Collaboration of Globally Local Suppliers in Wuxi

Since COVID arrived three years ago, it has notably damaged the global economy. It caused a supply chain crisis and cost increases,and Varex was forced to face the same challenges as well. Varex management responded by adjusting strategy, promoting global value chain for Varex units, and fostering a local-for-global and global-for-local mindset.

The Varex Wuxi plant in China collaborated closely with the SLC Engineering and Purchasing teams on new vendor development and supply chain optimization to achieve cost effectiveness and on-time delivery. Meanwhile, the management team at the Wuxi plant focused on servicing the Medical Sources solution line in particular, making processes faster and more efficient.

2022 was a year of collaborative achievement, marked by big progress on projects related to inserts of Sources products through joint efforts of SLC lead Jason Davies and the Wuxi Sources team lead Hoyt Shan. Below is an overview of two accomplishments of this global collaboration.

Goal: Promote technology development and innovation to reduce risks of the supply chain.

Challenge: Targets installed in insert manufacturing were stalled until samples were delivered . It had been a difficult year due to material shortages, delivery problems, and a factory shut down.

Solution: Wuxi developed a new vendor, KENI that supplies targets -critical parts with high technical requirements, which also have barriers to manufacturing because of raw materials and process complexities. Prototypes were made successfully under close collaboration between the Varex team and KENI and CMT Rare Metal Advanced Materials （Hunan）Co., Ltd. located in Hunan, China.

This is a Win-Win for both Varex and the Chinese industry. Varex gets a stable supply chain and production capacity that won’t be limited by a single source vendor. And it’s a technical breakthrough and industry development for the Chinese supplier.

From the website of Varex Imaging Corporation