14 DAY TRIAL // The end of the hard drive shortage caused by the catastrophic floods that affected Thailand seems to be in sight as Western Digital (WD) has just announced it restarted HDD production in one of its buildings in Bang Pa-in (BPI).
WD managed to get the facility ready for production one week ahead of its internal schedules.
The fab in Bang Pa-in has been submerged in some six feet of water since October 15 and WD managed to pump it dry only on November 17, while main power was restored on November 26 and production restarted just a couple of days ago.
Despite the fact that HDD production was restarted, the plant is still not 100% operational and will be producing less drives than the industry will need.
In fact, the company believes that significant industry supply constraints will continue in the March quarter and beyond.
WD believes that hard drive industry shipments in the December quarter will be limited to approximately 120 million units due to production and supply constraints related to the historic flooding in Thailand.
This estimate includes units that were in inventory at the beginning of the quarter.
"The passion, perseverance, ingenuity and execution exhibited by the WD team has been extraordinary and enabled us to make substantial progress in partially restoring our operations in Thailand, well in advance of our earliest expectations when the floods hit," said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer of WD.
"Much work remains to be done but we couldn't be more pleased with the effort and results thus far, including tremendous support from our supply partners and strategic customers," concluded the company’s rep.
Of all the hard drive makers in Thailand, WD was the most severely hit by the floods as these have completely submerged a large part of their fabrication facilities located in the affected region.