Site:

Solectron Technology Sdn. Bhd. - Penang, Malaysia
Plot 13, Phase IV, Prai Industrial Park, 13600 Prai Penang, Malaysia

Participants:

Kong Siew Mui, General Manager
James C. K. Chuen, Director, Business Development
Riwayat B. Mansor, Director, Quality and Engineering
Mohana Krishnan, Business Unit Director
Sundra Raj, Senior Engineering Manager

Mission and Strategy

• Solectron is a U.S. company established in 1977. It is the world's third-largest contract manufacturer.
• Solectron has 8 facilities across three continents employing approximately 13,000 employees. It achieved over $2 billion in revenue in 1995.
• Solectron is a key supplier to major global customers such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, SCI, Philips, Maxtor, and Toshiba.
• Solectron Penang was established in 1991 as a foreign subsidiary. Solectron has a corporate culture to share the best production methods among lines at each site and between sites. The Penang facility has 22 engineers devoted to process development and introduction of new products.

Key Elements of Presentation

• It has a total of 28 Fuji lines, 6 flex circuit lines, and one chip on flex line in a class 10K cleanroom that place a total of 275 million components per month.
• Solectron provides concurrent engineering and design services including electronic information interchange direct with its customers through the Internet.
• Solectron Penang has 5 different business units, including one dedicated for Intel that consists of 12 SMT lines (segments). At the current time, only 8 lines are being used. Its SMT lines are all identical hard-coupled lines with a Fuji GSP-III screener, one Fuji CP-6 chip placer, one Fuji CP-4 chip placer, a Fuji IP-II module placer, and a BTU oven with nitrogen reflow.
• Solectron has 199,000 ft2 and 2,700 employees. It hires local labor with 9th-11th grade education. It provides new workers with 1 month of training, 2 weeks in classroom and 2 weeks under direct OJT supervision. It runs 17 8-hr shifts per week (the same as 3 shifts for 5½ days per week). Shifts rotate weekly. Solectron can work its labor force up to 4 hours overtime per day, so it has significant labor force flexibility. It is experiencing 2% attrition/mo. for operators. It provides good benefits and quarterly profit sharing.
• Solectron Penang participates in a corporate technology council that manages the introduction of advanced process technology.

Key Elements of Tour

• The company was ISO 9002 qualified in 1993.
• The facility is 100% Malaysian managed.
• It is experiencing from 12 to 35 inventory turns, depending upon the product.

Key Results

• Penang was selected as the site to proliferate Solectron manufacturing technology to future Asian sites.
• It has already established a program office in Japan that provides access to Japanese technology roadmaps. Investigation has begun for possible expansion into China.
• Solectron Milpitas has historically been the site to provide advanced technology development to other Solectron sites for implementation and deployment. Solectron Penang has begun to share in the development of advanced process technology, especially for chip on glass and chip on flex. The Milpitas facility is used for cross-sectioning and process failure analysis at a corporate level.

Conclusions

Solectron Penang is establishing a manufacturing facility for active matrix TFT color LCD. It is importing this technology with the assistance of its customers. Some of the specific equipment has been jointly designed by Solectron and its customers. Processes required to support this technology include:

• Precision taping and heating of anisotropic contact film
• TAB-IC punching from reel
• Hot-bar / gang soldering of TAB onto PCB
• Solectron Penang has developed a unique program to encourage sharing of creative ideas. The program is called the C.A.T. program and encourages copying of ideas across the entire facility.