Wanting to decentralize the production of your devices to no longer depend so much on China, it’s not just a question of changing factories and that’s it. Apple knows the difficulties of this first hand, seeing what the Financial Times has published.
When the parts of a product are mass-produced, they must go through very strict quality controls. Ideally, all parts pass these checks, but it is normal for there to be a small percentage that fails for various reasons. The problem is that half of the carcasses produced in India had to be rejected
If the part is not compliant, the iPhone is not compliant
Of course, if half the parts you make don’t work, you have a problem. A big problem. It’s time, effort, money and materials that you waste. As evidenced by 9to5Mac, it would take place in a Tata factory in the Indian city of Hosur. They are already working on fixing the problem, but “they have a long way to go”
This is an example of what it can mean to move the production of a complicated product like the iPhone to another country: different personnel, different methods or different companies can make the process difficult and it can take time. time to refine it so that the terminals that end up in our hands are of the quality that we usually expect from Apple.
This can also be an asset for suppliers from China, which exceeds its quality controls much better and now has a strong argument to justify that part of the production remains on its territory. It’s something that will be solved over time, but will come with some hurdles until it’s done.
Original Image | Raghu Nayyar