A Publication for Mostek Employees June 1979
When Mostek Corporation opened its doors for business in dune, 1969, 12 people reported for work. Since that time, the company has grown into a worldwide organization with offices and representatives scattered across 27 countries. The Carrollton work force alone has grown from less than 50 to more than 3, 500 in the seven years Mostek has been located here. The company's total workforce is estimated at 5,600 worldwide with 1,500 employees located at the Penang, Malaysia assembly facility. When Mostek was first formed, the employees wore many different hats and filled in where they were needed as assembly operators, shipping and receiving clerks and salesmen. The first ,Wafer Fabrication Center was located in Worcester, Massachusetts in space leased from Sprague Electric Company. In order to produce the first chips, Mostek contracted with a small group of Sprague employees. In 1973 Mostek moved to Carrollton and opened the first wafer fabrication area with approximately 45 employees. The rest is history. From those beginnings, Mostek has become Carrollton's largest employer and enjoys a reputation worldwide as an excellent employer. With that growth have come numerous opportunities for advancement for the employees of Mostek. "Many employees who started with Mostek as operators and in other similar areas have become supervisors and general foremen," said Bob Massie, personnel director. The future continues to look bright for the employees of Mostek with expansions planned in Colorado Springs, Colorado and in Ireland within the coming years.
Carol Crutcher remembers Saturday, August 30, 1969, as a busy day. "I interviewed for a job with Mostek at 10 in the morning and got hitched at three in the afternoon," she laughed.
It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship for Carol-not only with her husband Don, but also with her employer, Mostek.
Those 10 years have seen Carol rise from a post as a keypunch operator and data coder to her present highly responsible post of Customer Service Manager-a job she joked her way to.
Through those years, she's kept a positive outlook on her job and the people she works with.
"I really don't consider it work and I think the key to my attitude about Mostek is the people. Mostek is a very professional company, but they don't crack the whip. They give you the responsibility to do the job and you do it."
Carol remembers the Mostek of 1969 as a highly excitable operation. "It was a young company and when we'd do a job, it was the first time it had been done," she said.
Carol worked for a brief period as a data coder until assembly operations were moved to Dallas in 1970. Because she had worked in assembly at Texas Instruments, she was asked to join the assembly division of Mostek.
At the time, the Dallas operation consisted of 16 to 17 employees who pitched in wherever they were needed to complete a job.
"I did everything in assembly," she said including running a branding "machine" which was a rubber stamp "taped very carefully to a pencil."
Because the company hadn't begun to reach the volume of work apparent today, there was a lot of "slack time" for assemblers. Carol generally spent her slack time filling in for sick workers working as a secretary, receptionistshe even "peeled ruby" in the engineering department.
When the company moved to Carrollton, Carol filled in for an ailing receptionist and received training on the complicated switchboard and telex machine to become the company receptionist. She filled her idle seconds by typing purchase orders.
It was in her job as receptionist that Carol found out about the availability of her present job.
"One day Dave West decided that we needed to have a customer service department and he started interviewing people for the position," she said. "He was having trouble finding a person to fill the position so one day, when I was raking a bunch of resumes back to his office, I jokingly told him that I could do -ie job and probably for a lot less salary." v was just a joke at the time and Dave kept interviewing people for the job.
hen one day he came in and said: `Do you really think you could handle the job?' I said I'd give it a try. I made him promise that I could have my job as a receptionist back if I didn't work out."
She moved into an office with Jim Garrett and West-"They both smoked cigars," she winced. Now she has her own office and a staff of 12.
It would be easy for her to become disassociated with the products and the company and simply manage her people. "But I'm the type who has to be doing something," she said. "I've got to be in there dealing with things-I'm not a time card signer."
She admits that she looks back on the formation of Mostek and the early, hectic years with fondness. "But, I sit back and look at our operation then and our operation now and say, `Wonder how in the hell did we do that?"
Ray sold business to work
Mike Ray
sold his television antennas and burglar alarm systems installation business in Demon to
enter the electronic manufacturing field.
Times were beginning to get hard for his business. RCA had moved into town and began undercutting his prices and the construction boom at North Texas State University, where he did a lot of contract work, had fallen off.
"I came out of the business on top," he said. "The guy I sold it to went bankrupt."
Mike figures that he made the right move at the right time when he sold his business. He also figures that he made the right move when he joined Mostek.
He went to work as a second shift supervisor in Research and Development in 1974, about the same time that the company was moving its Worcester, Massachusetts operation to Carrollton. He supervised a total of four people.
In a few short months, that number grew six-fold. "We were in a growing stage," he said, "because the production of the 4027 was just beginning to take shape and we started backing up the FAB to help with production. In addition to producing the 4027, we were also producing 4096's and other RAMS and ROMs."
As Mostek grew, so did the managerial and manufacturing expertise of Mike Ray.
After three and a half years as a shift supervisor, Mike was promoted to the position of Manufacturing Manager of FAB Three-a post he currently holds.
Although he holds the title of Manager, Ray is more likely to be found on the FAB area line rather than in his office in the Crosby I building.
"I spend about 80 percent of my time on the line because I feel I need to keep my hand in the pot," he said, "and because I'm not much for paperwork.
It's common for Mike to leave his office to fill in for a sick worker. It's a task he enjoys doing because this business has been his hobby since he was in junior high school.
Although he has given some thought to going back into business for himself, he believes the benefits at Mostek far outweigh any benefits he might have in being his own boss.
"Working for yourself can be a hassle," he said, "plus you don't have near the benefits."
Ray said he also appreciates the chances for advancement within the company.
"Just about everyone I've hired has advanced to a supervisory position within a few months of work. When I joined Mostek, it looked like an industry that was really going to take off."
Both Mostek and Mike Ray have.
The technology of a company
In 10 years a company builds a lot of memories for those who built the organization. In an industry as technologyoriented as Mostek, advances in science and engineering can make or break a company.
For those who have been around Mostek the longest, there are different opinions on which technological breakthrough was most significant to the growth of the company.
Marlin Shopbell, manager of Process Improvement, for example, believes advancements in ion-implantation "gave us an advantage that no other company had at the time."
Ion-implantation-the process of bombarding silicon wafers with ion particles-helped the company develop electronic components that had lower threshold voltage than those components manufactured by Mostek competitors.
"The basic research on ion-implantation was done by Sprague Electric (the one-time parent company of Mostek)," said Shopbell. "Mostek was the first company to use it in the production phase of Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) circuitry.
"A number of companies were experimenting with it but apparently their research divisions weren't talking to their design divisions," said Shopbell.
Chen Young, FAB 3 manager, maintains that the most significant breakthrough in technology for Mostek came when the company made the decision to develop Random Access Memories that used 16 rather than 22 connector pins.
At the time components manufacturers
and the industry hadn't settled on a standard. Manufacturers and customers alike were nervously looking for someone to take a leadership position and produce something that would become a standard when Mostek came up with the 16-pin design on its 4K RAM.
But competition developed an 18-pin design and it appeared that Mostek was going to have to wait out the rest of the industry while promoting its own design.
Finally, more and more customers began to use the Mostek design and built their systems around it.
"That was a very significant time for Mostek," said Young. "Had our design not caught on, Mostek would have been in very bad shape."
"In fact," said Chao Mai, Assistant VicePresident for Research and Development, "the leadership role in the technological advancement of all dynamic RAMS has been a key to Mostek's continued success in the industry."
"Basically, our leadership in this area has been a team effort," he said. "Our effort has involved everyone from assembly right on up to management."
The esssence of Mostek
To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
-William Blake
Auguries of Innocence
William Blake, the 18th Century English poet, is known best for the obscurity of the meanings in his work.
He has been debated for centuries and will be debated for centuries more. For many, the meaning of Blake poetry escapes into the same universe about which he often wrote.
For FAB Four Manager Myint Hswe, however, the obscure prose written nearly 200 years ago is the essence of Mostek Corporation and the whole semiconductor industry.
Hswe makes reference to the first line of the Blake poem.
"He talks about a grain of sand," said Hsew. "Something as insignificant as grain of sand-silicon-has turned out t be the basis of an entire industry."
Or, as Mr. Blake would put it, a whole new world was locked inside a grain sand.
Those devices created by Moste from the tiny chips made from grains sand have added a whole new dimension to man's ability to achieve. "Those creations," said Hsew, "have been used to expand man's knowledge."
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