MESA, Ariz. -- Motorola Inc. today announced it will close a three-decade-old chip manufacturing site here during the next two-and-a-half years as part of a restructuring of operations.
The Mesa site includes Motorola's Bipolar Manufacturing Center and its 20-year-old MOS-6 wafer fab. The company said the shutdown will affect 1,200 workers, with many of these employees expected to be transferred to other sites in the Phoenix area. However, Motorola said some jobs will be lost, and the number of cuts depends on several factors, including chip markets conditions.
"This decision is a continuation of our manufacturing renewal process to improve asset management by investing in advanced technologies and consolidating our older production facilities," said Chris Belden, corporate vice president and director of Technology & Manufacturing at Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector.
"At the same time we are phasing out manufacturing at the Mesa site, we plan to expand production at our MOS-12 facility in Chandler and CS-1 facility in Tempe," Belden added. "Depending upon business conditions, this should enable us to transfer a majority of the Mesa employees to other jobs."
Motorola and other chip makers worldwide have cut back semiconductor operations they wait for a recovery from the severe downturn in 2001. Motorola's chip plants are now operating at about 50-to-60% of installed capacity, according to company officials last month. The semiconductor group posted an operating loss of $381 million on shrinking sales of $1.3 billion in the second quarter (see July 12 story).
Belden said some devices now being manufactured at the Mesa site will be transferred to other Motorola plants, but other products will be phased out on end-of-life schedules. The bipolar manufacturing line makes chips for a range of applications, including automotive systems. The bipolar center will phase out production over the next 18 months, Motorola said.
The MOS-6 fab is scheduled to phase out production over the next 30 months. Motorola said this fab produces complex radio frequency (RF) products for wireless communications and infrastructure customers.
Motorola acquired the Mesa site in 1967 and began wafer fabrication in its original Bipolar-1 fab in 1969. Other fabrication lines were added to the site over the next 12 years. The MOS-6 fab began production in 1981, and the Bipolar Manufacturing Center (BMC) was created in 1998 with the consolidation of three bipolar production lines into one facility.
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