Foxconn experienced a tumultuous last year at its Zhengzhou facility in China, which happens to be the largest iPhone assembling plant in the world. Apple’s assembling partner caters to around 70 percent of global iPhone shipments through that plant. Due to a series of major setbacks, which included workers walking out of the facility and starting riots, Foxconn has installed a new iPhone assembly executive, one that will likely ensure that business is healthy throughout 2023.
Rising COVID-19 and a lack of pre-emptive understanding of the situation led to the Foxconn facility temporarily halting production
The new executive joining the workforce is Michael Chiang, who effectively replaced Wang Charng-yang, who was employed at Foxconn for many years. According to Bloomberg, Chiang’s appointment was made by the company’s chairman Young Liu in an effort to prevent other Chinese competitors from approaching him first. Chiang’s youth may also indicate that Foxconn intends to let the creative mind work and introduce more efficient production measures at the Zhengzhou plant.
Though Foxconn’s plant is said to have resumed production to previous levels, Apple could reportedly lose up to 20 million iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments in Q4 2022 due to earlier lockdowns. In a rare move, the company issued a press release in 2022, saying that customers should expect low iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments during the holiday quarter, but it was working round the clock to make sure that the supply chain stabilized.
To make matters work, when COVID-19 cases started to rise in China, Foxconn’s workers were rumored to have been subjected to harsher working conditions, which resulted in their eventual resignation and commencement of protests. According to one report, there were food and water shortages during the lockdown, naturally creating a sense of unrest among workers. Foxconn offering measly one-time bonuses did not help the condition at the time either.
Chiang will likely have his work cut out, as Apple was previously said to have stripped Foxconn of its exclusivity status when assembling the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra. The new executive will have to prove to its most lucrative client that an incident like the one prior will not happen again.
News Source: Bloomberg
