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With expansion, added personnel, and a new view on onshoring, Hanwha Corporation is alive and well. Vice President of Marketing Jonny Nichols details just what it takes for a supplier like Hanwha to remain competitive amongst shorter lead times and itchy customers anxious to get their product to market. The key, Jonny says, is to deliver systems that can do it all.
Nolan Johnson: Jonny, what is new and developing at Hanwha?
Jonny Nichols: Our group (HTAA) has expanded significantly in personnel and technology centers to better serve our customers. We’ve opened operations in Mexico with Hanwha’s Queretaro Technology Center (HQTC). We’ve also added personnel in applications and field service engineering and we’re expanding our inventory so that we can be ready to deliver quickly for our customers.
Suppliers are facing many demands, including shorter lead times and supply chain instability. Although the supply chain is stabilizing, we’re seeing greater demand on suppliers to have ready-to-go inventory so assemblers can take advantage of shorter lead time opportunities. Assemblers are being challenged to have more capacity available to support reshoring to North America, and they’re being asked to assemble a wider variety of assemblies, including mixed technology assemblies that require automated SMT mounting and THT insertion.
North American assemblers can no longer accept 24 weeks or more lead times from equipment suppliers. They need to be ready to run production on any project within a 16- to 20-week window. Hanwha is aware of this and maintains an inventory of various machinery configurations in quantity for this reason.
As a precision machinery supplier to the industry, Hanwha is challenged to inventory not only standard configuration pick-and-place machines in quantity, but to have optional system configurations available for the quickest possible delivery to anywhere in North America.
Johnson: You’re preparing for additional business because you see it coming.
Nichols: Yes, and that’s not mere speculation. It’s here. As a mission-critical supplier to many of our customers, we’re adding personnel and constantly improving support systems while increasing inventories of advanced technology solutions to ensure we’re ready when and where our customers need us to be.
Johnson: Has there been a shift in what customers say is a priority when selecting new equipment?
Nichols: Well, although machine inventory is a hot and trending topic among suppliers, there’s increasing chatter about extreme component range, specifically larger, heavier, odd-forms of which some require precision mounting while others require heavy insertion force…
Continue reading this conversation in the January 2024 issue of SMT007 Magazine.
