Made in USA- Subpar quality

I can tell you with most certainty the defacto minimum wage in Utah is $15.00 an hour-and we are one of the fastest growing states in the country. If you don't pay $15.00-you don't have employees-so tell me where the minimum wage is? It's the current situation-not the State or Federal governments setting the wage. BTW- will all due respect-I'm not saying it's GOOD OR BAD-but it's reality. Anybody could come here TOMORROW and get a job for $15.00 an hour.

On edit-watching the local news tonight-they mentioned the following

Costco is raising starting wage to $17.00/hr
Raising Canes (Chicken/fast Food) $15.00/hr
Starbucks $17.00/hr.

Don't know if this is Utah only or national.


Didn't mean to give you a hard time here CKN. Sorry if it seemed like that.

It's sort of that way here in my area too.

I'm with you on that.

Are the people who were making $16-17 an hour will THEY get a pay raise commensurate to a level to what they were making prior to this increase ?

Aka 30-32 dollars an hour....

Never going to happen.

It's not helping to those people. It's not.


My wife started a 2nd job at Cole Haan making $9 an hour 7 years ago. Now she is at $14.50. She said what you have stated... Which is true... People working at Target or a number of other places are making the same as she is. And they are roopty Doo high school kids...

It is quite deflating to people like her. And there's no increase at all for people like her. She is a high school teacher with a master's degree and has certification to teach community college classes has well. Thank goodness the second job is not a primary one.
 
It is sloppy. The foam flow over doesn’t concern me, the wavy media and center line does. If you bought it from a store that starts with W and ends with t, we might assume orange filter co. Has to keep reducing costs to keep the contract.
 
Didn't mean to give you a hard time here CKN. Sorry if it seemed like that.

It's sort of that way here in my area too.

I'm with you on that.

Are the people who were making $16-17 an hour will THEY get a pay raise commensurate to a level to what they were making prior to this increase ?

Aka 30-32 dollars an hour....

Never going to happen.

It's not helping to those people. It's not.


My wife started a 2nd job at Cole Haan making $9 an hour 7 years ago. Now she is at $14.50. She said what you have stated... Which is true... People working at Target or a number of other places are making the same as she is. And they are roopty Doo high school kids...

It is quite deflating to people like her. And there's no increase at all for people like her. She is a high school teacher with a master's degree and has certification to teach community college classes has well. Thank goodness the second job is not a primary one.
That really stinks. But if the company she is working for won’t increase, and she’s obviously smart and capable, why not go find a different $15-17+ job instead?
 
Having just retired as a Quality Engineer at an injection molding plant, I can surmise what happened here. (we did not make filters)

The mold flash could potentially be caused by a) excess variation in the filter media making it not able to seal off in the mold or b) a mold that needs repair or refurbishment.

What might have happened is that the mold was set and scheduled to run a certain number of parts to meet an order. The shots had flash as shown and the supplier would first try another lot of filters. If that didn't help, they would have to pull the mold and attempt a repair. This means not being able to fulfill the order on time.

Worst case is that the mold is just worn out. A new one could potentially cost $30k (or more) and take 4 months or more to build. Depending on the volume of sales and margins on this particular part, that might not make economic sense.

Low demand aftermarket parts are the worst because the tooling might be old & worn out, and the part might only need a thousand pieces a year. Tough to justify investing in a new mold when you know demand will be decreasing every year and your customers want cheap parts.

So maybe the molder looks at it and decides to accept it as is, fulfil their order, and move on to the next part. This is what made my job stressful; shut production down and tell our customer they aren't getting parts or accept "as is" and hope like hell I dont have to respond to a quality complaint. Some are easy calls to make, not so if borderline. No win either way.


We actually used filters supplied by a well regarded (by bitog) filter manufacturer to install in a plastic filter housing that we sold back to them. This type of overmolded flash was very prevalent.
 
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To pick up from my last post.

Before I retired a few months ago from my job in plastic molding quality, the facility I worked at made many aftermarket master cylinder reservoirs. We might get an order for several hundred of a particular part once every few years. Not a ton of sales for parts for 20 yr old cars, especially ones that weren't strong sellers when new.

Occasionally there would be one that we had not ever run before and inherited from another plant that had closed several years ago. Upon trying to shoot it, we might find that the mold was damaged or the part wasn't in tolerance. Since our customer actually owns the mold, what do they want us to do now? Nobody really wants to deal with any of that, they just want parts so it goes away.

Building a new mold at $40k for a demand of several hundred parts a year isn't economically feasible. They don't want to tell the end customer that the part is no longer available, so you try and make as many as you can.

Might mean a tolerance change, 100 % dimensional verification, or scrapping 3/4 of the product. Now a part that sells for $4 might cost $30. The time & effort expended for a few hundred pieces keeps you from working on issues with current high volume products.

Not a desirable situation for anyone. I own a 48 year old car and I expect to be able to still buy maintenance parts, but I get it.
 
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When that filter was installed no one would notice it and the vehicle wouldnt care. As long as it sealed properly the rest is cosmetic.
 
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