Siemens Establishes Singapore Hub for Asia Manufacturing

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

SINGAPORE - In September 2005, I had a chance to observe Siemens Electronics Assembly Systems’ first high-speed Siplace placement machine, which was produced at the company’s SMT manufacturing plant in Singapore. The $50 million operation for producing the HS-60 machine is the product of a 14-month technology sharing and knowledge-transfer exercise between the Singapore staff and Siemens’ Munich headquarters. The Siplace factory is part of Siemens’ Logistics & Assembly Systems Group “Go to Asia” project, a strategic plan to transfer manufacturing, development and training activities to Asia in response to rapidly changing electronics manufacturing trends.

Tilo Brandis, head of L&A EA, appreciates the benefits of locating assembly and development facilities outside Germany. “This setup is part of the global Siplace supply chain network that EA has established to serve the global SMT market,” said Brandis. “In addition, our manufacturing plants in Germany and Singapore are complemented by assembly centers in the Americas and China.”

Siplace machines are developed, engineered, assembled and delivered from the Singapore factory, Siplace Center Asia. The Singapore factory has also taken on the R&D, product life cycle management, sourcing, assembly and logistics aspects of the operation.

On Siemens’ decision to site its latest Siplace factory in Singapore, Hans-Dieter Bott, managing director of Siemens Pte Ltd. said, “Singapore has the ideal logistics infrastructure to support the Siplace team in realizing shorter delivery and response times. The pool of educated, trained and skilled workforce also facilitated the technology transfer and sharing.”

Josef Ernst, vice president of L&A EA SCA, spearheaded the Siplace competency transfer from Siemens in Germany to Singapore, and is gearing SCA up for its next expansion phase. To date, SCA records a headcount of more than 100 employees engaged in R&D, production, quality inspection, process engineering, purchasing, logistics, product life cycle management and human resources. SCA is capable of assembling and delivering the Siplace HS-60 machines, one of the most popular high-speed series of the modular Siplace platform. The Singapore factory is expected to add another 100 personnel to its payroll by 2006.

More than half of the components for Singapore-made Siplace machines are sourced in Singapore. The number of staff and R&D engineers is projected to grow to 240 employees by the year’s end, 95 of which will be R&D engineers.

The global market for high-end machines using SMT is worth $1.2 billion. The most rapidly growing market for purchasing these machines is in nearby China.

- By Gail Flower, Editor-in-Chief