Motorola Mobility to shut down its Chennai plant
Google-owned Motorola Mobility has decided to indefinitely suspend operations at its assembly unit in Chennai. The move will affect 76 employees at the facility.
Motorola Mobility Corporate Communications (Asia Pacific) Director William Moss is quoted as saying, “On Monday, we began informing 76 employees of our customer fulfillment centre in Chennai of our plans to suspend the operations indefinitely as of February, 2013. We know this is difficult for our colleagues who are impacted, and we are working with them to settle all dues, provide relief packages and to help them find other opportunities.”
According to Moss, the move is part of the company’s efforts to streamline the company’s supply chain activities. He added: “We are now fulfilling customer orders directly from factories, and we have no current or forecast production requirements that would require the continued use of our Chennai facility.”
Moss further said that the decision to close down Chennai plant was taken after considering several options to keep plant operational. “This decision (to suspend the operations) only affects the Chennai customer fulfillment centre. We continue to maintain our R&D centres for mobile devices and home business, corporate IT and other corporate functions in India”, he said.
The announcement to shutdown the Chennai plant comes days after the company shut down its India specific product website. “We are streamlining our business and support systems, and unfortunately, we’ll no longer have a dedicated website for India. Your local support site will remain open well into the future, and we’ll continue to provide support for our existing products. If you are interested in viewing our current products, you can still do so here,” reads the message on the site.
Google had acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in May this year, on the back of heavy losses last year. Motorola Mobility is totally independent from Motorola Solutions.
Source: Business Today