New NGK Spark Plugs assembled in Thailand ?

[bertsmobile1]

Robots might work cheap but the machine costs a lot.
Better chance of some one diverting a scrap metal load of faulty plugs than some one setting up to make fake ones.
Back when I worked at Champion in my college years, there was 3 machines that made the spark plugs.
Each & every plug was tested as i came off the line .
Depending upon what the results were the plugs ran along the line then dropped into different boxes .
The best went into the bin for printing then boxing as individual plugs
the next best went to be printed & loaded into cards for the Leyland engine plant
The next best went to be blister packed for supermarkets
After that they go labled with a dozen different brands
The total failures went into a bin & were crushed then separated to recover the metal while the ceramics when to landfill .

After printing a clear glaze is applied so the names & grades can not be changed.
Even that machine was very expensive.

So perhaps a factory has been set up to take the scrap metal ones then print ,glaze , package & sell them, but the margin would be in the cents per hundred

 

[7394]

Well I'll say this, no more plugs from anywhere else than O'Reillys. they are always from Japan, & only cost $2.49 ea.

Not assembled in Thailand. These were for back up, the BPR4ES.......6578 for my Kawasaki.

Guess I'm keeping them..

 

[Born2Mow]

Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia... these are all non-Communist nations (generally) in SE Asia that are good, fair trading partners with the US. And they have cheaper labor than the Chi-coms. Lots of production is located there or moving there.

The price of labor in Japan has been climbing. Even the Japanese are sending small, high production things to SE Asia.

 

[upupandaway]

The price of labor in Japan has been climbing. Even the Japanese are sending small, high production things to SE Asia.

They have been doing that since the late 80s. I mean Japanese brand VCRs started showing up from china since if not before the early 90s.

 

[7394]

OK, spoke to NGK tech dept. On the Hex of the NGK plugs is a stamping of letters & numbers. (usually only 4 in total)

If the 1st letter is a "U" the plug is legit NGK, & assembled in Thailand. Most of those have a plastic cover over the tip, instead of the usual thin cardboard as well. But the Letter tells the tale.

Very easy to look up NGK & get their tech Dept.

 

[MowManMow]

With most products made in fully automated plants with fewer people involved in producing items I wouldnt sweat the quality much. NGK is still in charge of the corp & they stand behind things.
Larger corps are mostly ran with production costs & profits in mind and thats about it today, quality is no longer really first.
We may be long gone by the time it happens but the day will in fact come when one country manufactures everything & it will be whoever makes it cheapest. The sad part is the friendlier countries get the sooner it will happen.
Automation/robotics has changed enough where quality will be the same no matter where the factory is placed, Corps always believed most faulty products & assembly interruptions are created by human line workers not as much as equipment failures. Man caused equipment failures, bad machine setups, not reacting to small line problems leading to larger problems etc. Mostly true! Sensors/alarms now do inspections throughout lines to wake the few people up when problems arise..lol.
It is what it is... I retired yrs ago but I first oversaw robots making OEM car parts 25yrs ago and was amazed how consistent they were even then. Its simply jaw dropping to see robotic abilities today.

 

[mechanic mark]

https://www.google.com/search?q=NEW+NGK+SPARK+PLUGS+MADE+IN+THAILAND&oq=NEW+NGK+SPARK+PLUGS+MADE+IN+THAILAND&aqs=chrome..69i57.34984j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[bad69cat]

Yet they still do it. Third countries will try anyway if there is an unit of money to be made. Besides robots work cheap.

Here most of the NGK I have here are either assembled in the USA using Japanese parts and domestic parts or they are made in Japan. I have enough problems with CMR series out Japan so don't need any them fakes.

Besides I make a decent profit even at my low stock level since I use the NGK suggested retail prices.
View attachment 56261
The quantity sold last year is incorrect due to a program glitch the programmer made last year which since has been corrected. This seems to be the year I sell a lot of plugs as I seeing more failures at the start of the season.

$100 here... $100 there, pretty soon your talking real money!

 

[bertsmobile1]

Yep,
On products with a high labour content they get moved to a third world country so we can exploit the near slave labour so we can pay a lot less than we can afford for stuff which we mostly don't need so we can toss it away when we are finished with it .
The other reason why production goes off shore is to export pollution to countries that have weaker pollution laws that where the goods are sold.
The bulk of the CO2 emission reductions in the USA & EU are not because we run leaner fuel in our engines it is because all of the manufacturing generated CO2 has been exported to China so we ( includes Australia ) can CLAIM we are polluting less while in fact increasing the overall pollution like as if the pollution in the air over China stays over China.
The difference in labour charges from a machine automatically making 100,000 spark plugs an hour between Australia at $ 15 ( US ) per hour & Thailand at $ 50¢ and hour is effectively nothing.
But the difference in having to have air filters in the exhaust , oil filters on process water outlets & dumping costs on solid waste is massive so we expoer the pollution to Thailand and let the Thais die from respriatory failure , dermitius & cancer

 

[7394]

https://www.google.com/search?q=NEW+NGK+SPARK+PLUGS+MADE+IN+THAILAND&oq=NEW+NGK+SPARK+PLUGS+MADE+IN+THAILAND&aqs=chrome..69i57.34984j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Thanks Mark- the "assembled in Thailand plugs, have the 1st letter on the hex stamping of the plug, & it will be a "U".
These are the 1st I ever got from there, thus my initial concern.

And in that 4 digit code tells they were assembled in 2020. So I can sleep again.. LOL