Celestica Strengthens Today’s Supply Chains Against Tomorrow’s Disruptions

The coronavirus pandemic may be a once-in-a-century event, but it’s not unique in its ability to severely disrupt the world’s supply chains. The time for technology companies and their manufacturing and supply chain partners to prepare for the impact of future events like trade disputes, natural disasters, and global health emergencies is now. 

According to Gartner, “manufacturing and procurement leaders who take a reactive view to each unfolding crisis are missing an opportunity to design networks strategically to withstand planned and unplanned disruptions.” 

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of regionalization in creating a balanced and resilient supply chain and manufacturing network. Many global technology companies have designed their supply chains with a focus on reducing cost and outsourcing production into large facilities in low-cost regions to drive maximum efficiency for their business. As a result, these companies find their supply chains and manufacturing operations cumbersome, rigid, and far from their end customers, lacking the flexibility to pivot and respond to disruption.

Recent trade disruptions, logistics challenges, a stressed supply chain, and the growing urgency behind sustainability initiatives are causing companies to re-evaluate their priorities, raising business continuity and the ability to execute above all else. 

To help our Connectivity and Cloud Solutions customers address these changing market dynamics, Celestica has pursued two critical goals in concert over the last five years.

First, we evolved our joint design and manufacturing (JDM) division into a Hardware Platform Solutions (HPS) business so customers can benefit from our innovation, design, and scale, enabling them to reduce their R&D spend and focus on other areas of their business. We can now deliver off-the-shelf or customized networking, storage, and compute platform solutions, optimized for our customers’ specific applications. Additionally, our ecosystem of supply partners ensures that we stay on the leading edge of data center technology, roadmaps, competitiveness and advantageous product availability. 

Second, we have established a purpose-built, global network of sites to provide our customers with the products and lifecycle services they require in the geographies they prefer. Our multi-node design and supply chain solutions offer tremendous flexibility and resilience for our customers, providing the business continuity and performance they need.

For example, to further enable and complement our design and engineering capabilities, we have established a software design Center of Excellence in Chennai, India, extending the breadth of our offerings across software, hardware and test solutions.   

Additionally, we are moving across the value chain by deploying circular IT lifecycle management services to help customers extend product life and value through our remanufacture, reuse, and redistribution services, as well as enabling them to decommission and dispose of end-of-life hardware responsibly and sustainably, when the time comes.  Providing IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) and global redistribution services enables us to offer cradle-to-grave products and services to our data center customers.

Expanding our Global Services business and adding value up to rack-level solutions are the key reasons behind our decision last year to add a facility in Richardson, Texas. This site provides capacity for PCBA, rack integration, and optical manufacturing, as well as robust after-market services. 

The Richardson location and our growing team in Santa Clara, California provide our customers with easy access to Celestica’s HPS offering. Combined with our expansion in Mexico and Southeast Asia, and to complement our strong China footprint for design and manufacturing, we can help our customers strike what Gartner calls “the right note between resilience and efficiency in a global manufacturing network.”

Today’s supply chains and network expertise have taken years to develop and mature. The move to regionalized solutions requires persistence and fortitude. Disruption breeds change and innovation. Today’s discomfort will bring about tomorrow’s strength. 

At Celestica, we are driven to create optimal solutions with our customers. Talk to us about how we can help build resilience into your global supply chain.