TOKYO -- Renesas Electronics' Naka factory in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, was severely damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. A decade on, the "Renesas Shock," that crippled the automotive chipmaker and brought global auto production to a halt, is still fresh in the minds of employees and executives.
Things were not as bad as they seemed immediately after the quake knocked out the company's main plant. At first, it was thought the factory would be out of action for six months, but it came back online in just three. The disaster underlined the importance of resilience, and Renesas applied the lessons it learned to the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake and the COVID-19 pandemic.
