Manufacturing Magazine November 2019 | Page 163

“We have 8,000 engineers working on connectivity solutions ”

— Roberto Lu , VP Technology , TE Connectivity speed and stability of the 350 + kph Beijing to Shanghai high speed train link , Lu says . It ’ s worth noting that TE Connectivity is among the biggest foreign employers in China , where it has more than 2,000 engineers working on product research and manufacturing development .
The competitive advantage of vertical integration can ’ t be overstressed . A major transportation organization , for example , wanted connectivity solutions to deliver fast streaming of media content . Weight reduction and efficient operation were key criteria . “ They came to me with the next question : what about manufacturing technology and were we going to manufacture in a low cost location with a lot of manual labor ? I could assure them that we have 11 patents on this product family manufacturing technology . We own it . Our production today is all about flexible precision automation and semi-automation . Our customer can rest assured that TE can not only produce the parts to the satisfaction of the customer but that we have our manufacturing technology in-house and they have access to our technical team members including myself !”
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