Electronics Weekly puts its questions to an industry figure: Andy Allen, v-p Europe of EMS company Plexus

We hear you love supply chain management. Why?

The business remains highly competitive and we feel that it can make the difference between the success and failure of a new product, it's that critical. Customers need speed and flexibility to respond in an increasingly unpredictable market and responding inside of lead times is absolutely vital to our success. A tightly managed supply chain is no longer optional; CEMS without it are no longer with us.

What is there to get right about supply chain management?

It really is a detail job. There is no such thing as being 99 per cent successful - if you're not 100 per cent right you fail.  To hit a deadline, absolutely everything has to be in the right place at the right time.

Does it matter where in the world you make your products now?

No, not really. We can support the logistics for just about anything. Plexus offers direct order fulfilment, meaning we can supply product to our customer's customer. It's becoming more common as companies want to operate a 'virtual factory'. In terms of region, sometimes it doesn't make sense to go to Asia. We focus on low volume, high mix products, and often the cost of the logistics outweighs the cost benefit of having it produced in Asia.

For some customers we operate 'regional manufacturing', producing products in multiple locations to service regional deployment. We operate identical processes and systems across all sites, meaning that customers get the same quality everywhere, and the product can be easily picked up and moved to a different site depending on customer requirements.

What sort of people do you look for when you recruit?

I've always believed in the old adage that you hire for personality and train for skills. Our staff need to be energetic and naturally inquisitive. For our design team we value experience in a wide range of tools and systems, and they need to get a buzz from a challenge.

Have you ever started to design a product and then approach a customer at Plexus?

It's just not something that we do. No organisation can do everything well and we focus our energies on designing products for our customers. We also never retain any of the intellectual property for the products we design.