Wow, you're fast! BRKS is getting their finger into a lot of pies. Here's the full text:
Wednesday April 12, 7:12 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Seagate Technology, Inc. Recording Head Manufacturing Operations Expect to Benefit from Brooks Automation's Factory Automation Products
CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 12, 2000--
FACTORYworks(R), Xsite(TM) and AutoSimulations Productivity Family (APF) suite meet Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS) and real-time dispatch and scheduling requirements at Seagate's wafer production and slider facilities.
Brooks Automation, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKS - news), a leader in semiconductor tool and factory automation solutions for the global semiconductor industry, today announced that it has signed a contract to provide the recording head operations of Seagate Technology, Inc. with a multi-million dollar solution set of software and consulting services, including the implementation of FACTORYworks, Xsite and the APF product suite, at the company's manufacturing sites in Bloomington, Minnesota and Northern Ireland. Seagate's Malaysian sites are expected to deploy the Brooks software early in 2001, in phase three of the implementation.
Seagate's Bloomington and Northern Ireland sites perform two types of manufacturing--wafer and slider in Bloomington and wafer only in Northern Ireland--that, while different, are interrelated. FACTORYworks meets the unique MES requirements of both sites, supporting the sites' discrete requirements while reinforcing their ability to work together.
FACTORYworks also provides Seagate with tremendous flexibility. As a leading producer of disc drives, a product whose life span can be measured in months, Seagate requires an MES solution that can adapt to the needs of a rapidly changing product. FACTORYworks answers this need by enabling Seagate to optimize throughput, improve equipment utilization and move down the yield curve faster. In addition, FACTORYworks provides Seagate with a cost-effective solution to its MES needs.
Seagate selected the AutoSimulations Productivity Family (APF) software suite for scheduling, capacity analysis and real-time dispatching. APF includes pre-engineered integration with FACTORYworks, allowing scheduling decisions to be made utilizing real-time shop floor data.
Looking forward, Seagate's recording head operations believes that it will be essential to connect ``islands of information applications' together, introduce more functionality, and provide an integrated system solution that will help it become a world-class manufacturing enterprise.
``Our goal is to have a factory automation system that is world-class and state-of-the-art,' said Thomas Dunlap,
Director of the MES Project. ``FACTORYworks, Xsite and APF provide the foundation for achieving this goal. Our use of Brooks software will help us increase the visibility and availability of data across our organizational departments and business units.'
``As Seagate's needs evolve to include additional areas of the factory, we are confident that we will be able to meet
those needs in the future,' said Robert J. Therrien, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brooks Automation,
Inc., ``We also believe that Seagate will be able to better integrate these solutions into their existing systems.' |
