Assembly Services Singapore: Supporting Supply Chain Security

De-globalization, also referred to as re-shoring, is a significant trend describing much of
the dynamic characterizing the semiconductor industry in 2024, and indeed, going back as far as 2017. You only have to look at how this topic has dominated much of the industry media over these past seven years. Great care, however, needs to be taken in adopting the right framework of understanding. What we are really talking about here is common-sense risk management associated with normal business growth and new product development. As we all know from the shortages at the time, supply chains became stretched to breaking point during the global pandemic, posing severe practical obstacles across all these areas. Added to which were the logistical concerns flowing from uncertainty. It was almost a game of roulette as to which jurisdictions would be closing their borders, opening their borders, or what regulations would be in place. Language and cultural barriers only added to potential confusion. Needless to say, we all recall the stress of those times and want to do as much as possible not repeat the experience.

At the same time, other business dynamics continued to work as previously, manifest in research and development, mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, facing down the forces of competition, and finally, the relentless and ubiquitous pressure to always add value and reduce costs.

Palomar Assembly Services globally are acutely aware of this history, the undulations present in normal business growth, and the consequent challenges faced by our customers in successfully negotiating their way through these ups and downs. Together with our customers, we have been listening at a strategic and tactical level to identify short- and medium-term solutions to ensure readiness and create resilience. As a result, we have identified the kind of support needed, then honed these to the different needs in which our customers operate. In Asia for example, we have noticed strong levels of investment moving into Malaysia and Thailand. These two countries are well-known for their strong and talented labor force, focused infrastructures dedicated to the production of semi-conductors, factory clean-room space, and local supply chain security. These elements, together with many years of experience, account for the levels of interest we are now seeing in these and other countries.

It is really important to point out that none of this primarily driven by politics. Mass-media hype in this respect is neither true, and certainly not helpful. Mature companies like ourselves have seen short-term faddism of this kind come and go, and for this reason remain professionally committed to support all companies in the region, indiscriminately, in whatever political jurisdictions. Our collective ethos is all about business growth and success. Whether this is China, India, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan or Vietnam does not, and should not make a difference. Our goal is to support our customers’ needs in establishing solid supply chains in secured sites, worldwide, as well as more specific challenges relating to each of the stages between product development, proto-typing, low then and high-volume roll-out.

For Palomar, this is what we have always done. In Singapore, we are in our twenty-fourth year of servicing customers in our region. What does this mean for Asia? Experience translates into knowledge; knowledge translates into efficiency. Additionally, being local means, we know the language and understand technical nuances. Thus, we are in a very strong position to support customers logistically. For example, in moving equipment from a factory in one country to consolidate with a factory in another. Equally, we can train staff with little or no experience in operating our systems. We can help with the physical move. We can de-install then reinstall systems. We can certainly help in effectively tasking proto-typing and low-level output of new products in environments previously only working in high volume manufacturing. Best of all, we can nearly always meet our customers’ timeframes and are agile enough to meet the unexpected. Finally, being global means if we do hit an unknown, we have a large personnel base from which to swiftly implement a resolution.

Check out more on Assembly Services Singapore in these video interviews:

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Assembly and Test - North America	Assembly and Test - Asia	Assembly and Test - Europe

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Dr. Anthony O'Sullivan
Strategic Market Research Specialist
Palomar Technologies