IRVINE, CA—Although it already has an established sales and service presence with offices in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as through its distributor A&P Instrument Company in Hong Kong and other Chinese provinces, Newport Corporation just celebrated the official opening of its first manufacturing facility in China. “With a major presence on the world stage and strong government support for new technological development, China represents a significant growth opportunity for Newport,” said Bob Phillippy, president and CEO of Newport Corporation.
The new facility in Wuxi, China has 30,000 square feet of mixed manufacturing capability, including a metrology laboratory for incoming and finished goods inspection, opto-mechanical assembly areas, and state-of-the-art cleanroom areas. “The Wuxi facility will allow Newport to offshore more mature, less differentiated products in order to gain substantial manufacturing economies,” said Phillippy. In fact, Phillippy emphasizes that there were three main goals in establishing the Wuxi facility:
- to build a low-cost manufacturing base for commodity products,
- obtain a local presence in China’s fast-growing technology marketplace, and
- be more responsive to the local market in terms of customer service, technical support, and product leadtime.
“The grand opening on December 3rd exceeded our expectations,” said Phillippy. “Our technology transfer team and the developing Wuxi manufacturing team are already working together to drive our product transition initiative.” Manufacturing operations at Wuxi are being orchestrated by Joe Mogilewsky, VP, corporate operations and quality at Newport. Prior to joining Newport, Mogilewsky—who has over 22 years of operations management experience—served in roles as plant and program manager at Aerojet/Northrop Grumman where he led a wide range of activities including operations, environmental health, and safety, quality, and procurement. Before that, he spent 14 years with United Technologies Corporation, where he was responsible for a wide range of activities including corporate procurement and operations management. Phillippy added, “For the last two years Joe has led a number of company wide operations initiatives, and we believe that our new Wuxi facility will enhance our manufacturing capabilities significantly.”
A team of U.S.-based Newport employees are in the process of transitioning product assembly to Wuxi; these products will ultimately be assembled and tested by locally hired employees.
“We are pleased with the new Wuxi facility,” added Phillippy. “It is set up in the model of other Newport manufacturing facilities with the highest standards for cleanliness and streamlined operations to produce products with the uncompromising level of quality we expect at Newport Corporation.”
Numerous international technology companies are either headquartered or have subsidiaries or manufacturing sites at Wuxi—a city of about 4.2 million people situated in the center of the Yangtze River Delta in Jiangsu province. The list includes solar-module manufacturer Suntech (Wuxi, China), hard disk-drive manufacturer Seagate (Scotts Valley, CA), CMOS micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) integrated circuit manufacturer MEMSIC (Andover, MA), and information technology services company iGATE Global Solutions (Bangalore, India).
The Wuxi facility joins Newport’s other international manufacturing sites in France, Germany, England, and Canada. Newport’s product portfolio of lasers and light sources, opto-mechanical components and mounts, optical filters and gratings, spectroscopic and photonic instruments, vibration control, motion control, subsystems, and systems provide a broad range of solutions for its customers’ applications to “Make, Manage, and Measure Light.” —Gail Overton