This post hints at one of the great advantages of being close to suppliers. When you're that close to the supply source, you gain all sorts of advantages like:
a) You can typically find the person actually building the damn thing, and ask about it.
b) You can probably get your hands on a large set of cheap, defective parts to play around with.
c) You can get your hands on the actual parts really cheap.
b and c together vastly reduces the cost of experimentation, and more importantly, reduces the cost of screwing up.
This is some of what you lose when you become just the end node of the supply chain. This is the type of 'magic' that some people speak about when they talk about when 'America (or insert your choice of western democratic country) built things'.
a) You can typically find the person actually building the damn thing, and ask about it.
b) You can probably get your hands on a large set of cheap, defective parts to play around with.
c) You can get your hands on the actual parts really cheap.
b and c together vastly reduces the cost of experimentation, and more importantly, reduces the cost of screwing up.
This is some of what you lose when you become just the end node of the supply chain. This is the type of 'magic' that some people speak about when they talk about when 'America (or insert your choice of western democratic country) built things'.