Over the past few years, AI has advanced by leaps and bounds, with the potential to revolutionize industries, including global manufacturing, and create new challenges for business executives to manage their employees and supply chains. But new technologies have also created new uncertainties, and business leaders are trying to use these tools to manage supply chains and employee teams.

CRIO-9040 On December 12, 2023, Flextronics CEO Revathi Advaithi, who also serves as a member of the U.S. government’s Supply chain Policy Advisory Committee, was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Glazer at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit, Advaithi talks about how developments in technology will affect the way everyday products are made, how she deals with uncertainty, and looks to the future of the workplace and manufacturing.

Emily Glaze: First, let’s talk about the job market. In the context of the current global economic slowdown, do you think we still need more AI experts or more labor on the factory floor?

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Revathi Advaithi: Of course. Any skill that has to do with supply chain resilience, software skills that have to do with how to do production planning, or how to retool software systems to be more efficient, is hot and scarce in the market. When we hire employees, we ask questions such as: Can you operate SMT surface-mount technology machines? Can you operate large manufacturing equipment? Can staff be deployed reasonably? I think high-skilled workers are still hard to find. They are still a scarce resource in the talent market. Most people prefer to work for trendy software companies rather than manufacturing. So we’re still going to be hiring around those areas, and I think the pace of hiring will accelerate. But on a day-to-day basis, our progress is much slower.

Emily Glaze: You mention a lot of trendy brands, and I hear Flextronics is behind many of them. I imagine that many of us have probably used products made by Flextronics in the past 24 hours, from hair dryers to coffee makers. Can you tell us a little bit about the different work Flextronics does and its contributions?

CRIO-9040 Revathi Advaithi: When my kids ask, “Mom, why don’t you guys make these cool, fun products that we use every day?” I always say, “What we do is not a brand. But if we didn’t make them, you wouldn’t have them.” But in reality, we do almost everything from vacuum cleaners to hair dryers to flat irons. We used to be a big player in mobile because the end product market is too competitive and we are no longer in it. We have a strong presence in cloud communications and enterprise technology. Industrial and power is one of our largest end markets. Therefore, whether it is embedded computing power supplies, device power supplies, or basic infrastructure, industrial, residential or commercial sectors, they are our main customers. In addition, electric vehicles are also one of our important platforms. So we’re not just dealing with small products, we’re dealing with huge devices and integrating them globally.