Guess which countries manufactured my tools

[Frank Pellow]

Frank,

Question: Did you count your general use tools (socket sets, wrenches etc.), or is this list just WWing related?
What's from Sweden?

Jay

The vast majority of my tools are woodworking related. But, I do have a socket wrench set (made in Taiwan and branded Mastercraft by Canadian Tire) and I did include it.

[Ken Waag]

Hi Frank,

I don't know if you posted this thread for a specific reason but when talking about "Made in ..." I think we should try to figure out how much of a product really comes from the "Made in ..." country. In German, we call that "Wertschöpfungsanteil" but I'm not sure if "value added" is the right translation. I'm not familiar with the specific situation but I know that German products must have a certain percentage of "Wertschöpfung" in Germany in order to justify "Made in Germany".

Regards,

Christian

If I'm getting Christian's point correct, it is a good point. Alot of tools (and other items) labeled made in USA need only meet certain requirements. Like Christian's Werschetsersauceandall, it means that just some of the parts and assembly must be done in the USA. For example, a few years back while many were badmouthing the import competitors, and praising Delta's USA made products, many of the parts were coming from other countries and some of the assembly was done here. Enough to meet those requirements. That USA machine might've been about one bolt away from being an import. So it's less straightforward than it appears.

Not judging the situation either way just saying that often you don't knoiw what you don't know.

[Mark Singer]

Frank'

Do you have 1 routa bit from Isreal? Please check ....my sista really wants to know ...its , how do you say....."very impotant"

[Christian Aufreiter]

If I'm getting Christian's point correct, it is a good point. Alot of tools (and other items) labeled made in USA need only meet certain requirements. Like Christian's Werschetsersauceandall, it means that just some of the parts and assembly must be done in the USA. For example, a few years back while many were badmouthing the import competitors, and praising Delta's USA made products, many of the parts were coming from other countries and some of the assembly was done here. Enough to meet those requirements. That USA machine might've been about one bolt away from being an import. So it's less straightforward than it appears.

Not judging the situation either way just saying that often you don't knoiw what you don't know.

Yep, that was basically my point. But you expressed it a lot better, of course.

Christian

[Frank Pellow]

Prompted by the recent thread http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=30002, I decided to revist my tool purchasing habits and see how things stack up 6 months after I last looked at them.

Here is my revised list (showing cost of tools by country) :

#1: Germany___26.2________(previous #1 with 25.6%)

#2: Canada____25.2________(previous #2 with 24.8%)

#3: USA_______14.4________(previous #4 with 12.7%)

#4: China______13.9________(previous #3 with 15.9%)

#5: Italy_______9.5________(previous #5 with 10.0%)

#6: Taiwan______4.1________(previous #6 with 3.9%)

#7: Japan_______2.2________(previous #7 with 2.0%)

#8: Sweden_____1.5________(previous #8 with 1.6%)

#9: Mexico______1.1________(previous #10 with 0.9%)

#10: UK__________0.6________(previous #11 with 0.6%)

#11: Thailand_____0.5________(previous #9 with 1.0%)

#12: France______0.1________ (no change)

#13 Korea_______0.1________ (no change)

Unknown____0.6___________(down from 0.8 because I found out where some tools were made)

Please observe that the USA, Mexico, and the UK have moved up in the list and that China and Thailand have moved down.

Based on some comments that others have made, I should add that I am reasonably confident that, with my tools, a high percentage of the total tool is made in the countries that I have listed. In a couple of cases I actually split the tool cost between sourcing countries.

[Tom Donalek]

Frank, I'm afraid that I don't know the spread sheet formula to do it, but would it be possible to re-work the ranking based weighted by value? What I'm getting at is that you could have a large number of cheap items from one country, a just a few high-price items from another, and that 'information' wouldn't show up in your ranking. I'm just not sure how to do it in a valid, useful way...

Is there a statistician in the house?

[Frank Pellow]

Frank, I'm afraid that I don't know the spread sheet formula to do it, but would it be possible to re-work the ranking based weighted by value? What I'm getting at is that you could have a large number of cheap items from one country, a just a few high-price items from another, and that 'information' wouldn't show up in your ranking. I'm just not sure how to do it in a valid, useful way...

Is there a statistician in the house?

Ir would be very easy for me to add a column which indicates the number of "tools" from each country. Would that give you what you are suggesting, Tom?

[Lee DeRaud]

Ir would be very easy for me to add a column which indicates the number of "tools" from each country. Would that give you what you are suggesting, Tom?

I think what he's suggesting is the percentage of total tool-investment dollars spent in each country.

[Frank Pellow]

I think what he's suggesting is the percentage of total tool-investment dollars spent in each country.

How is that any different than what I put into my list.

[Paul Canaris]

Italy
Germany
Taiwan
China
Japan
England

[Lee DeRaud]

How is that any different than what I put into my list.

I thought (and so did Tom apparently) that the percentages in your list was in terms of "numbers of tools", not "cost of tools". If it reflects the purchase prices, you're right, you've already done it.

[Howard Barlow]

...I love statistics, it was not very much extra work for me to come up with these statistics, and it appears that some people may be interested.

Frank, did you know 68% of the people polled don't believe in surveys? 82% believe statistics are just made up 73% of the time and have no better than a 50/50 chance of being 100% correct most of the time.

Oh...
Tiawan
China
Germany
Canada
USA
Funkytown

[Tom Donalek]

Ir would be very easy for me to add a column which indicates the number of "tools" from each country. Would that give you what you are suggesting, Tom?

No - I think that this is what I'm thinking: Let's say you have 10 tools from Blueland each worth $100 and 4 tools from Redistan each worth $500. Your straight 'number of tools' ranking would be:

#1 10 Blueland = 71.4%
#2 4 Redistan = 28.6%

But your 'value' ranking would be

#1 $2000 Redistan = 66.7%
#2 $1000 Blueland = 33.3%

See what I mean? I guess that I'm thinking about the "made in the USA/North America" tool discussions and I'm curious about where our bucks/loonies are going. I should probably go tabulate my own stuff, but given that you have all the raw data in front of you, I thought I would ask.

Now that I've thought it through a bit, here's what I would do if I had your spreadsheet in front of me: 1) sort the rows by 'country of origin', 2) Sum dollar values for each country, 3) make new table with 'country' and corresponding total dollar value, and 4) complie ranking and percentage of 'value' by 'country'. I know I'm being a pain in asking this, so you're very welcome to use your time more productively than doing this! I'm just suspecting that the ranking would be different, and I'm curious about precisely how...

[Frank Pellow]

I thought (and so did Tom apparently) that the percentages in your list was in terms of "numbers of tools", not "cost of tools". If it reflects the purchase prices, you're right, you've already done it.

The percentages in my list are based upon cost of tools.

[Paul B. Cresti]

Frank,
Your post got me thinking so I did a quick survey myself. My percentages are base upon total value percentages. Just to note I included my phase converter (Kay) and my cutters heads (Schmidt) which are mostly insert type and cost me a couple of bucks!

Italy - 68%
USA - 16%
Austria - 8%
Germany - 6%
Tiawan/China - 2%

There may be some others or the percentages my shift a bit because it is a quick survey where the majority of my shop is included.