In 2006, the company announced that a large part of its production would be outsourced to the electronics manufacturing service company Flextronics, which has plants in Mexico, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The decision to outsource production came as a direct consequence of an analysis of LEGO' s total supply chain. Tb reduce labor costs, manually intensive processes were outsourced, keeping only the highly skilled workers in Billund . LEGO's work-force was gradually reduced from 8,300 employees in 2003 to approximately 4,200 in 2010. Additionally,production had to be relocated to places closer to its natural markets. As a consequence of all these changes, LEGO transformed itself from a manufacturing firm to a market-oriented company that is capable of reacting fast to changing global demand.