Nokia TMC Keeps on Rolling Amidst Economic Slump
chosun.com
The production lines of Nokia TMC, the production plant for Nokia¡¯s mobile hand sets, were running around the clock each day last week. A worker at the plant, located in Masan, Gyeongnam Province, said that every worker there has been very busy but they are happy as the company is doing well in the midst of the heavy economic slump.
An official at Nokia TMC explained that when Nokia¡¯s plant in Texas, United States, faltered in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nokia¡¯s head office turned all of the workload at the US plant over to the Masan plant.
With the rush of work orders, the production at Nokia TMC doubled from 2.5 million mobile sets in September to about four million units in October, and the company said that there have not been any problems in the production schedule and quality. The Nokia TMC has a total payroll of 788.
One high-ranking official at Nokia¡¯s head office in Finland said the productivity of the Korean plant outrivals any of Nokia¡¯s nine plants across the world, adding that other global plants need to emulate Nokia TMC¡¯s production and quality control system.
Nokia TMC has been exporting all of its handsets and consequently, it is not well known in Korea. But the company in fact has been contributing a lot to Korea¡¯s handset exports. Back in 1998, the plant surpassed a goal of handset exports worth W1 trillion and in about two years since, the plant achieved W2 trillion worth of exports last year. For this year, the plant is targeting an export of W3.8 trillion.
Officials at TMC cited several reasons for the high production quality of the plant, explaining that the plant has very flexible production lines that can tailor to any orders and a very amicable relationship exists between labor and management.
One official at TMC commented that there has not been a single labor-management dispute for the last 17 years since the company was founded in 1984.
(Kim Ki-hong, darma90@chosun.com) |
