PM (#34278359)
Ding ding ding! Got it in one
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by HeyLaughingBoy on Friday January 06, 2023 @08:04AM (#34274177)
You're assuming that there are high-quality, high-volume print suppliers with slack time / idle machinery. I wouldn't be so sure. And even then, existing literally everywhere in the world now becomes a problem of finding them.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by shlubbert on Friday January 06, 2023 @10:06AM (#34275403)
There has actually be a pretty significant general paper shortage over the last two years due to difficulties sourcing the raw materials. Not sure if that's the root cause for the issue mentioned here but I'd bet it contributed to it.
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Re:No, You Can’t Manufacture That Like Apple Does by w1nst0nsm1th on Friday January 06, 2023 @07:10AM (#34273820)
I read it.
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