Question about Arduino hardware's production line and It's social environment

Hello everyone!

I'm pretty new to Arduino so It's being a little difficult to me to find additional information about how the social environment for mass production of Arduino boards are managed.

Is Smart Projects Eletronics a retailer only? Is there any documentaries out there about this specific subject?

Thank you very much for your time,

Ortiz

primotico.blogspot.com

how the social environment for mass production of Arduino boards are managed.

Do you mean are the made in sweat shops employing child labor?

As far as I know they are made in Italy by properly payed grown ups.

Do you mean are the made in sweat shops employing child labor?

Not really Grumpy Mike. But I'm not indifferent to child labor as well, for sure :wink: I would like to say to you that I'm not accusing or making any bad insinuations about Smart Projects or any other Arduino supplier. <-- I will call them temporarily as suppliers over here but I really don't know if the term covers their business description.

I would like to add too that I'm pretty sympathetic to the whole idea behind the Arduino project. I guess the whole project aims for a kind of transparency that's pretty unique and it doesn't underestimate the value of small scale. At the same time for some reason I think It's impossible, because of institutional reasons, to implement a factory of Arduino in my country. That's just an hypothesis BTW . Not that I'm interested in building an Arduino factory over here myself, at the moment I'm more interested to prove my hypothesis wrong :slight_smile:

I guess I need to contact the people behind this work (the arduino documentary): Arduino O Documentário (2010) Português Brasil HD on Vimeo

If you have any other hint, please let me know.

Yours,

Ortiz

At the same time for some reason I think It's impossible, because of institutional reasons, to implement a factory of Arduino in my country.

Well it would help to know which country was your country, you haven't filled in the location in your profile.

Assuming it is Brazil, I know things are very restrictive there. In my last job we looked into exporting some electronic equipment into the country. The import duty was three times the sale price of the equipment which made it impossible. What is often done is that "kits" of components and assembled sub boards are shipped in and assembled in that country. This reduces the import duty, but there were also other layers of taxes that practically doubled the cost of the units.
Several engineers from my company traveled to Brazil and some of them got robbed at gun point by the police. It is not a popular destination.

Well it would help to know which country was your country, you haven't filled in the location in your profile.

Assuming it is Brazil, I know things are very restrictive there. In my last job we looked into exporting some electronic equipment into the country. The import duty was three times the sale price of the equipment which made it impossible. What is often done is that "kits" of components and assembled sub boards are shipped in and assembled in that country. This reduces the import duty, but there were also other layers of taxes that practically doubled the cost of the units.
Several engineers from my company traveled to Brazil and some of them got robbed at gun point by the police. It is not a popular destination.]

Hello Grumpy Mike! Your assumption is correct, I´m from Brazil. I´m really sorry for your colegues BTW.

How do you get to know about the exporting taxes? Would you mind to share this information? Thank you very much for your patience.

A bit off topic but very interesting podcast for those interested in the subject: http://stitcher.com/listen.php?eid=9657400

Yours,

Ortiz

How do you get to know about the exporting taxes?

The company I was working for sells TV set top boxes. We have an operation in Brazil doing the assembly of kits. My division was selling a different sort of thing and we were looking into how we could keep the sell price as close to the price to the rest of the world as possible. So the sales guy who was in the country did some investigation and reported back. It wasn't just the straight import tax, it was at every stage some other form of tax got added on and eventually the end user ended up paying close to three times the real price.
As this was a very complex product it wasn't suitable to have the boards assembled and tested in country. The tax relief on the manufacture was tapered according to how technical the manufacturing steps were, so assembling the boards into a final product didn't get rid of it all. There was also a large amount of test equipment we would have to put in the factory and that attracted import tax as well.
In the end it was all put on hold because of licensing decisions being delayed due to up coming elections, with different candidates promising to do different things.