The global toothbrush
The really unbelievable fact about the story “The global toothbrush” is that an electric toothbrush is fabricated in so many different countries.
In the article the Philips Company is used as an example for globalization, because it has several locations all over the world.
But why there is not only one location? Is it actually profitable to split the work?
The Philips Company
The Dutch Company is one of the biggest producers of electronics. The annual sales betray €30.3 billion. It employs about 160.900 workers in 60 countries. And just for a toothbrush there are working 4.500 employees of two dozen nations in ten different countries at twelve nations.
Although it’s Dutch, there are only few workers from the Netherlands.
Philips produces between 10.000 and 27.000 toothbrushes per day. Today ca. 300 million people use electric toothbrushes and in 5 to 10 years the number could rise up to 900 million.
The company pays salary in a different amount to the employees of the different locations.
That means, that for example the Americans get $9- $14 per hour whereas the Chinese people only earn 1000 renminbi per month, which is about $ 120 per month and $ 0,75 per day.
The toothbrush is fabricated in 10 countries: in each case one factory in Japan, France, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines, Sweden, Austria and two in the United States and two in China. And there still is the question, why it is necessary that e.g. in Austria the plastic parts are manufactured and the same plastic parts are assembled in the United States.
Example of the journey of the toothbrush
I want to show a short part of the journey of the toothbrush to understand the connected work to manufacture a toothbrush. Our journey starts in Zhuhai (China). Here the circuit boards are etched. In Taipei (Taiwan) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) the circuit boards are fit with components. Those components are soldered in Manila (Philippines). After that one or twice a week ca. 100.000 circuit boards leave Manila Airport to be flown via Tokyo to Snoqualmie near Seattle, where the toothbrush is packaged. All in all the single toothbrush parts travelled 27.880 km until they arrived in Snoqualmie.
The journey shows, that the single locations have to work together very well and have to communicate. It’s not possible, that for example there are too less circuit boards manufactured in China, because then the whole production defers.
Globalization
Already 600 years ago the globalization began, when the Europeans discovered the world and began to trade with countries all over the world. Today the globalization is dominated by females, because the employees in fabrics mostly are female. This is because the salary for men are higher then for women.
Conclusion
I think the example of the Philips Company shows the today’s globalization in a critical way. Now we know, how closely the single locations have to work with each other so that the whole production works. The locations are under considerable strain, because of the strict exhibitions they have to fulfill. Another very important thing is, that the companies always are in search of cheaper offerers of the single toothbrush parts. This means, that the factory could be closed anytime or sold to little prices. All the globalization companies work for their advantages and that is why they have so many locations. The splitting is cheaper than just one location and even though they have to transport the single parts, the price is lower.So at the end I want to quote the text: “Globalization means business. And business means competition.”
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