Jabil teams with SolarEdge to advance smart energy technology
EMS provider Jabil is teaming up with SolarEdge, a provider of smart energy technology. A shared focus on manufacturing excellence and automation has led to the installation of more than 2.5 million intelligent power inverters and more than 60 million power optimisers in over 130 countries.
“We produce tens of millions of products every year, so high-volume, high-quality manufacturing is our lifeline to meeting aggressive growth demands and unrelenting product quality expectations,” says Zvi Lando, CEO of SolarEdge Technologies, in a press release. “That is not an easy challenge for any manufacturer, but Jabil has delivered on our expectations during the ups and downs, and most challenging times. Because we are similar in attitude and company culture, we focus on execution and accomplish what we set out to do.”
Overall, SolarEdge’s products are quite complex to build, especially in such large volumes, some of which are made in quantities more commonly associated with consumer electronics and cellphone production. Jabil and SolarEdge collaborate on all aspects of production, encompassing design for manufacturing, supply chain management, as well as manufacturing automation and scalability.
“We’ve done tremendous things together to create an optimum manufacturing environment,” explains Scott Gebicke, Senior Vice President, Industrial Division, Jabil. “We deployed an automated solution that enables Jabil to operate in the leanest and most efficient way possible while decreasing manufacturing time by almost 50%. This makes a big difference when you’re making tens of thousands of products each week, if not millions in a month.”
To keep pace with SolarEdge’s market ramps, Jabil devised a dual-site strategy, mirroring its massive China production facility with a secondary site in Vietnam. In addition, the development of a multi-level vertical testing facility reduces the resources and floor space needed for product curing and testing.
