Exyte is currently building one of Malaysia's largest semiconductor facilities to date. A megaproject so complex and challenging that it requires a profound level of teamwork across international borders. The success of this project relies on the careful coordination of employees spread across Asia, facilitated by Exyte employees Anthony Brown, Saravanan Natarajan, Ng Aik Beng and Kok Ann Tan. 

 

On the Malaysian island of Penang, a semiconductor boomtown is being built. No matter which direction you look construction cranes, building shells and scaffolding shoot up into the sky. Again and again, airplanes take off and land at the nearby airport, one of the busiest in Malaysia. 
A portrait of Anthony Brown, who is standing with his arms crossed. He is wearing a blue suit jacket over a white shirt, looking directly at the camera with a calm expression.

It's always about finding creative solutions

Here in this impressive, busy city, Exyte is not building just any factory, but one of the largest and most advanced semiconductor facilities in Malaysia. "This is an extremely challenging brownfield construction project," says Anthony Brown, Global Director for Off-Site Manufacturing (OSM). "There's no place to store components, the road is narrow and must not be blocked." 

 

 

As space is extremely limited at the construction site, workers need to be very precise and careful to avoid injuries or damage to the existing structures nearby. Another challenge of working on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula is the weather. The monsoon season brings heavy rainfall and occasional flooding. But challenges like these are also why he loves his job. "At Exyte it's always about finding new, creative solutions to complete challenging projects that others think are impossible. Something that we manage with a great teamwork spirit."

 

 

Three teams - thousands of kilometers apart 

 

 

Exyte’s key solution is Off-Site Manufacturing, which happens some 800 kilometers away from the construction site, not in Malaysia but in Singapore, supported by another team over 2,700 kilometers away in Hyderabad, India. With the OSM method, component modules are not assembled on the construction site but at another location. This makes complex construction projects safer, faster, and more reliable.

 

 

 

 

But for OSM to be successful, it needs to come with perfectly matched teams that can collaborate while working at great distance from one another. While it’s logistically tricky, the company's global presence and expertise allow the method to work and make the implementation of complex solutions possible. 

A portrait of Saravanan Natarajan. He is wearing a turquoise Exyte polo shirt and smiling gently at the camera.

At the Shanta Sriram Tech Park of Hyderabad, India's fourth largest city and one of the subcontinent's major technology hubs, Design Manager Saravanan Natarajan and his colleagues at Exyte's subsidiary DES create 3D designs of the semiconductor facility's OSM components. Based on their modeling, project teams in Singapore then manufacture the components. "We're modeling, designing, and calculating for a facility a few thousand kilometers away," says Natarajan. "It only works because Exyte is a truly global company. Collaboration and communication allow us to get together as one big team even though we might be thousands of miles apart. Exyte’s strategic global footprint makes it easier for us to succeed on such a complex and fast-track project," he adds. 

 
"It’s great to see that the engineering design work that we are doing here at DES in India is being fabricated and installed elsewhere with a high degree of quality. The success of this approach will certainly provide great value to Exyte’s clients,” Natarajan says. 

A portrait of Ng Aik Beng. He is wearing a white hard hat and a high-visibility yellow safety vest with the Exyte logo. He stands in an industrial environment, surrounded by wrapped materials and pipes.

It started with an empty hall

On the western outskirts of the vibrant city-state of Singapore, Workshop Manager Ng Aik Beng, and his team of nearly 70 workers are assembling spools for the cooling system for the semiconductor factory in a workshop. Around 1,000 stainless steel and PVC pipes up to ten meters long are installed here into steel frames – designed largely by DES. 

The workers, in their blue protective suits and yellow helmets, carry out their work routinely and quickly, bolting together steel frames. There is a focused atmosphere and the team works like a well-oiled machine. It is hard to believe that just a few months ago, neither the workshop nor the team existed. 

"We set up this workshop with all the workers especially for this project. When we started a couple of months ago, we only had an empty hall," says Aik Beng. 

 

 

Everyone's opinion matters 

 

Workers from Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines were trained and familiarized with the project. "We built a team from scratch within eight months. I'm quite proud of that," says Aik Beng and smiles. 

Aik Beng works closely with his team. It's important for him that there are no closed doors for the workers in the workshop. Lunch breaks are often taken together, and everyone is listened to when there are problems or differences of opinion. "Even though our crew is completely new, we already developed a great team spirit," Aik Beng says. 

When you walk out of the hall, you see the Singapore skyline looming on the eastern horizon behind the industrial area. About 100 meters down the road lies the second workshop. There, the cooling system racks that Aik Beng and his team have assembled are integrated into modules, which are then loaded onto trucks  

Workshop set up from scratch   


„The modules are almost three meters high and eleven meters long, which is really impressive when they are loaded onto the truck,“ says workshop manager Kok Ann Tan. He too built his workshop with about 50 employees from scratch. 
 
„Packing these eleven-meter-long modules is a bit tricky“, says Brown. „But Kok Ann Tan, Ng Aik Beng and their teams really do a fantastic job.“ 

Once the modules are loaded onto the trucks, they travel through Malaysia, about 800 kilometers along the AH2 Highway, past the stunning capital of Kuala Lumpur and across the Second Penang Bridge toward Penang Island in the Strait of Malacca. 

Both Workshop Managers, Kok Ann Tan and Ng Aik Beng, have been to Penang to meet the project managers at the construction site. “This is to cultivate stronger teamwork with the team in Malaysia, to learn more about the project site’s challenges and to get to know the personnel involved in the site development,” explains Aik Beng. 

 

 

The fast pace of the project required the workshops to be set up in Singapore. The city-state is known for its efficiency. Singapore is also home to Exyte’s Global Advanced Technology Facilities team. This allowed the company to tap a large pool of qualified and experienced talent, and a faster personnel mobilization even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The modules from the workshops in Singapore are delivered by truck to Penang. At the construction site they are received piece by piece as soon as they need to be installed. 

 

 

 

Our work gives us a greater purpose 

 
At the end of the project, the teams in Singapore alone will have spent 250,000 hours in the workshops, where 1,000 modules will have been assembled. It will have taken 800 truck trips to transport the modules to their destination. 

Once the facility has been handed over to the client, millions of semiconductors will be produced for devices we all use, like computers, smartphones, and cars. "Knowing how many people will benefit from these chips gives us a greater purpose and pride in doing what we do,” says Kok Ann Tan. “This is why we are building this factory and I'm proud that we're getting it done despite all the challenges, all thanks to our great teams.” 

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