September 1999 Article 3
MPE INDUSTRIAL ATTACHMENT STUDENT WINS TOP PRIZE IN SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL’S INTERNS PROJECTS COMPETITION
 
Wilson Oh (MPE) (on the right), First Place Winner with Mr T H Chee, Vice President, Drive Engineering Asia Pacific, Seagate Technology International
 This year Seagate Technology International started a project competition to foster creativity among their interns from both NTU and NUS.  They also wanted to encourage the students to learn presentation skills, etc.  More importantly, through this program, they wanted to identify good potential employees.
 
A total of 69 interns from both NTU and NUS, attached to the various plants took part.  The competition involved 3 rounds.  The first round was on an Intra-plant level, the second round, on an Inter-plant level, and the top five qualifiers presented their projects at the Finals.  The panel of judges comprised academics from NTU and NUS and also Directors from the various plants.  Mr Wilson Oh walked away with the Top Prize of $500.  He had undergone the School’s Leadership Development Program which was introduced to identify and develop potential leaders among the “cream of the crop.”

Mr Oh was attached to Seagate Technology International Customer Service Operations (CSO), from 11 January to 26 June this year, as part of the School’s Third Year Industrial Attachment program.  During his stint with CSO, he was assigned to the Department of Industrial Engineering and Strategic Planning.  He handled many projects, ranging from process improvements to plant layout.  However, throughout the period of attachment, he had the challenging task of identifying and investigating the problems with the plant operations.  This was indeed a mega-scale project.
 
Having carefully identified and performed a thorough investigation, Mr Oh developed a new system for the plant operations.  This involved the flow of materials, as well as the merging of some of the functional areas.  The advantages of the new system include a reduction in the level of inventory, improvements in the cycle time, and better management of Work-In-Progress (WIP).  All these contribute towards making the factory more “lean”, in line with the organizations drive towards “Lean Manufacturing”
 
A presentation was made to the top management and the new system was accepted and implemented in various phases.  The initial phase of implementation saw a substantial decrease in the level of excess inventory.   Subsequent implementations are currently in the pipeline, and with such promising results, this new system may very well be implemented in other Seagate plants with similar operations.