Sony to Close Pittsburgh Technology Center: Last US TV Factory

December 10, 2008


A draw­ing of the Pittsburgh Technology Center from a while back…

Sony‘s last US TV fac­tory, The Pittsburgh Technology Center, is located in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania. It opened in 1990 and man­u­fac­tured RPTVs (Rear Projection TV) and when the mar­ket shifted dra­mat­i­cally to LCD TVs, the Center shifted to man­u­fac­tur­ing those and now pro­duces 46″ and 52″ LCD TVs. The fac­tory is part of a planned clo­sure of 5 or 6 fac­to­ries world­wide. The Westmoreland fac­tory employs 560 people.

On December 9, 2008, Sony announced that it will be clos­ing about 5 to 6 fac­to­ries (or 10% of 57 fac­to­ries) world­wide and lay­off about 8,000 full-time employ­ees and another 8,000 tem­po­rary work­ers. Sony, like all other TV brands, is deal­ing with a global slow­down of demand for TVs. The Westmoreland plant will cease man­u­fac­tur­ing TVs by February 2009 and Sony’s Baja, Mexico-based TV plant will be sup­ply­ing the US with Sony-branded TVs. Sony plans to com­pletely shut­down and close the plant by end­ing TV and Blu-ray repair and logis­tics oper­a­tions by March 2010.

I do not know the over­all health of US-based man­u­fac­tur­ing of elec­tronic goods, but my gut feel­ing is that it isn’t too healthy. Sony’s planned clo­sure of The Pittsburgh Technology Center is sig­nif­i­cant in that it is Sony’s last US TV fac­tory. For Sony, one of the most well-known TV brands, to admit that man­u­fac­tur­ing TVs in the US is just not com­pet­i­tive says some­thing and some­thing must be done. Sure we have a thriv­ing ser­vice sec­tor in the US but I think there needs to be a healthy man­u­fac­tur­ing base as well. I per­son­ally would pay a bit more for a Made in USA Sony 46″ or 52″ LCD TV. I bet those will become collector’s items.

Source: PC World

[tags]Sony, The Pittsburgh Technology Center, 46″, 52″, 46″ LCD TV, 52″ LCD TV[/tags]