ThinkPad production in Mexico has begun!

I ran across this interesting bit of news and thought I'd share. Lenovo has started production at a new facility in Mexico. It will serve the Latin and North American markets.

It will be interesting to see if the new, closer location translates into quicker delivery times (compared to orders from China). Hopefully quality will be kept up to existing ThinkPad standards, too.

LINK to story

 

It's gonna be Mexican standard.

 

Interesting indeed...

Production in Mexico will result in tax savings for Lenovo due to NAFTA.

I would guess that production in Mexico will also result in lower freight costs for North American sales as well as potentially faster order fulfilment.

Production in Mexico must be more expensive than production in China though. Also, parts logistics must be more difficult considering most laptop components are manufactured in China.

I'm sure Lenovo has good reason for the new production facility. Hopefully us consumers see a benefit (i.e., more competitive pricing and faster order fulfilment).

 

Hey, I'm from Mexico. My past Thinkpads was bought here and those were made in Guadalajara Mexico. My T61 is made in China, I kinda feel the difference because my T42p was rock solid.
I'm unsure if new models will be manufactured on the same factory, but this is good move.

 

I don't think that is a fair judgment of the factories. You would have to have the same model from each to really compare. Ownership and management differed from those two models as well.

I don't think we can draw any conclusions until we actually see what the factory puts out in today's models .

 

The 600 series were manufactured in Guadalajara, and they were fabulous.

 

The Lenovo factory is located in the metropolitan area of Monterrey (150 miles from Laredo, TX). Monterrey was ranked as Mexico's wealthiest city in 2006, based on annual income (average of $11,500). So the overhead, especially labor costs, will increase exponentially compared to those in China. Obviously the benefits of North American production are expected to be worth it.

Ford began building the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln Zephyr/MKZ in Hermosillo, Mexico in 2006. It won the Strategic Vision Total Quality Award in its first year! That proves that Mexican workers and factories can build very high quality products.

 

I have no doubts about Mexican manufacturing capabilities, however it doesn't inherently make the product better if lenovo doesn't push for better quality.

 

Of course not, you're absolutely right. My intention was simply to demonstrate that Mexican factories can be competitive, in terms of quality, with the any other country.

 

Same here.

 

Its a pretty big stereotype that mexico produces substandard parts wich isnt true. however turnover of people can and does affect quality.

My mother is in management and has sent several lines to mexico. one line was brought back into the US because of bad quality (due to turnover of people) the other lines she had no issues at all. Completely perfect as if made anywhere.

I believe any company can be successful in mexico as long as they are willing to pay decent wages to the workers and stop treating them like a 3rd world country. If people are payed well and happy they wont have issues of people comming and going and retraining ect. which in the end affects quality

 

Most people think that about any country that is not a top developed nation. I grow tired of the same comments of substandard chinese production. It just depends how much care the company wants to put into ensuring they have quality production. If you are willing to pay people will produce how you want it is just the ordering company's responsibility to manage the situation.

 

HURRAY!!! lol im not sure how much better the quality would be compared to MADE IN CHINA but its good to hear Lenovo is moving out of china? but Lenovo is a Chinese company. interesting.
Ill be like the old days when older IBM models were made in mexico. like my first Laptop Thinkpad 600. I hope the price goes down as well.

 

The pricing is already lower than IBM's older pricing, I wouldn't want any lower price points on the T or X series as that would just encourage cutting corners.

 

hmm i never really knew the retail for older IBM models. i guess it just wasnt my era of time. lol
im not sure but too me, i think the general laptop prices are little to high.

 

You can get a laptop for like 400 dollars at best buy every day of the week, 5 years ago you couldn't find a laptop for under $1000

 

well 400usd bestbuy machines are ok but has way too many defected products. i dont think i can buy a laptop having to live with fear of getting black lines going through the screen. that just kills it. probably go on ebay for 250 usd.

 

Well that's the point. You pay a bit more for a superior product in build quality and support. Mass consumers are interested in price point pretty much. That fact has driven margins down for the OEMs...Now we have a bunch of crappy cheap laptops. Fine if you treat them okay and make sure they don't overheat .

 

sure right. good thing about lenovo and dell is their crazy nice warranty policy. tech coming to fix it for you the next day. wow! i really love this. it must be b/c the most companies using these Thinkpads in a "time is money" kind of world.
ya its really hard to recommend any of the 600 or less in laptops in bestbuy.

 

Business laptop pricing, adjusted for inflation, is the lowest it has ever been!

My first laptop was a Toshiba Satellite 4060CDT that I bought in late 1999 for $2600! For that price, I got a 333MHz Pentium II processor and 64mb of integrated RAM in a 13.3" case....and it was among the less expensive models at the time!

 

wow. back in the 90s early 00s. it was horrible..
$2600 is a price of a top notch Samsung X360?
hey my '98 compaq presario has 64mb ram. lol. 7xxmhz. i use it for a 2nd backup storage.

 

I'm guessing Lenovo opened up their plant in Mexico primarily to cut costs on shipping end products and open up additional cost-saving opportunities in their supply chain.

 

I plan on visiting the plant, maybe to get a chance of employment there, I have always wanted to work on the IT industry.

 

dont you think it will be mostly for factory working labor there since its in mexico? I dont think lot of thinking will be going on there

 

Wow. That's not offensive at all.

Would you also say that factory workers in GM and Ford plants don't work in the auto industry?

 

I digress in your thinking.

Last Friday went to the factory and it is certainly big. I don't think there's no 'thinking' going there as you say it, because they've created a building called 'Lenovo Technology Centre', they will have support offices down here, so it would not be surprising if in the future when calling for support there will be a mexican operator

 

My wife is from Jalisco, Mexico, and I'm a born gabacho from US, and I've been there many times over the years, to many different places. Quite a few Americans you talk to here in the USA have a definite misunderstanding of things over there. Many of them still think Mexico is just a desert with people on Burros (donkeys). But the fact is, there is a lot of diversity as you travel around different parts in Mexico. Many Americans believe the whole Mexico is 'poverty' or 'third world', when in fact it really depends a lot on where you go. Yes, some parts can be poverty stricken, yes, but all the while, other areas are simply thriving farming communities doing just fine and everyone's happy, and there are also very developed, modern cities full of highly educated people, where they commute to sky-scrapers everyday and conduct modern business, like we do. It is very short-minded to assume that all areas of the country have economic problems. Many Americans also forget that you can travel here in the USA to a small logging town where there aren't many educated people, and many of them are very simple minded as well. Most people don't think about them, but we have our areas that have 'economic issues' too

 

By the way, I'm happy to hear that they will make Thinkpads in Mexico. Maybe next time I go there, I will buy one while I'm there, for my Mother-In-Law since anything over there that is not imported, and is made domestically is cheaper to buy.

 

Nice insight ojosch.
I prefer to buy Thinkpads over eBay in the past, look at the Lenovo Mexico webpage, the prices on the models in there are really high, maybe because those include a 3 year warranty, but I think those prices stayed the same as when the IBM Thinkpad were made years ago at Guadalajara Jalisco.
Yes, you're right, maybe the misconception on Americans about mexico is because also in the movies they depict some small towns with people indeed on Burros and with crap buses.
I've been wanting to move to Monterrey, NL because there's a diversity of everything, maybe it could compare to a big US city because it's one of the largest city of Mexico.
I just wish I could get a job at Lenovo and show them how Thinkpads should be made, I think Lenovo made a lot of mistakes 'redesigning' the new models starting with a list of flaws I posted on another thread here.

 

Also, you must not forget, that the reason why they had to go through that 'redesigning' phase was to turn a non-profitting IBM into a profitable Lenovo Your average kid who will buy 1 Thinkpad, or exec who is going to buy 1000 Thinkpads for his large fleet (both want a good price), most of those consumers do not know how much better a Flexview IPS screen or the old keyboards really were. These consumers are aimed at #1: value, #2: customer service, #3: and reputation. At least Lenovo has kept the nice trackpoint feel as they've always had. Have you ever tried to use a Dell trackpoint lately? And with no middle button? I still like my Thinkpads

 

The designing and engineering implementation is done in the US and Japan, so if you worked in the Mexican production center it would likely be process engineering or quality control.