ICMS Success Stories – Seagate Factory Construction Management

Bob Smith, Former VP Operations Seagate

For Seagate Technologies, ICMS oversaw the construction of an 180,000 square foot manufacturing facility with class 10,000 to class 10 cleanrooms. The site also included a very large DI water treatment plant producing semiconductor grade purified water. The project included a full waste treatment plant and a high voltage power sub-station installation.

This was for Conner Peripherals, a manufacturer of computer hard drives and hard drive recording media. The project was in Singapore and was Conner’s first high technology manufacturing facility in Asia. The site was formerly owned by a company that built and serviced oil pumping equipment for off-shore oil rigs. Needless to say, it was basically a demolition and build from scratch project.

The site was secured in July and by November of that year we were running the first of three production lines. The second and third lines were operational by May of the following year. This was a major accomplishment at such an accelerated pace. The total investment was around $180 million of which about 1/3rd was facility.

The second project was a larger but similar factory that was started by Seagate. Seagate and Conner merged soon after completion of the first Singapore project. I inherited the Seagate factory, which was also in Singapore. This was about 250,000 sq ft but was still under construction. The facility design had problems and as it turned out the construction was not to specification. Mike came in to help us remedy the defects and rebuild the clean rooms. This was a $60 million repair that was charged back to the original contractor and design firm.

After the factory was repaired and in operation, Mike helped to expand its capacity. Since I now had two factories in Singapore building similar product, I wanted to consolidate the operations into one site. Mike designed and costed the renovation of the second facility that allowed the combination of both factory capacities and phased it in a way that prevented any lost factory production. This renovation and consolidation was seamless and brought another 29% profit to the bottom line.

The third project was a facility that was just beginning operation in Limivady N Ireland. I inherited this Seagate plant as well after the merger with Conner. The factory was not at the target competitive manufacturing cost and needed restructuring both organizationally as well as facility. Mike was contracted to correct the facility layout and engineering short comings. His work allowed the factory to improve output efficiency and expand output. His work enabled me to restructure the plant within 6 months to meet the cost of goods target. These projects were in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Scope: ICMS assisted in site selection. ICMS handled project management which included engineering, design construction, bid process, contractor selection. ICMS worked well in conjunction with the Conner Management group.
ICMS’s Mike Pellatt, is honest and makes the right decisions. His speed of execution is money to a manufacturing company. He will save you money without compromising safety or quality.

Mike is very honest and open. He will always be on the side of the project owner. Mike will insure your interests are met and correct and/or manage the contractors in a professional manner. He is a turnkey shop. His knowledge of manufacturing as well as facility design is key to his ability to understand, and often suggest, improvements or alternatives to facility design. These suggestions will usually result in a more efficient factory.

Any time anywhere, I would recommend ICMS.