DEC Singapore’s History
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) appointed a local company, Automated Systems, to market its products in Singapore and the neighbouring regions, particularly the smaller computers. This was decided when DEC’s general international, Dr. Ronald Smart, manager came to Singapore in end February 1973 who mentioned that the minicomputer revolution has not yet reached this region. DEC PDP minicomputer range were launched. DEC PDP-8, one of its minicomputers, would be invaluable to many local firms in terms of quality testing and process control as the level of sophistication and technology increased, coupled with labour shortages.
A year later in February 1974, DEC Data fair, a four-day exhibition-cum-seminar on the role of minicomputers was held at the US trade centre in Yan San Building. Minicomputers were introduced here in the mid-sixties and are so called because of their size and relatively low price. Among their various applications are engineering and scientific computations, process control, numeric control of machine tools and data acquisition and logging. On show is the DEC Data-systems 330 including the central processor, magnetic disk, magnetic DEC tape, printer and display terminals.
Singapore had its first computer manufacturing plant as DEC finalised to set up its production facilities in the Republic to make computer equipment and parts. This new potential investment was accorded excellent tax treatment by the EDB as computer manufacture fell within the Government’s list of priority industry. DEC was expected to start its initial production at the end 1980 and was offered a 2.2. hectare piece of land in Ang Mo Kio Industrial Park II by the HDB for its own factory. The local facilities were expected to be significantly integrated involving production from basic components which may be sourced substantially from the local market. When the DEC subsidiary starts production, it would beef up local industrial technology further and more of various intermediate and supporting industries such as parts suppliers and software personnel training will be established. The local company would be registered as a subsidiary of the DEC group’s Swiss manufacturing arm, Digital Equipment International. The DEC group’s manufacturing plant were in the US, Europe, Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The plant would be export-oriented playing a major role in complementing the rest of the group’s manufacturing facilities. Although industrial sources indicated that the company has been actively recruiting staff for the local subsidiary, its regional executives from Hong Kong who were currently here to negotiate investment terms with the EDB insist on keeping their plans secret. DEC advertised jobs since November 1979.
Under the US-based parent company plan, Singapore was one of the three sites considered for the manufacture for various products, including the new EC personal computers. But there was a competition from Hong Kong and Taiwan where DEC is more firmly established. The Singapore factory is DEC’s newest of the three. For the manufacture of personal computers, one factor against Singapore’s favour was the relative shortage of technicians. Since DEC was the first computer factory to be set up here, its technicians tend to be drawn to newer factories and to the commercial sector. Such a situation was said to be less serious in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
DEC’s Singapore factory makes parts of the computer memory system, including memory boards, storage moulds, data cartridges, disk drives, and magnetic heads. By April 1983, DEC Singapore had about 650 staff. The demands for DEC’s VAX 11-782 computers showed upward trends while its PDP series remained popular in demand.
In May 1984, Lim Soon Hock was promoted to general manager for Asean while Casey Leaman was appointed as the new Far East marketing manager based in Hong Kong. Tom Coleman /Thomas P Coleman managed all sales activities for DEC in Asean, in addition to Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In the same month, DEC planned to transfer some of its engineering work to the Far East. By May 1984, DEC employed about 1,000 people manufacturing computer peripherals. DEC stepped up its efforts in direct selling and planned planned to set up a computer technology centre in Singapore to help develop the local software export industry. DEC and the National Computer Board discussed the details of the proposed DEC Computer Technology Centre which was the fourth besides Sperry Univac, IBM and HP.
DECtalk converted standard ASCII text into high quality speech output. The new DECtalk text-to-speech synthesizer developed by DEC of the US was launched in Southeast Asia by its local company, Digital Equipment Singapore Pte Ltd, at PerCompAsia ’84. DEC also displayed microcomputers and peripheral devices at the show. DEC unveiled the VAX 8600, then the most powerful computer system. The VAX 8600, the first of a new generation of computers in DEC’s line of 32-bit VAX systems, designed to provide the speed required in applications like biotechnology, energy management and geophysical research.
DEC appointed one of Singapore’s largest systems houses, the government-owned Singapore Computer Systems (SCS) as its turnkey specialist on December 12. DEC’s ASEAN general manager, Lim Soon Hock, said that SCS provided the software support in turnkey projects and better fill out market niches. Other products of DEC include its All-in-1.
Reference NewspaperSG (nlb.gov.sg)