Panasonic’s Old Welsh TV Plant Reinvents Itself as European Toughbook Hub
CARDIFF, Wales -- Panasonic’s factory site on the Pentwyn Industrial Estate, on the Eastern outskirts of this Welsh town, was built in 1974 to produce TVs for the European market, but has reinvented itself many times to stay viable, Kevin Jones, managing director-computer products solutions, Europe, told us during a media briefing at the plant last week to mark the launch of the Panasonic Toughbook FZ-T1 Android smartphone. The FZ-T1 is the latest in a line of ruggedized mobile devices that Panasonic has been assembling in Wales for 20 years.
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“It’s very tough in business now, and this site has survived because it has changed,” said Jones in a part of the factory that once made surface-mount circuit boards for CRT TVs, and is now used to assemble, customize and repair Toughbooks for Europe and Russia. The factory was built for TV production at a time when the strong patents on Europe’s PAL color TV system were being used to encourage local European manufacturing. All the major TV makers set up factories in Europe, many in the U.K. to ease language barriers, and most have since closed.
As the TV market declined, Panasonic’s factory was variously used to make microwave ovens and modules, European games discs for Nintendo consoles, and induction hobs, with research into fuel cell technology, said Jones. Since 1998, the site has been the European hub for Toughbook assembly from kits of parts imported from Panasonic factories in Japan and Taiwan, he said.
The site now serves the whole of Europe and Russia, assembling Toughbooks, and configuring and customizing them to suit individual market requirements, said Jones. The factory also runs a repair service that collects damaged Toughbooks by courier, mends them and ships them back to their owners usually within a week, he said.
At its peak, the factory employed 2,500 workers in TV manufacturing, and needed a workforce that large because the PAL license didn't permit TV assembly from kits, said Jones. After TV production ended in 2005, the factory retained a team of engineers to liaise with European broadcasters, he said. Some of the unused factory land was sold off for housing and the workforce is now down to 418, mainly on labor-intensive Toughbook assembly, configuration, repair and testing, he said. “We are close to our customers,” and “able to react quickly” to their needs, said Jones. “They tell us what bespoke features they want and we use 3D printers here to show them what the factory in Japan can make.”
On our tour of the facility, we observed numerous production tricks designed to boost plant efficiency and flag possible errors. Finished packaged boxes are weighed to within an accuracy of 25 grams (0.9 ounces) to point up anything missing, like a cable or stylus, or something inadvertently added to the shipment. The color of the paperwork that travels with repairs is changed daily so that anything waiting too long for service attention is immediately made obvious.
We asked Jones how any new trade-war tariffs might affect the factory and what impact Brexit might have on the plant’s pan-European Toughbook operation after the U.K.'s pullout from the EU officially takes effect in March. Under World Trade Organization rules, computers travel globally duty-free, “so that is not an issue,” he said. “We don’t supply the U.S. market, so that is also not an issue.” One big “unknown for us is what may happen at country borders, and whether there could be delays after Brexit,” he said. “We just don’t know what will happen.” European aerospace giant Airbus has threatened to pull out of the U.K. because of fears of friction at the borders, with post-Brexit customs checks delaying aircraft parts that are continually being moved among factories around Europe.