(Reuters) – Toyota may have pioneered the just-in-time manufacturing strategy but when it comes to chips, its decision to stockpile what have become key components in cars goes back a decade to the Fukushima disaster. After the catastrophe severed Toyota’s supply chains on March 11, 2011, the world’s biggest automaker realised the lead-time for semiconductors…
Confection du Boischaut Nord (CBN) is a small miracle of manufacturing: it is one of the few firms in Indre’s once-buoyant local textiles sector to have withstood the onslaught of foreign competition, first from southern Europe, then North Africa and now Asia. Yet the overtime episode is a telling insight into a France struggling with itself:…
Electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf may be paving the way for a revolution in the market for metals used in the industry. The new materials used to build these futuristic cars, such as Lithium, could open up a new field for commodities investors. For example, the new demand for key elements used in electric…
The furniture production industry that had sustained a North Carolinan community for generations, was abandoned at the start of the century when furniture makers left Hickory for China. Now, little more than a decade later after the the local community college shuttered its relevant courses, jobs are coming back. The issues has become so important that competing presidential…
For KKR & Co LP, the private equity firm behind some of the world’s largest leveraged buyouts, the acquisition of U.S. outdoor retailer Mills Fleet Farm for a little more than $1.2 billion should have been a formality. The New York-based firm was indeed very close to clinching the deal in late November. But then, the junk…
Pfizer and Allergan are in talks to create the world’s biggest drug company by market value. The problem with this scenario? Pfizer’s take over of Allergan have faced a political backlash in the United States over fears that the deal would lead to the company shifting its headquarters and taxable profits to Ireland. But a Reuters…
