Intuitive, the company behind the da Vinci surgical system, will build a manufacturing plant in Penang, Malaysia, that it says will make the instruments and electromechanical components used with its surgical robots. The 316,000-square-foot facility is expected to begin operating in 2028, and the company estimates it will support 1,200 skilled jobs by 2032.

Intuitive describes the plant as an expansion of its global manufacturing and a response to rising demand for robotic-assisted surgery in Asia Pacific, which it calls one of the fastest-growing regions for the field. The project was announced with Malaysia's deputy minister of investment, trade and industry and Penang's chief minister present, alongside Intuitive's chief manufacturing and supply chain officer, Mark Brosius.

Where the robots are made, and where they are used

Moving instrument manufacturing into Southeast Asia shortens a supply chain and gives a country a share of a high-value industry, and Malaysia has spent years courting exactly this kind of investment. The jobs figure is the company's own projection, for a plant that will not open for two years, and it describes a destination rather than a schedule. Manufacturing is also not the same as clinical access: a factory in Penang does not place a da Vinci system in a public hospital, and robotic surgery stays concentrated where insurers and health budgets will pay for it. In much of Southeast Asia, patients pay out of pocket, which makes the market smaller than the language of growth suggests.

Intuitive's systems are installed across the region, but the company does not say here how many, or where. The question that matters to patients is not how the instruments are made but who is operated on with them, and that is settled by procurement, training and reimbursement, none of which a factory decides.