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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (43749)	3/14/2001 9:30:02 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

TI to close 6-inch analog fab in California Semiconductor Business News (03/14/01 16:18 p.m. PST) DALLAS -- Texas Instruments Inc. today (March 14) announced it will close its 6-inch wafer fab in Santa Cruz, Calif., which primarily produces analog ICs for hard disk drives. Products from that fab will be transferred to other manufacturing plants in Dallas and Houston, said TI. The Santa Cruz facility will be phased down by the end of 2001, eliminating 600 jobs. The plant was acquired by TI in 1996 when it bought Silicon Systems Inc. of Tustin, Calif., for $575 million. The Dallas company had hoped to expand its presence in hard-disk drive ICs with the acquisition, but TI fell behind in read-channel chips and decided to end its activities in that segment (see Sept. 19 story). TI has reassigned analog design engineers from the read-channel area to other projects, but it is determined to remain a leading supplier in hard-disk drive servo and preamp functions, said a company spokesman in Dallas. The decision to close the Santa Cruz fab was made to make the company more competitive, according to TI managers. "Manufacturing can be more efficiently managed by consolidating this capacity into locations with the potential for higher-volume, more technologically advanced processes," said Kevin Ritchie, TI senior vice president for worldwide manufacturing operations. "This decision, while difficult, increases competitiveness and efficiency." Two weeks ago, TI managers said the company would spend about 30% of its $2.0 billion capital budget on converting three 6-inch analog fabs to 8-inch (200-mm wafers). TI today said the consolidation is part of previously discussed cost-reduction activity. The Santa Cruz fab was one of five TI plants scheduled to shut down temporarily to reduce inventories and costs in the current downturn (see Feb. 22 story). But TI has decided to close down the 150-mm (6-inch) wafer fab by the end of this year.