Head Quarters: Factory #20

Our tour started slightly backwards, as we began in building #20, which is usually used for motherboard assembly. The temporary nerve center for all of the Chinese conglomerate companies exists on the 7th floor of this inconspicuous factory along the southern coast of Shen Zhen. At the time of the tour, ECS was moving the office facilities into the 10th floor of the new #26 E-Trend building (ECS Taiwan).



We would actually be returning to this factory later in the tour, but for now, we can give a few specifics about the production campus. The whole facility employs about 7,000 people, of which at least half are dedicated for quality assurance only. In 2002, ECSM was the largest motherboard production facility in the world, with over 2,000,000 motherboards and 1,000,000 adaptor cards per month in production. ASUS now produces slightly more, around 2,100,000 motherboards per month. However, this milestone is constantly traded off between the two powerhouses.

Getting to China Biloda PCB: The Birth of a Motherboard
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  • Anonymous User - Monday, October 6, 2003 - link

    "Quote # 19"
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    #17-Most people RMA products because they are ignorant fools who should be buying Dells.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    Is it a misprint, or do 50% of the originally manufactured bare motherboards fail QA? If that's true, you think they could figure out what the single biggest problem there is, fix it, and drop the fail rate to 20% or something. Yeesh. This article makes it seem like a miracle that their motherboards even work at all.

    I was going to mention how terrible a job sticking SIMM/DIMM connectors onto motherboards, all day, every day, for $150 a month would be, but then I thought there are a lot worse ways these women could be forced to make money.
  • AgaBooga - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    Any response to #7?
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    #9 you ignorant slut...

    since it is impossible to get the truth about employment practices, manufacturing practices (although the article alludes to how others around ECS are polluting)or just about anything else in china your statements just show you to be an apologist for a corrupt and tyrannical system...

    i can guarantee that there are no 'lazy' workers over there, a mistake or two on the line and you go back to the rice paddy and another slave takes your place - one hell of a motivator...
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    Nice article although ECS and it's affiliates still produce some of the worst motherboards I have ever used.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    A very interesting article.What is surprising is that it is not more mechanized and that there is so much (wo)manual labor involved!As far as the cost of labor is concerned.It may be likely that $150 is considered a good wage in China
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    A very great article, I knew that ECS was a large company. But not that large and I did´nt know that they have had Matsonic and PC Chips.

    The article could have been much more with their mainboards and Notebooks Espacially about the QA, and production technics.

    #6 ECS Produce ALOT of mainboards it is somewhat impossible to garantee a mainboard that is not defetive, or an entire shipment.

    Here they article could give us some insight on what happens with RMA mainboards at ECS, this would defently provide some insight what a mainboard manufactor do with these mainboards.

    #11, I agree with you.

    #9, to the part of the postoffice, I can only say this. In the US the law require that a Coperate Employer also hire Minority Groups in giving %.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    #6, you're an idiot, stop posting.
  • DAVIDS - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    #9, I think you're making a lot of over-generalizations about American workers. Lazy people can be found in every country. There are a lot of American workaholics who spend 50-60 hours/week on the job. Also, you seem to forget that many of the technological innovations found in computers were made by researchers here in the US. The microprocessor, random access memory, etc. are all American inventions.

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