City's Book Sorocaba SP 2020

Making
history
The rise of Flex and the technology revolution
Flex in Brazil
In Brazil, Flex is responsible for design,
testing, manufacturing, distribution, reverse
logistics and circular manufacturing of
various high technology products used in
our daily lives.
In Sorocaba, specifically, we manufacture
printers, notebooks, routers, payment machines,
data centres, telecommunications
infrastructure equipment, among others.
Over the past 50 years, Flex has helped customers
maximize the potential for success of their product.
The journey started back in 1969 when Joe and
Barbara-Ann McKenzie started a family business
called Flextronics, which made circuit boards for the
growing number of companies in Silicon Valley. By
automating board construction, they could produce
more reliable boards, more quickly and cost
effectively than their customers.
A decade later the company was sold to Bob Todd,
Joe Sullivan, and Jack Watts and became a contract
manufacturer where customers could outsource the
manufacturing of other components and assemblies
for their products, not just the circuit boards.
The proposition remained the same - volume
production with consistent quality at lower costs than
customers could achieve themselves.
The company expanded its services to include the
purchase of materials and parts for manufacturing, as
well as using computer-aided design to create and
optimize the circuit board for each product.
By 1981 Flextronics became the first US manufacturer to
go offshore by setting up in Singapore. It brought with it
a common set of employment standards which was a
real differentiator for employees.
The company realised extraordinary growth when new
CEO, Michael Marks implemented his twin strategies of
vertical integration to optimise the supply chain, and
aggressive global expansion by creating industrial
parks where suppliers could re-locate to be close to
where the products were manufactured.
There was also a growing trend for manufacturers to acquire
the manufacturing facilities of OEMs in the computer
and telecoms sectors which led to further acquisitions.
By the end of the 90’s, the company had 2.6 million
square feet of manufacturing space in 26 operations
centres around the world. Its customer list was a ‘who’s
who’ of the ICT industry, and the company distinguished
itself from competitors by the quality of its working
environment and HR standards for employees and its
ability to get products to market quickly through its
multi-disciplinary Product Introduction Centres.
The following year, Marks was named one of the ‘Heroes
of U.S. Manufacturing’ by Fortune magazine and
Flextronics was named in the top three in IndustryWeek’s
‘100 Best Managed Companies’ list.
In 2007, under a new CEO, Mike McNamara, Flextronics
made a bold move and bought long-time competitor
Solectron for $3.6 billion. The move put Flextronics at the
top of the US market and gave it the scale to help
customers with any aspect of product development.
In 2015 Flextronics repositioned the company as Flex and
adopted the phrase Sketch-to-Scale® to encapsulate
the comprehensive portfolio of services that Flex could
deliver for its customers.
And in 2019, its 50th year, Flex appointed Revathi
Advaithi, its first female CEO to lead the company into
the next era.
The world has changed from the pioneering days of
1969, and Flex has matured into a powerful and trusted
advisor to customers in multiple sectors. It has 200,000
employees, 20,000 design and engineering staff, 50
million square feet of manufacturing space and
operations in more than 30 countries.
Flex continues to enable disruptors to disrupt, and innovators
to push the limits of what’s possible.
There are more than 4,000 people building
more than 50 different products. Within this
operation, there are real-time information
systems that allow faster and more effective
decision making in order to anticipate
market volatility scenarios.
Among the many advanced control
systems there is a platform that allows
control of the entire inventory flow, connected
to all operations around the world,
managing processes in a standardized way
for any customer anywhere in the world.
Still in the manufacturing operation, robotics
is a key presence: Robots with product
assembly capability, following the human
movement-based programming, guarantee
precision in quality and operational
safety. “All this represents a gain in effiiciency
and quality, while allowing the company
to expand its market, increasing the range
of services offered to its customers,” said
Leandro Santos, VP of Operations Brazil.
Integrated Business Ecosystem
In contrast to the traditional linear production
model, from the extraction of natural
resources to the final disposal of post-consumer
products, Flex in Brazil enables a
circular production process in Sorocaba,
through Sinctronics, a Centre for Innovation
and Technology, created to help the electronics
industry to minimize the damage
caused by post-consumer products.
Together with its customers, Sinctronics
aims to keep materials in continuous and
circular cycles - fabrication, use, recovery,
disassembly and remanufacturing. For
Doglacir Sandrin, Site General Manager for
Sorocaba and Sinctronics, the innovation
center has established itself as a business
ecosystem: “This is the link that allows Flex
to harness the full potential of Brazil to
promote the circular economy for the
chain of electronics. Here we produce a
new way of generating products, jobs and
wealth for society, replacing a linear cycle
with the circular one that is regenerative.
All this here: in the countryside! We are very
proud of what we’ve built, and we are sure
that circular manufacturing is not the
future, it is the present.”