History (1991): Western Digital Opened Automated Manufaturing Line of HDDs in Singapore

Last month, Western Digital Singapore Pty Ltd., a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp. (Irvine, CA) officially opened in Singapore a new $7.5 million fully-automated HDD manufacturing line that produces 5,000 drives per day.

Since 1988, the Singapore plant has been the sole disk drive production center for the company.

The new line, that includes industrial robots operated from computers, automates the entire assembly and test processes of 3.5-inch Caviar units when most other Singapore manufacturers usually employ a combination of manual and automated operations.

The WD facility now covers an area of 250,000 square feet and employs 3,000 people.

The production of its new Tidbit series of 31.5 and 63MB 2.5-inch HDDs began in June. It accounts for 10% of the plant’s total output but should reach 50% before the end of this year. It also produces XT, AT and SCSI compatible drives with capacities ranging from 20 to 320MB .

Last April, WD announced the shipments of its 5 millionth 3.5-inch disk drive from Singapore.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠43, published on August 1991.