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Designed, developed & manufactured in Singapore |
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Seagate's hope in cracking the burgeoning consumer electronics market lies in one of its smallest products yet - the ST1 Series of 1-inch disc drives - which was entirely conceived in Singapore, from design to manufacture. It's just another achievement for the Seagate-Singapore partnership, which continues to grow, evolve, and of course, innovate - even after more than 20 years.
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Singapore's sterling reputation as a hard disc-drive (HDD) manufacturing centre is internationally recognised. Currently, the country produces at least 35 per cent of the world's HDDs. In fact, since the early 1990s, Singapore has been responsible for manufacturing one-third of global HDD output.
Seeing Singapore through its meteoric rise as a definitive HDD hub is US-based disc drive giant Seagate. Founded in 1979 as a technopreneurial enterprise, the company has, like Singapore, experienced similar growth in leaps and bounds. Today, Seagate is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of storage technology for Internet, business, and consumer electronics applications.
A COMMITTED BUSINESS PARTNER
In 1980, Seagate was responsible for innovating the first 5.25-inch hard drive. While it certainly seems like dinosaur technology today, it was a development that helped jumpstart the PC revolution. It certainly helped boom Seagate's business. In 1982, the trailblazer established its first volume manufacturing facility for disc drives in Singapore. Twenty-two years later, and the Seagate-Singapore partnership is still going strong. To date, Singapore is Seagate's key manufacturing centre, making all of the company's enterprise and mobile storage products. The company is also one of the private sector's largest employers, boasting staff strength of over 7,700 professionals.
Just last year, Seagate made clear its intentions to invest $500 million into its Singapore operations over the next five years. It began with a $200 million commitment in June 2003, with the storage technology giant announcing that it was pumping in $200 million to expand its recording media manufacturing plant in Woodlands, which is already the company's largest media manufacturing facility in the world. Once completed in the end of 2005, the five-storey, 51,000 sq-metre extension will boost the local operations' ability to produce more than 50 per cent of the recording media Seagate requires for its disc drives. Already, the first-level production floor has commenced operations.
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"We continue to make strategic investments in Singapore by leveraging established infrastructure and tapping the significant technological and human capital this island-nation has to offer."
- Bill Watkins, President and CEO, Seagate
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"This is an important milestone in the history of Seagate's recording media operations," said Bill Watkins, Seagate's President and Chief Executive Officer. "We continue to make strategic investments in Singapore by leveraging established infrastructure and tapping the significant technological and human capital this islandnation has to offer."
The $200 million announcement was followed five months later by an additional $300 investment plan to boost Seagate's local capabilities even further. Seagate's Jim Chirico, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Operations, elaborated that this sum will be used to "undertake both R&D and manufacturing activities for the production of small form factor drives for use in PCs and consumer electronics devices; upgrade current advanced automation machinery for the production of small form factor enterprise drives as well as products requiring the use of perpendicular media recording; and employ skilled local specialists to provide engineering expertise and support to Seagate's development and manufacturing activities."
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Seagate Singapore now provides regional support services for Engineering, Procurement and Logistics, IT, Sales and Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Corporate Communications, Environmental Health & Safety, Facilities, Security and Intellectual Property Management.
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Seagate's resounding vote of confidence in Singapore in November 2003 also coincided with the Singapore government's likewise strong show of support towards the company. That month, the company was honoured with the prestigious International Headquarters (IHQ) Award. With its IHQ status, Seagate Singapore now provides regional support services for Engineering, Procurement and Logistics, IT, Sales and Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Corporate Communications, Environmental Health & Safety, Facilities, Security and Intellectual Property Management.
"We see the role of Singapore as a place where we are going to do highly technical operations such as design and development and use the expertise of the labour force," added President and CEO Watkins at the ceremony. "The Singapore team has developed into a very strong engineering-based organisation."
SEAGATE SINGAPORE - TAKING CENTRESTAGE AGAIN
Hot on the heels of last year's milestone developments was Seagate's June 2004 unveiling of 12 new products that is part of the company's largest-ever product launch. These offerings will enable Seagate to potentially increase its current 26 per cent share of the total disc-drive market to at least 97 per cent. And of these 12 new innovations, five will be made in Singapore - the ST1 1-inch disc drive, along with four other new storage drives - the Cheetah 15K.4, Cheetah 10K.7, Savvio 10K.1 and Momentus II.
"The Cheetah 15K.4 is the lowest cost IOP (interoperability) per Gigabyte drive for mainstream applications," elaborated Teh Ban Seng, Seagate's Vice President, Asia Sales and Marketing, "while Cheetah 10K.7 is a low cost per Gigabyte disc drive for data intensive, low I/O (input/output), bulk storage."
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Creative use Seagate's ST1 1-inch disc drive for its audio products
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Savvio is the industry's first 2.5-inch enterprise-class disc drive that enables a new class of high I/O density storage solutions for Fortune 1000 data centres," he continued, "and the Momentus 7200rpm and 5400rpm versions of storage drives are optimised for notebook workstation and mainstream notebook applications respectively."
As for the ST1 1-inch disc drive, suffice it to say that Seagate's 5.25'inch hard drive days may be long gone, but it's since been replaced by bigger (judging from the impact, not size) and better technology. And Singapore has had a big role to play in this advancement. On all counts, it's not a gargantuan step for Seagate's operations in the city-state. After all, it was from the country's shores that the company first introduced the U Series high capacity disc drive, which went on to become Seagate's biggest selling product in its entire history. Like the new ST1 1-inch disc drive, the U Series was also wholly created in Singapore, and even earned the Innovative Product Of The Year award by the Singapore government back in November 2001.
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LOCAL PRIDE
Fast forward to 2004, and the Seagate Singapore team has proven its innovative worth again. Of the biggest challenge the team was faced with during the conceptualisation and execution of the ST1 series, K T Say, Vice President, Engineering and Research & Development, revealed that it was "building a drive that is both ergonomic as well as being able to withstand an environment to which portable devices are often exposed. The small form factor is definitely one of the main challenges faced as it entails many design, manufacturing, reliability and quality issues. The design team must also address other major considerations such as power consumption and costs."
Indeed, the final result managed to achieve all these. Key benefits of the ST1 1-inch disc drives include RunOn Technology, which combats playback consistency problems experienced by HDD music players in high-movement situations; as well as G-Force Protection, which protects the drive against possible shocks from mishandling and adds to the robustness of the system. The drive also supports low-power modes, and compatibility with all existing integration standards for portable disc drive-based devices are assured.
Thanks to these cutting-edge features, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are already sitting up and taking notice of the much-anticipated disc drive. Jostling for the consumers' dollar also means that the OEMs need to listen to their potential customers' needs - and Seagate's new 1-inch disc drive seems to fit the bill perfectly. "Consumers want the ability to carry more music...they need reliable and rugged storage at an affordable price," observed Dave Reinsel, IDC Programme Director, Storage Research. "Products such as Seagate's new ST1 Series...are designed to meet these requirements."
Unsurprisingly, a month after the announcement, Creative Technology appointed Seagate as its strategic supplier of disc drive storage technology for its new portable audio product lines, starting with Seagate's new ST1 Series 1-inch hard drive. Afterall, the 5-Gbyte capacity version can store up to 2,500 high-quality songs - another very attractive feature for such CE manufacturers like Creative. "Compared to flash memory, the ST1 Series delivers a much lower cost per megabyte - up to 10 times the capacity at similar price points - making it a very cost-effective storage alternative," pointed out Seagate's Teh.
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Seagate will no doubt be making full use of its fully automated production lines at its one million sq-ft facility in Ang Mo Kio to produce its new ST1 Series
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ALL SYSTEMS GO
"We are currently stringently qualifying our ST1 drives internally and with some of our customers," continued Chirico of the 1-inch disc drive's projected demand. "As this is a fairly new product in the market, our volume shipment will depend on our customers' demand for ST1." So far, the outlook for the compressed audio player market looks rosy, with IDC's Reinsel describing it as "one of the fastest-growing consumer electronic markets for hard drives". In addition, IDC predicts that the hard drive market for portable digital audio and media players will reach nearly 15 million units in 2007.
To ready itself for the boom, Seagate will no doubt be making full use of its fully automated production lines at its one million sq-ft facility in Ang Mo Kio to produce its new ST1 Series.
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Part of Seagate's $500 million planned investment may also go towards the upgrading of equipment at the plant, as the 1-inch drives require extremely stringent and demanding production standards. "Automation lines have to be upgraded to ensure that all components are fabricated within very tight tolerance range (i.e. nanometres range)," speculated Seagate's Chirico. "Consistently maintaining high yields will be difficult during production since components are very small and delicate."
Nevertheless, the company remains optimistic that it will meet demand and expectations. "Seagate intends to maintain a strategic presence in each of the countries in which it currently operates, including Singapore," stressed Chirico. "These sites will continue to be the focus of continued capital investment and the transfer of new, leading-edge technologies and products. The company will also continue to leverage Factory of the Future and other corporate initiatives like Six Sigma and Supply Chain Management in Singapore to enhance our efficiency and help us maintain our leadership position."
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"Singapore continues to provide an attractive environment in which to conduct business..."
- Jim Chirico, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Operations, Seagate
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LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
With these new product announcements, coupled with its hefty $500 million pledge of investment, Seagate's Singapore operations are in high gear. And with the Asia-Pacific alone contributing a monthly average of 40 per cent to Seagate's global total sales revenue, Seagate's Chirico is convinced that Singapore will remain a strategic hub for disc drive manufacturing.
Things are also looking up for the region's key sectors. "As consumer confidence rebounds, PC shipments should see favourable growth," analysed Chirico. "IDC has also raised its projections for Asia/Pac's (excluding Japan) overall PC growth for 2004 by 2.5 to 16.4 per cent. Expected growth in the consumer market segment was raised by 3.5 per cent to 12.6 cent; and at 18.6 per cent growth, the commercial market growth forecast has been raised by 2 per cent."
Indeed, with a renewed manufacturing stable of products, and a design and engineering team that continues to leave a global footprint, Seagate Singapore is poised to ride the wave of the next era in storage technology.
"Singapore continues to provide an attractive environment in which to conduct business," praised Seagate's Chirico. "Singapore provides a sound infrastructure, technological capability and skilled human resources. During the past 22 years, Seagate and the people of Singapore have worked together to develop and strengthen our relationship. Seagate management believes that the partnership and close cooperation between Seagate and Singapore will be further strengthened in the years ahead and will continue to reflect our mutual commitment to that relationship."
For more information on Seagate, please visit: www.seagate.com
On Singapore's Electronics industry, please visit: Industry Opportunities/Electronics and Precision Engineering section of www.sedb.com
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The One-Inch Disc Drive
Says Seagate's Jim Chirico, ''Industry analysts forecasted that the total available market for CE drives to be 70 million units in 2007 with a compounded annual growth rate of 42 per cent from 2003 to 2007. Seagate '' On all counts, the ST1 Series will certainly help Seagate in its efforts to capture a significant portion of the CE market.
- Offers 2.5-GB and 5-GB capacities for use in such mobile devices as small digital music players, PDAs and other handheld entertainment devices.
- Represents Seagate's first foray into the sub 2.5-inch consumer electronic (CE) category.
- Designed and developed in Singapore's Design Service Centre.
- Will be manufactured for global consumption in Seagate's one million sq-ft plant in Ang Mo Kio.
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