Out of Control

Years ago, traffic congestion prompted Dell to expand in Nashville instead of its home base, Austin. That scared local leaders into action and they embarked upon our nation’s most aggressive congestion-cutting plan.

Now some good news. Samsung just announced it would open a new chip plant in Austin. Although a variety of factors lead the company to choose Austin over other locations, mobility was one of the most important:

Samsung took awhile to decide on Austin, in part because of concerns about transportation. Samsung trucks its silicon wafers to Dallas before sending them by plane to South Korea for final processing, so congestion on Interstate 35 can cause costly delays. The company carefully studied Central Texas' planned infrastructure improvements, spokesman Bill Cryer said.

Article here.

Could also file this under “insourcing.”

A while back I interviewed (see p. 7) an exec from SAS, Samsung’s first Austin-based operation.