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New Delhi: Tata-owned luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have confirmed that production have now resumed across their global manufacturing facilities. The restart of the final facility marks the end of a controlled recovery process that followed a cyberattack, which forced a total operational shutdown for six weeks, starting in September 1st.
The final major facility to resume was at the Halewood plant in Merseyside, UK. This is one of the major factories for JLR’s volumes as it produces the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport. This facility coming back to full operation means that all three of JLR’s UK factories, Halewood, Solihull, and Wolverhampton, are now working at full steam.
For Halewood, the restart also marks the resumption of the GBP 500 million transformation project for their upcoming EV models.
The phased restart started with engine and component manufacturing lines, before moving to the high-value assembly lines for the likes of Range Rover and Range Rover Sport at Solihull and the Defender at Nitra, Slovakia. This faltering approach was needed to verify the security and integrity of JLR’s rebuilt IT systems and supply chain flow following the system-wide breach.
Although technically all plants are “online” again, the immediate challenge for JLR now is to transition from merely operating to achieving full production capacity. Industry experts feel that the complete return to normal operating speed will still take some time. The company comes with quite a big backlog of orders, mostly from their main profitable models.
A hacking group named Lapsus$ has taken responsibility for the cyberattack, noting that it exploited a flaw in the SAP Netweaver software to access customer data. The six-week shutdown i now estimated to have cut GB P 1.5 billion in revenue, with wholesale dealer sales in the September quarter dropping by almost 66,165 units.
The successful resumption of all global manufacturing is a signal of progress to the market, suppliers and customers as well. All core operations are back online, and JLR is making a phased return to normal output from them. There were many concerns from the supply chain reliant on the brand, but JLR have managed to answer the grievances.
