The Logistics of Labor and Life at Signetics
Kyle Stine · IEEE Annals of the History of Computing · 2024
Signetics Corporation expanded its integrated-circuit manufacturing globally from the 1960s to the 1980s, with logistics playing a crucial role in its growth. The Don Liddie Papers on Signetics, housed at the Computer History Museum, reveal diverse factors influencing the company's overseas strategy. Adding insight to narratives of the semiconductor industry's technological innovation and pursuit of cheap offshore labor, the internal communications, press releases, corporate brochures, and site-selection reports from Signetics present the image of a company carefully balancing the technical necessities of production and distribution with the everyday requisites of housing, education, recreation, and culture. Site selection required a wide-ranging assessment of the prospective factory in relation to the surrounding infrastructure and logistical networks that supported both the flows of materials and movements of people.