The Coronavirus outbreak has underlined the industry’s dependence on manufacturing in China. Fortune magazine has published a sobering article outlining how the uncertain mood is already affecting major electronics manufacturers, writes Anglia CEO Steve Rawlins.
It is no surprise then that we’ve had customers consider moving production away from China – either on a short-term or longer term basis.
Identifying a suitable supplier with the capacity and expertise to take over the work is only one half of the challenge in doing this though – the other is diverting the supply chain to ensure that the parts required are delivered to the new manufacturing location seamlessly and promptly.
When a customer chooses to move their manufacturing to China, we are able to remove many concerns regarding the quality, continuity of supply and protection of IP by working closely with the customer and OEM / EMS factory to offer a seamless migration path, coupled with global price support ensuring continuity is maintained.
This capability puts our customers in a strong position if they now need to contemplate moving away from China – back to the UK, to mainland Europe or elsewhere in Asia.
We will work closely with their new chosen EMS, the price will remain the same, and the high levels of inventory and buffer stocks that we’ve built up in Hong Kong and the UK will remain fully accessible – shipments can be diverted to a new site instantly.
Providing customers fully consider the supply chain implications, there is no reason why they can’t move production away from China relatively quickly if the Coronavirus issue isn’t resolved soon. We’ve partnered with many customers as they moved production to China. There has been no difficulty putting these arrangements into reverse as they consider how to respond to the current uncertainty.
* “For tech world’s China manufacturers, the coronavirus ‘nightmare’ may be just beginning” by Debby Wu, Gao Yuan and Bloomberg, www.fortune.com, February 10, 2020 11:03 AM EST
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