Japan Electronics Makers Recover from Quake

Japanese electronics companies are resuming plants with damage by the major earthquake. However, the electronics companies cannot procure the parts and materials normally when the earthquake impacted on the suppliers. The electronics companies make an effort to resume the damaged domestic plants and also seek alternate possibility including parts supply sourcing, production increase at overseas plants and relocation to other companies.

Hitachi resumed output at its largest and main plant of power systems unit of Hitachi plant in Ibaraki on Tuesday. The firm’s display making Mobara plant also resumed the output. NEC group restarted production at its 4 plants in Iwate, Fukushima and Miyagi. The firm tries to increase the production level by securing the parts and materials. Canon could shift the camera production from Oita to plants in China and Taiwan depending on the parts availability.

Panasonic group’s digital camera plant in Fukushima was damaged by the earthquake. However, the firm plans no production shift to overseas plants when the firm will resume the output at the digital camera plant soon.

Most of production restart by the electronics makers was due to power supply recovery while some plants have no time schedule to restart the production due to Tsunami damage. The production loss could continue for months when controlled blackout impact to the output especially in power demand peak season of summer. The earthquake impacts Japanese industries for longer time.