Applied Materials

In the morning, when the sun just began to show itself, a group of students have already gathered in preparation of their journey to the "most important U.S company you've probably never heard of." Well, I have now (maybe a little earlier), and now you do. The group of students set out on a mini-bus, wandering through the streets of Singapore, till they reached Upper Changi Road, nearly half the island away from where they began. Thus starts the first experience of industries for several students of HCI, including myself.

Truthfully, upon arrival at the company, I did not find it particularly impressive; narrow hallways, merely two lifts, and five or six stories. We had to split up into two groups just to ascend to the 4th level, where the briefing room is.

And that's when and where the impressions began to change

First off, we were greeted by Mr Avid (correct me if the spelling is wrong), one of the GM of the company. He began telling us his life journey through education, work, till he ended up where he is now. That was a friendly, informative start. Further on, we were treated to a slew of information by various office staff. Despite being quite technical, I managed to stay generally conscious and absorb the information. Some significant pickup points include the sputtering process used to embed various elements onto wafers, and the importance of vacuum in the processes. I also developed a better understanding of transistors, which act as switches of sorts and is important in improving efficiency. Speaking about efficiency, it reminds me of Mr Avid telling us about industrial engineers, whose job is to improve systems, making them more efficient. Perhaps with greater research and learning and a bit (a lot) of innovation on the part of the students that have come, and those that will come after, efficiency will be pushed to the limits and transcend it.

Anyway, back to the journey. We were led for a production line trip by Mr Bryan. We all looked a bit silly in the safety wear, but then again, it was quite hard to recognise anyone. He showed us how many of the machines worked, the quality testing and so on. He encouraged us to ask questions. One of them was the "EMO" button on the machines. My first impression was like "how do make a machine emo (emotional in teen language)" It turns out it stood for Emergency Machine Override. The only thing lacking on the production line trip was the lack of people working. We happened to catch them on the lunch hour, when everyone was at the cafeteria.

We wrapped up the journey with a sumptious buffet, during which we interacted with some of the staff. All in all, it was an eye opening journey, which we realised that we could actually translate theory in school to reality in life.

Many thanks to: HCI, Applied Materials Inc, Mrs Eileen Tay, Mr Chia Kok Pin, and most importantly, the many friendly staff of Applied Materials who hosted us.