INVESTMENT ANALYSIS FOR AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING: A CASE STUDY

Investment opportunities for electronics manufacturing can create many challenging components within the standard context of economic analysis theory. First, most of these operations are dependent on significant capital investment with short analysis periods due to technological obsolescence. These problems are compounded with the reality of short product lives and fluctuating consumer demands. Perhaps the most challenging environment for electronics manufacturing is that of automotive electronics. These facilities are typically faced with similar manufacturing issues common in all electronics production but have the added difficulty in meeting very stringent quality and reliability requirements in a globally competitive market. This case study investigates the challenges in evaluating investment options in electronics manufacturing and pays specific attention to those issues that are most 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.