Inside China Tech | How a 120-metre walk down Huawei’s production line provides a lesson in global supply chains

The trade war between the US and China has forced companies to diversify their networks of suppliers so that they would not be found wanting should crucial components suddenly become unavailable one day.

At Huawei’s smartphone plant in Dongguan, China, the diverse origin of machinery used in the production lines for the P30, one of the company’s high-end models, provided a lesson in hi-tech global manufacturing supply chains.

It literally takes a world to make one of these nifty devices, which our sister tech site, Abacus, declared to have an “amazing” camera zoom. And we are not even talking about the origin of the 1,631 parts that go into a P30 Pro, just the equipment used to assemble and test the phones.

To enter the factory floor, we had to wear a white lab coat, a hat and anti-static shoe covers. Each production line for the P30 was 120 metres long. There were machines for slathering on the soldering paste, others to heat and join the parts onto circuit boards, and yet more to assemble, inspect and test the phones. One line can produce 100 P30 smartphones per hour.

There is equipment from Brady, a Guangdong, China-based robotics company. South Korea’s Koh Young Technology make solder paste inspection equipment. Japan’s Fuji Corp., Mitsubishi Electric, Saki Corp. provide various machinery that check that the correct parts are adhered properly and where they should be on the printed circuit boards.