Common Industrial Furniture Questions
1. Will China tariffs increase what I pay at Walmart?
Itu2019s hard to tell what impacts tariffs will have (mostly proposed, constantly renegotiated, and often on very basic inputs that are a small portion of a complete productu2019s cost on a retaileru2019s shelves.
) Wal-mart has been extremely reliant on Chinese-manufactured goods since the 1990u2019s when Wal-mart Board Member Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill (a big beneficiary of both Arkansas-based Wal-mart and Chinese government campaign support, a Little Rock restauranteur/Chinese intelligence agent went to prison for campaign finance violations in his million plus dollars.) That favoring Chinese production cost at least 3. 5 million US manufacturing jobs by recent estimates, closed many factories and devastated entire U.
S. industries (furniture mfg., apparel mfg.
, shoe mfg., toys mfg., bicycles mfg.
, steel, cement, shipbuilding, and major products like IBMu2019s personal computers/now Chinese Lenovo and much of Dell and Appleu2019s production, etc.) and created a huge trade imbalance thatu2019s funded Chinese growth worldwide. Chinau2019s trade with the US is so one-sided that they really have little opportunity for retaliatory trade barriers (not to mention keep getting caught stealing about $5 billion dollars in US product designs every year with a massive industrial and cyberspying effort.
So yes Wal-mart prices on Chinese-sourced goods may go up slightly, which doesnu2019t offset the quite often poor quality that means theyu2019ll wear out or fail much sooner making them a bad bargain/higher cost of ownership/higher opportunity cost than the low prices appear. Good quality pays, poor quality is very expensive. Charles Fishmanu2019s book u201cThe Wal-mart Effectu201d is a particularly deep and balanced look at the economic impacts of Wal-mart while the book u201cPoorly Made in Chinau201d explains a lot of their systemic quality problems
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2.
Is EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) dead as a career field?
I would say no. It is all the rage in the furniture industry and has been for at least five years.
I know it is important in health care also, and we all know slow that industry is to adapt to new technology, so it's likely to stay relevant in health care for the foreseeable future.Two caveats: EDI has been around a long time, and isn't hot like, say, highchair. In particular, health care EDI jobs don't pay all that well for jobs in the IT realm.
Second, in my industry (furniture/supply chain), there are rumblings about blockchain supplanting EDI. So I wouldn't count on EDI analyst paying really well for a full career if you haven't started studying yet.
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3.
How can machine learning revolutionize the furniture industry?
Frankly in the current condition of the industry, I donu2019t see much use for it in production applications. Thatu2019s because materials testing has become a thing of the past, so you donu2019t 100% know what the raw materials youu2019re using have in the way of properties.
Thatu2019s because youu2019re relying on salespeople who tend to u201cfluffu201d the qualities of the products theyu2019re selling you and thatu2019s what leads to failure of finished products made from them. If you took the time to know for sure what you were starting with, you could tell the machine to build a book case that would rate at 250 lbs of holding power and take up a certain amount of space. The machine wouldnu2019t have to learn anything, though.
In that case it would spit out a plain algorithm and a finished design. With the right links, it might even spit out a finished product.In the sales end, the machines are, well, machines.
They donu2019t pick up on customer excitement or micro expressions the way an experienced person will. They canu2019t and they wonu2019t be able to for a long time, if ever. While theyu2019re still looking to recognize a cat, the salesperson has sold a sofa.
As for design, you could tell a machine what people in general find pleasing and let it go to work, but a person would deal with issues faster and better when it did something negative. Machine learning has its place, but that isnu2019t it
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4. How do environmental and social factors affect the furniture industry in India?
Environment vitally affects the availability of different wood varieties of varying qualities that are suitable for furniture of common local styles for different purposes. Social factors affect both the local styles of furniture and their local purposes within the varieties of wood available in the local environment. In the present age, however, where transport of wood from diverse environments to any point of use anywhere in the world is possible, local environment and local social factors are no more critical limiting factors to furniture styles as any wood variety from anywhere for any furniture can be made anywhere for use anywhere else.
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5. How much does ERP Software cost Budgeting?
Well, good question.
Interesting. I would need to stop and ponder that for a moment. I would say that most ERP systems have a budgeting functionality built-in to them.
Cost $0.Now, of course, it depends on what you are in need of budgeting, and who your audience is, the size of the budget, the complexity of it. If you needed something rather complex, you might in fact find some ERP's that did not have the ability to give you what you needed, and you needed to go out and get an add-on product to accomplish this.
There are a few. They can generally be bolted on to the ERP. (hopefully you don't need to get the DB admin' to dump all your data and then import it in to the budgeting system!
) Cost $25k to 75k. Then, next, a lot of the ERP systems have a "Financials" module and then an "Advanced Financials" module. Cost $5k to 25kFinally, there is this How much does NetSuite cost?
Cost $0 to $10k. Cheers
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6. Why is mechanical engineering preferred to aerospace if the course load is 95% the same?
As numerous others have stated, 95% similarity is quite extreme. By the end of sophomore year, the ME majors and AE majors in my department begin to take completely different coursework. The MEu2019s had the liberty of choosing courses that fit their technical interests and professional goals, whereas the AEu2019s all followed a layed-out map of courses to take.
In my department, ME undergrads will never touch topics such as flight dynamics, aerodynamics, spacecraft dynamics, and propulsion - that is, unless they take these as electives. Even if they chose only the Aero-related courses to take as electives, they still do not see all that the AEu2019s do in their cirriculum.But to give a shot at your question, ME is a far more flexible degree than AE.
There is no doubt about that. Job availability is in the favor of a person with a BSME over one with a BSAE, almost always. Additionally, as stated, MEu2019s can choose courses and focus on a particular area.
Areas include, but are not limited to, dynamics and controls, structures, biomedical, manufacturing, fluid dynamics, or thermodynamics. Ultimately, if a person is passionate about aeronautics and dreams of making a long-lived contribution to the field, they will not go wrong either way. I think the quickest way of determining if ME or AE is right for a prospective undergrad is for them to ask if they can see themselves working somewhere that does not involve aircraft or spacecraft.
Besides, thereu2019s always graduate school for those that may lean towards one way or another as they progress in undergraduate studies. Interestingly, if an ME undergraduate decided they wanted to, for example, dive into Civil Engineering and study bridges after taking a junior level structures or advanced solid mechanics course, they can actually go on to graduate school to do just that
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7. Can an e-commerce site be a good startup idea in the present scenario?
Not even the best of the e-commerce websites are making good money, in fact, most of them are burning cash to give heavy discounts to attract new users.the hypothesis is that in the future when they have sufficient customers and there would be an oligopolistic market they would make money, or they would make there own private label products and sell them for a good profit.Maybe a niche product market where the profit margin is quite high could become a successful e-commerce venture such as the clothing industry, furniture industry, jewelry to name a few.
The success of an e-commerce venture depends on the delivery cost optimization and the bulk deals you do with the manufacturers which can give you price advantage, for a small startup both of these things are difficult. unless you have some big venture capital firm supporting your idea it would be difficult for you to burn cash.if you have something radically new which will attract and retain customers, and which is not that capital intensive then it could work.
The other thing could be that you create the startup and you grow your business without ever being profitable, you can still personally make a lot of money after selling off the business to a big firm. The thing that they will pay you for is your business model and the number of customers on your platform then maybe they will come up with something to turn the business profitable
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8. What subjects are studied in an industrial design degree?
Visual Communication - how to communicate your ideas through sketches, drawings, and renderings. This involves a lot of drawing and rendering.3D Modeling - how to make models physically and with CAD.
Ergonomics - the science of measuring the human body and how that relates to product design.Marketing - how to determine if there are paying customers for a product.Economics - why there would be paying customers for a product and understanding how much they would pay.
Manufacturing Technology - how mass produced products are made.Materials Science - the different types of materials that mass produced products are made from.Team Collaboration - How to work in teamsDesign History - You need to know what came before and how culture influences design.
