The global toothbrush
The text the “global toothbrush “ describes the way of making an electrical toothbrush in several steps in differant parts of the world.
source: the “Spiegel” edition 5/2005 page130
The Conpany
The Company producing the electrical toothbrush is the Dutch enterprise Philips.Philips is producing its toothbrush in 11 different parts of the world, in 5 differnet time zones which easily can be changed when it is more suitable or more profitable for Philips.
There is not really a main part of the system because each part is important. Philips coordinates where the separate working steps should be done, by directing precisely in which part of the world which toothbrush piece should be concidering the time zones of each country.The globalised production of the toothbrush means that the production of copper coils takes place in China, the production of charging in France and the production of special steel in Sweden and the packing of the toothbrush takes place in the U.S..
The different countries
The reason Philips organises the production of a toothbrush in so many different countries is that the transport costs are very low.So it’s possible to combine the production of the toothbrush in many different areas of the world. The long journey of the products is more profitable than producing them in one country.
The simple work procedures which need a lot of labour are done in countries with lower wages like the Philippines, Malaysia or China. High skilled work like engineering or charging components are taking place in countries like Austria or France.
The People behind the empire
The people behind the empire are coming from very different social backgrounds.Although they probably never will meet they are independent from each other. ( But the poor ones more than the rich ones)For example the Philippean operator Mary Ann Cole, living under poor living conditions, works on the assembly line at Manila.
Her wage is only a part of German workers’ wages, doing the same job. Nevertheless for Philippean workers it´s quite well.
The engineer Peter Hendle is a well paid worker who lives in Germany under much better working conditions.Without knowing Mary Ann Cole could lose her job on the Philippines because the testing results of Peter Hendle have failed.
Globalisation
Most of the people named in the article are satisfied with their jobs and are convinced that Globalisation is the chance of their life.But the brutal fact of Globalisation is that each one of the accurat system of producing worldwide could be replaced by another worker in another country.
Finally that means that empires like Philips are forced to produce as cheap as possible. If they don´t do it the competitors will take over their bussiness.
