Abstract

Chinese consumer electronics and mobile communications company OPPO featured in the famous SUPERFACTORIES series on National Geographic. With this, OPPO joined the league of companies like Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Corvette, Apache Helicopters, Caterpillar, Tetrapak, and the precision operations of logistics giants like UPS that had featured in the SUPERFACTORIES series of National Geographic. The show turned the spotlight on OPPO’s manufacturing facility in India located at Greater Noida. The huge manufacturing unit of Chinese smartphone manufacturing company was efficiently producing smartphone units for not just the Indian market but also the global smartphone market. This was in tune with the “Make In India” initiative of the Indian government. The manufacturing unit, termed as a superfactory, housed state-of-the-art manufacturing machinery operated by well trained staff. The process was operated efficiently to avoid errors and every second at the unit was accounted for. This efficiency helped OPPO declare that it was able to produce one smartphone every 3 seconds in this superfactory.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand quick response manufacturing
• Understand the importance of technological innovations for a business

Keywords

OPPO; Lean Manufacturing; Quick Response Manufacturing; Technological Innovations; Superfactory