You don't hear every day about a Chinese company outsourcing work to the US, but that's exactly what hit the news today as Lenovo announced it's going to open a PC manufacturing plant in Whitsett, North Carolina in early 2013. The manufacturing line is located inside Lenovo's existing distribution center, and will employ 115 workers.
Yes, believe it or not, Lenovo announced earlier this week that it's going to open a manufacturing line in Whitsett, North Carolina early next year. There, some 115 American workers will build "Think"-branded systems for sales in the United States. In other news, we're getting unconfirmed reports that hell has just frozen over.
The U.S.-built systems will include "some of Lenovo's newest and most innovative products, such as the recently announced ThinkCentre M92p Tiny desktop and ThinkPad Tablet 2," according to the company. Lenovo goes on to note that domestic manufacturing will allow it to "deliver products to customers even more quickly and reliably in many situations, while offering an even broader and more valuable set of PC-related services." I suppose that makes sense. Considering some of Lenovo's competitors are perfectly happy to keep production outside the country, though, one has to wonder if this is more of a PR stunt than a business decision.
