When I posted my "Pictures: Inside a Nokia factory" article I didn’t think it would attract this much attention.
After Jaggle picked it up my traffic soared. Welcome everyone from the Netherlands!
Someone left a comment on that post telling me to check out this Business Week article called: "The making of a Nokia phone"
Whoever you are … you made my day.
To everyone else: Read it already!
Nokia is one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated manufacturers. Though highly automated, the production process still involves significant human intervention, from placing high-value components like digital camera modules by hand, to visually inspecting and testing finished products, to packing phones in boxes.
For strategic reasons, Nokia does virtually all this work itself, rather than farming it out. Why? To ensure control over the process and keep costs down. The formula seems to work. On average, it costs Nokia 69 euros ($87.63) to make a phone, and on average it sells phones for 102 euros ($129.54), leaving a gross margin of nearly 33%, better than its rivals can muster.
In the following slides, see how the workers at Nokia’s plant in Salo, Finland, make a phone, from raw materials to finished goods.
Huge thanks for sharing this piece of knowledge with me, whatever your name may be.