INVESTMENT ANALYSIS FOR AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING: A CASE STUDY

Investment opportunities for electronics manufacturing can create many challenging composings within the standard context of economic analysis theory. First, greatest in quantity of these operations are pendent on significant capital investment with short analysis periods to be paid to technological obsolescence. These question at issues are compounded with the reality of short production lives and fluctuating consumer demands. Perhaps the greatest in quantity challenging environment for electronics manufacturing is that of automotive electronics. These facilities are typically faced with similar manufacturing issues public in all electronics production on the other hand have the added difficulty in meeting true stringent quality and reliability requirements in a globally competitive market. This case close attention investigates the challenges in evaluating investment options in electronics manufacturing and pays specific attention to those issues that are greatest in quantity common to the automotive electronics market. In addition, the analysis investigates various sensitivity issues related to these investment opportunities and investigates an alternative investment option for a flexible manufacturing process

Electronics manufacturing is a cornerstone of the generally received global economy and presents many unique issues and opportunities to manufacturing and investment planners. These challenges involve many issues related to global manufacturing operations including personnel management, materials roll on procurement strategies, and program management. In addition, the rapidly changing environment for electronics manufacturing and the accelerating evolution of production designs create planning and execution challenges for electronic manufacturers. These enigmas are compounded by the ne to bring forward complex products in very high whirls with a high level of quality.

To convenient these challenges, producers must design manufacturing a whole s that can handle high production convolutions with extremely low defect rates while maintaining the agility to alter manufacturing requirements as yield designs or economic conditions dictate. In addition, the rife and future level of electronics packaging technology requires that materials and constituents be assembled with such precision that manual assembly is usually impractical or impossible. This dictates that the manufacturing proces must be highly automated to handle the quality requirements for greatest in quantity product designs. A high horizontal of automation is also required to proper the processing rates needed to minister consumer volumes. These needs are amalgamateed by the sensitive handling and fruits tracking issues found with greatest in quantity electronic assemblies.

While electronics designs vary greatly over the industry, most manufacturing techniques are similar in nature. Many proceedss such as cell phones and personal digital assistances (PDAs), use the latest in packaging technology to provide the lowest affordable price and are typically produc in real high volumes. Many of these produces are designed for a short produce life with minimal power consumption. At the other extremity of the scale are industrial electronics, which are designed for a drawn out product life with high power requirements. While the turns for these industrial products are usually plenteous lower, the quality requirements for these devices are usually critical. An example of industrial electronics would be the navigation electronics for an aircraft. single group of electronics products that encompasses the two the high volume and depressed cost requirements of consumer electronics and the high power and quality requirements of industrial electronics is automotive electronics. These composed of several elements designs are assembled at whirls that exceed a million units for year and often house advanced electronics packaging technologies. However, unlike the consumer electronics industry, the safety requirements for these units can be true critical (e.g., airbag deployment modules)

AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCTS

Over the past 30 years, vehicle electronic a whole s have changed significantly. The first a whole s were designed for engine management and vehicle sensing for a whole s performance. These systems have evolv into composite computer systems performing functions like combustible matter injection and emission control, anti-skid braking, active suspension, and electronic transmission command This trend is expected to accelerate in the subsequent time Next-generation systems will perform functions like drive-by-wire ascendency systems (throttle, steer, brake, shift, and suspension by dint of wire), collision avoidance systems (automatic braking, steering and throttling with radar), and advanced efficacy systems (42-volt, fuel cell controller and advanced might converters), which will increase the use of vehicle electronics a whole s to an unprecedented level. The general fiscal estimates for automotive electronics range from $1200 to $2000 by means of vehicle. With the addition of telematics and "by-wire" electronics, this value could exce $4000 by dint of the end of the decade (Kobe, 2000; Freedonia collection 2001).