Saturday, March 28, 2009

One maquiladora in Vila do Conde

Rui Figueiredo, in a letter to the editors of the daily newspaper Público, published March 28, 2009, calls our attention to the fact that there had been previously to Qimonda other assemblers/producers of semi-conductors in Portugal and mentions Standard Electric, Signetics, Texas Instruments, and Philips, as having been established just for that same kind of products mainly in the 70s, perhaps in a smaller scale than Qimonda, but this would take away from Qimonda the pioneer role many attribute to her, even if not herself. The role of all these “factories”, including Qimonda, would just be to import the so-called wafers, in the case of Qimonda from her own factory in Dresden, to cut them, to encapsulate, test and assemble them.

We add our hypothesis: Qimonda/Infineon came to Portugal just to take advantage of the comparatively low Portuguese salaries and of the government subsidies it was able to harvest. Qimonda pulled the plug in Dresden and there was no way Qimonda could survive in Vila do Conde, as the facilities here were just an assembling factory, a maquiladora.

posted by Carlos A. Páscoa Machado @ 7:16 PM

4 Comments:

At Sunday, March 29, 2009 4:48:00 AM, Anonymous Joaquim said...

Permita-me discordar um pouco do seu Post. A Qimonda não é (era) apenas um assemblador. É um centro de competência em teste de alta velocidade, uma extensão de Front End com WLT (wafer level test).
Têm aida uma parte de Investigação e desenvolvimento a nivel de desenvolvimento de Packages.
Presumo que saiba o que isso é, já que opina con tanta convicção.

Quanto á vantagem que a Qimonda tirou dos baixos salários, concordo consigo (se os compararmos á Alemanha). Mas tornar a Qimonda Portugal num mero "maquilador" é diminuitivo da competência das pessoas que lá trabalham e revela algum desconhecimento da realidade. Concordo que a verdadeira tecnologia de ponta está em Dresden, nas o nivel de excelencia atingido pela unidade de Vila do Conde não pode ser diminuido.

Cumprimentos
Joaquim
Um (ainda) empregado da Qimonda Portugal

 
At Sunday, March 29, 2009 6:20:00 PM, Blogger Carlos A. Páscoa Machado said...

Olá Joaquim.
Não, na realidade desconheço em que consistem os processos que enuncia, e muito agradecia que me esclarcesse sobre isso e a percentagem que esses processos representariam no total das actividades da Qimonda em Vila do Conde.
A minha hipótese era conscientemente provocadora para tentar suscitar reacções e longe de mim estar a ofender o brio dos trabalhadores da Qimonda.
A sua explicação contribuiria para me esclarecer a mim e a todos os que se derem ao trabalho de ler o meu despretencioso blog.
Grato pela sua colaboração.

 
At Monday, March 30, 2009 11:25:00 AM, Blogger Virgílio A. P. Machado said...

Déjà vu,

Wasn't this what happened to Magnetic Peripherals, Inc. Portugal, a Control Data company, later Imprimis, a subsidiary of Control Data?

http://www.jorgegrave.com/graveblog/?p=20

http://www.engenhoeobra.com.pt/esxx_investigacao_21.asp?investigacao=3 (1970)

 
At Thursday, April 16, 2009 2:42:00 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

It is important to clarify that DRAM business and semiconductor in general is highly supported by public funding. There are no exceptions. Among the DRAM producers we can name immediatly the 3 top ones: Hynix, Elpida, Samsung, but we cannot forget the Taiwanese which account with additional 4 companies in the top 10. Guess why? why Intel got 2 billions from New York state to build a factory in US... It is well known by the economists the so called multiplication effect in the economy.
So, I really get upset when some gurus talk about leaving the free market to function. Do you know that 2 independent consultants said that Qimonda is one year ahead of competition? Perhaps today is the only one in world capable of adding value.
So, it looks like Europeans are still sleeping.

 

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