11 ms·
Maybe it's unique to Japan or to this brand but I'm surprised by how manual the process is. I wonder how much of this is done due to nostalgia/inertia vs econom
by zdc1 1mo ago
Maybe it's unique to Japan or to this brand but I'm surprised by how manual the process is. I wonder how much of this is done due to nostalgia/inertia vs economics or the desire for humans in the loop.
- hnmullany 1mo agoI was a private equity analyst in the 90's and we owned Berol - one of the classic American pencil companies. Their classic wood pencils were made the exact same way - batch oriented and quite labor intensive. Their next gen process was a fully automated continuous process co-extruder that extruded a core of hot graphite surrounded by a cellulose/wood mixture. That continuous string of graphite/wood composite was pulled down a two hundred foot line where it was cooled, sealed, painted twice, varnished, cut, capped with erasers and boxed. The whole line could be operated with two people.
- uint8_t 1mo agoI was a gradeschool student in the nineties, and I just want to close the loop for you. All of us young people knew those bendy, half-plastic, scratchy-lead pencils were trash. (The graphite would even break inside the barrel). They were barely fit to play the role of tinkertoys. I hope the PE firm did something magnanimous with the money it saved.