History (1999): Seagate Produces More Than 600,000 HGAs Per Day

This is the last in a series on Thailand’s HDD industry by Jean-Jacques Maleval visiting the country.

The manufacture of head gimbal assemblies (HGAs) is particularly labor intensive. The process consists largely of attaching, with the help of a microscope in a cleanroom, a tiny magnetic head (or slider) on a metallic suspension gimbal, along with reading and writing wires that ultimately serve to transmit data from the head towards the engraved circuit board, after which these assemblies are tested.

Every Seagate HGA in all of Seagate’s HDD drives shipped worldwide are produced in 2 factories in Thailand, those in Teparuk (erected in 1988) and Korat (1996) in Nakornatchasima.

Combined, they boast an army of 21,617 employees, 13,267 and 8,350 respectively, or just over a quarter of the entire company’s WW workforce for this process alone. This does not exclude the small number of HGA pre-production prototypes produced in the US firm’s Oklahoma plant.

The 2 factories rotate in 3 teams 6 days out of the week.

From reliable sources outside of Seagate, which chooses not to reveal any production statistics, these 2 factories produced a combined total of between 45 and 50 million HGAs per quarter in 1998 (production capacity is 60 million per quarter), or nearly 190 million units for the whole year, destined exclusively for internal use (1998 WW production was around 900 million HGAs).

According to an official statement by Seagate, the company has shipped 29.3 million HDDs last year, each thus with an average 6.5 heads (or HGAs), or slightly over 3 platters per disk drive, which seems to correspond with our calculations.

For the HGAs, a majority of the sliders come from Seagate, but also from Alps and Read-Rite.

The transition from MR to GMR heads has already begun at the Korat facility, and is expected in June for the Teparuk plant.

The suspensions are obtained from Hutchinson, KRP and Magnecomp, while the tube wires are from SSDI and Innovex.

Once the HGAs are finished, they are sent towards 2 other Seagate plants in Thailand, one in Wellgrow (established in 1994, with 7,695 people) and Chokchai (established in 1997, 3,329 people), for the production of HSAs (head stack assemblies), a vital part of the final HDD assembly (HDA), which in turn is undertaken at other plants in China (Shenzhen and Wuxi), Malaysia and Singapore.

Seagate also has a 6th facility in Thailand, in Rangsit, which dates from 1994 and employs 1,959 people for motors and poles.

Previously, the company had several other fabs which have since been shut down. In Lad-Krabang, just outside of Bangkok, one produced coils and circuit cables, activities that have since been transferred to Chokchai.

Historically, the first Seagate plant began operating in Bangkok in 1983. This was the very first implantation of a disk drive manufacture in Thailand.

A certain S.G. Tien supervised HGA and HSA production with 50 women, mostly military spouses.

The following year, Seagate expanded with the production of motors. HDAs for 5.25-inch units took off in 1987, in Chockai, but were later dropped.

According to an article in the April 1994 issue of Asia, Inc., in the early 90s, an investigation, never entirely resolved, into the company and a factory it operated at the time in Samut Prakan, 20km to the south of Bangkok, was launched following the deaths of 4 workers in their twenties of mysterious causes (industrial poisoning?).

In mid-August 1991, there were a series of protests by hundreds of workers, resulting in the dismissal of 87 employees, the formation of a union, and the firing of another 621 workers.

Even so, today a veritable army keeps Seagate running in Thailand. There are a total of 34,962 employees, of which only 17 are not Thai, and this number attained 43,640 in 1997.

The company’s Thai exports were estimated at a value of 56 billion bahts in 1997, 80 billion in 1998 (1 baht=$.03).

History 1999 Seagate Thailand