Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/424967
48 SMT Magazine • December 2014 into a company offering managed supply chain services that complement its contract manufac- turing business. It delivers planning tools that integrate into the system, providing visibility through the supply chain with the right analyt- ics. Foxconn, a Taiwanese EMS company, has its own retail outlets. In manufacturing, Jabil has strengthened its plastic injection capability by acquiring Ny- pro Inc., a precision plastics manufacturer with strong presence in the disposable medical product market. This ac- quisition allows Jabil to expand into the healthcare and con- sumer packaging markets as well as reinforce its consumer electronics business. Manufacturing movements have circled back from off- shoring (or outsourcing) in the 1990s to the last decade's reshoring, in which multina- tionals retrieved some of their production intended for the American market. The emer- gent trend is next-shoring, whose two defining priorities are proximity to demand and proximity to innovation, par- ticularly an innovative base of suppliers, according to the McKinsey Quarterly. In both developed and emerging mar- kets, demand and innovation will be critical because next-shoring is less about moving manufacturing from one place to another than about adapting to, and prepar- ing for, the changing nature of manufacturing everywhere. Moreover, Tan has remarked that the capac- ity to rein in manufacturing technologies to- ward competitive advantage depends on talent. To do this, he said, it is crucial to have people "who understand your industry, your business, your specific environment, the technologies themselves and how to maximize these." Plexus, a US-based EMS provider, recently opened a 265,000-square-foot facility in Gua- dalajara, Mexico, to beef up its manufacturing base for the North American market. EMS providers have also recently ventured into automating their back-end production lines to address rising labor costs worldwide as well as the increasingly stringent quality re- quirements of OEMs. Michael Hansson, vice president for auto- mation at IMI, said, "In the end, the value of automation boils down to decreasing costs and increasing revenue. If implemented judiciously, automation will increase throughput, improve quality, increase repeatability, and reduce labor-related costs." To illustrate, IMI custom- ized a robot for its plastic injection moulding line in Mexico to handle pin stamp- ing, insertion, removal of fin- ished parts, inspection, and sorting. Without this auto- mation, it would have been impossible to attain the tight tolerance in the insertion pro- cess, high repeatability in the cycle time, and high uptime of the injection machine. After automating lines in its Mexico and Bulgaria plants, IMI will soon implement an automation strategy for its China factories. Foxconn had led EMS automation in China manu- facturing to increase efficiency and "hold the line" on wage in- creases through manufacturing effi- ciency improvements. In terms of markets, in search of sustainable profitable growth, EMS companies have main- tained a balancing act between high-volume programs especially in the 3Cs (computing, communications, and consumer electronics) and low-volume, high-mix programs usually found in the non-traditional markets of auto- motive, medical, industrial, and even aviation. With technology permeating everyday life like never before, the medical electronics appli- cations market represents another growth area worth around US$90 billion and is projected to grow close to 6 % per year driven by the de- mand for telehealth, wearables, and healthcare FEATurE emS INdUSTrY: NO reLAxING NOW continues In both developed and emerging markets, demand and innovation will be critical because next-shoring is less about moving manufacturing from one place to another than about adapting to, and preparing for, the changing nature of manufacturing everywhere. " "