The electronics manufacturing community is facing a challenge it has never handled before. The human impact of the coronavirus has been profound, with an unprecedented quarantine of over 60M people and hundreds of deaths – the business impact is coming.
Even if factories outside of the Wuhan region open up as planned, the United States is not expected to change their travel recommendation for China, likely keeping the teams of development engineers that would typically fly to support development builds grounded. As a former Apple engineer myself, this time in the factory is absolutely priceless for learning at the speed that a product development schedule requires.
Andre Neuman-Loreck, Managing Partner at On Tap Consulting, says electronics companies who had been planning to do prototype builds immediately after Lunar New Year have had to get creative. He has first-hand knowledge of multiple companies deciding to move forward with their builds by sourcing printed circuit boards locally in the United States and trying to make do with 3D printed parts from local suppliers instead of tooled parts from China.