Nortel Networks farms out remaining PCB assemblyChris Druce
Nortel Networks is outsourcing its remaining circuit board assembly (PCBA) activities to SCI Systems, threatening up to 50 jobs in Northern Ireland.
Although no redundancies have yet been announced, PCBA production, which employs 50 people, will cease at Nortel’s Monkstown site in Northern Ireland by the fourth quarter of this year.
Monkstown will remain as a centre of excellence for the integration and testing of metro optical and optical long haul networking systems, an “extremely important area of business for Nortel”, said a spokesman.
The company’s Canadian site at St Laurent, Quebec, will also have its PCBA business outsourced to SCI, although the site is to remain as a cornerstone of Nortel’s “virtual manufacturing strategy”.
Nortel also announced it is to extend its master supply agreement with SCI, which covers its existing PCBA manufacturing services. The deal marks the completion of the company’s plans to outsource its entire PCBA output and will include the sale of all associated equipment and inventory.
“The agreement we’re announcing today represents our continuing commitment to take advantage of the best-in-class capabilities of the external marketplace,” said Richard Lowe, v-p of global customer and product operations at Nortel.
“This in turn enables us to better direct our investment and internal resources to those specialised skills that continue to offer us competitive differentiation in the marketplace and that are not easily found outside the company,” he added.
Nortel started its shift to outsourcing in 1999 and claims that the switch has brought significant benefits to the company.
