Nikon Factory to be Built in Laos

This could be interesting.

http://www.dpreview.co​m …SLR-factory-in-Laos/print

With standardization and automation being so easy, I doubt it will matter much as far as quality control is concerned. They'll get to lower their labor costs significantly though.

Good news for 800 people, but I wonder when they will run out of cheaper places to make things. Only Sub-Saharan Africa is poorer than Laos. Savannakhet is literally over the river from Thailand.

Or will the world have come full circle and America so economically fragile that people will work here for less?

When I was working in the semi-conductor industry, we were continually chasing reduced costs around the planet; Malaysia --> Philippines --> China --> Vietnam, sweet tax incentives and cheap trainable labor were important. A critical component for us was infrastructure - could power, water, etc. be supplied on a 24-7 basis and be reliable. I was involved in a number of exploratory visits to locations that had the cheap labor and tax cut parts of the equation in place, but lacked the required infrastructure to operate a T&A factory. Putting our FABs in these places was not an option.