By Amrit Charoenphan, BBA#14

On Friday, November 16, 2007, the IM 203 Production and Operations Management class of Assoc.Prof.Dr.Tritos Laosirihongthong was privileged to have the opportunity to embark on a factory tour and witness a presentation by the Western Digital (Thailand) Company Limited at Bang Pa-In Industrial Estate at the province of Ayudhaya.  After arriving at the factory around 2 pm, we were cordially greeted by Western Digital employees and were given a brief video introduction in a seminar room on the history of the company as well as the hard drive industry.  A manager from the Human Resource department of Western Digital then gave us an introduction on Western Digital factories in Thailand, an overview on the global and local hard drive industry, the major components of a hard drive, the manufacturing process of a hard drive, and the qualification and compensation plan for prospective Western Digital employees.  Finally, a Senior Engineer from Western Digital was kindly enough to explain to us the concepts of Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma, which was highly beneficial as it perfectly coincides with what we are learning in IM 203 class.

After the presentation, we were allowed to take a walk-through of the facility at Western Digital.  The facility tour was an eye-opener for most BBA students, as many of us may have never seen what an actual hard drive looks like, let alone heard of the word ?Hard drive.?  Well, for those of you who still have no idea what a hard drive is or what a hard drive looks like, it is the component that stores all the data in a computer, whether it be operating system files, documents, music files, pictures and so on.  Although it may not be the first component that comes to mind in deciding consumers? purchasing decisions for their desktop or laptop, hard drives play an integral part as the CPU and RAM in the overall computing experience that cannot be overlooked.  We were able to see that hard drives must be manufactured to the most advanced manufacturing process and technology as any contamination from dust or particles will permanent damage the hard disk drive.  Touring the facility, we have learned that Western Digital are highly committed to controlling the work environment, both for Electro-Static Discharge) and contamination by manufacturing their hard disk in Clean Rooms.  As the name suggests, Clean Rooms are highly controlled working environments that must have an air quality purified to less than 100 particulates per million as any quantity of particulates higher than this will result in contamination of products as subsequent shutdown of the production line.  We were told that employees working in the Clean Room are audited for cleanliness from particulates, as the were not allowed to wear make-up, wash their clean suits at home, and so on as this could lead to contamination.