A Year After Killer Tsunami, Sony Factory Faces Tough Reality - trappawkwast86

The story of this Sony factory, which took the full brunt of a powerful tsunami that clean through a year agone, reflects that of much of Japan's northeastern coast – abrupt tragedy, battled with inventiveness and stoic resolve, and now black economic reality.

Smashed cars piled crosswise the street from a Sony factory in Tagajo, northern Japan, a year after the area was ravaged by a powerful tsunami. IDGNS Pic

Electronics factories throughout the region were disrupted by the magnitude-9.0 seism and baneful tsunamis that followed on Process 11 parting year, but few took the damage like Sony's Sendai Technology Center, settled little than a mile from the sea.

Earthquakes are common in the region, but tsunamis less so. Locals were caught off-guard when the waters crashed this far inland, flooding to meters deep inside minutes and carrying a churning morass of cars and debris. Many in the neighbourhood raced to take refuge in the facility's of import building, at six stories high-pitched the tallest around.

Employees at the mill, Sony's main production base for professional videotapes, blank Blu-ray of light Discs and another media products, quickly made makeshift gobs from containers and new materials. They used them to pluck the great unwashe from the freezing waters and later to ferry food and supplies to nearby shelters. Chief operating officer Howard Stringer would publicly commend them for their "bravery, generousness and ingenuity."

When the water receded in the following years, the roads were whole blocked with smashed cars and debris, and table of contents of the factory had spilled out into the surrounding neck of the woods. Weeks later, risque labels from Sony's video tapes still fluttered around the mud-caked streets nearby.

Lazy Recuperation

Workers clad in masks, tutelar suits and wooden-headed boots set about restoring the factory almost immediately after the waters absolved, but the Sendai Applied science Center was among the last of Sony's tsunami-tainted plants to come online. Full production didn't set about for nearly six months, and the manufacturing of some parts was shifted to other locations entirely.

Workers on their way into a Sony manufactory in Tagajo, northern Japan, a year after the area was ravaged aside a powerful tsunami.

Today, when factory employees arrive they park across the Street from a wad piled high with heaps of smashed vehicles, and walk of life by dump trucks and large cranes that are still making repairs. Sony representatives declined consultation requests and get at to the factory curtilage.

The plant is located in Tagajo, a sleepy suburb of 61,000 residents. They were spared the utter devastation of other communities near, their 189 dead Beaver State wanting a small percentage of the 19,000 overall in Japan. But most incomplete the families there had scathe to their homes, as well as hundreds of localised businesses.

The Sony factory in one case again stepped into the void, making about a third of its 113,000 square toes meters of floor space available to topical businesses, free of charge. A local government-backed arrangement that is running the program has gestural up nine companies and occupied fractional the available distance.

"This will help invigorate the business residential district," said Hitoshi Ishikawa, an official at the Miyagi Organization for Industry Promotion, which manages the internet site. "It's very rare for a company to DO this."

Scaling Back

Unfortunately for some workers, the space on the factory floor became available because Sony is grading back its own production at the manufacturing plant. Information technology as wel made battery electrodes and optical components for projectors earlier the tragedy, but output has been shifted elsewhere. Employment at the Tagajo plant, which was over 1000 previously accordant to media reports, had been slashed to 900 as of January.

Twisted barriers persist in front of a Sony factory in Tagajo, northern Japanese Archipelago, a year after the country was ravaged by a powerful tsunami.

So the same local employees that were praised by Sony's Chief operating officer are now organism set bump off, for some through the companionship not revitalizing their contracts. This is common in Japan for large companies, and can avoid the mark and legalities of outright firings. Earlier this month a protest butt against was held near the mill, and organizers said about 300 people showed up.

"They are exploitation the disaster as an excuse to let people go," said Shinni Otomo, a local union representative.

A Sony spokesman said the cutbacks were ready-made every bit a event of the shift in production.

Sony is facing $3 billion in losings during the current business enterprise year that runs through this month, overburdened by one-off costs like the earthquake and flooding in Thailand, but also because it is troubled in a tough economy where consumers birth plenty of options from foreign competitors. Incoming CEO Kazuo Hirai, who will payoff ended from April, has not ruled forbidden more farm out cuts.

All along Nihon's seacoast, a similar dynamic is flowering. For residents that patterned together in the days and months subsequently the disaster, the adrenaline of extant the first class is fading, and they are once again faced with the reality of a stagnant economy.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/468966/a_year_after_killer_tsunami_sony_factory_faces_tough_reality.html

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