Harris Corp’s Harris Semiconductor Pte Ltd in Singapore is to close its Singapoire assembly and testing facilities over the next 12 months as part of a restructuring programme, the company’s managing director, S C Lim, told Reuters. Harris is seeking economies of scale by moving manufacturing to Malaysia, and the closure will take place over the next year, resulting in 475 employees, more than half of them production operators, losing their jobs in Singapore. The company is helping them seek other work and is working on an employee benefits programme some may find jobs in the Malaysian plant, which currently employs more than 4,000 people in Kuala Lumpur, which will be the company’s only manufacturing facility in the Asia-Pacific region. We assemble and test 50m chips per year in Singapore. In Malaysia, we have 10 times the capacity, Lim said, adding that Harris Semiconductor plans to grow in the US, China, South Korea and Japan, raising sales in Asia to $135m in the year to June 1995, from $100m. Harris does plan to keep its chip design centre in Singapore, where it has found a good skilled labour market.
