Where IT comes from: Pure Storage’s lean Czech assembly

Loyal and valued staff

Shopfloor staff “are not skilled”, says Černy, but he is keen to emphasise they know the job well and are valued. And it’s an environment with strict controls on static electricity owing to the risk to damage to componentry.

“They are mostly women,” he says. “I think that’s good. They are sensitive. They know the value of the product. We have long retention periods – they’ve been here years – and are multi-level operators that know every [assembly] station.”

Six Sigma and lean are built-in to make sure we learn from mistakes. It’s OK to make mistakes, but stupid to do it twice or three times

“They’re even so experienced that they can work directly with the engineers and give good feedback,” adds Černy. 

Production is tightly monitored, with component and assembly barcodes tracked through their production lifecycle. Assembly staff work to instruction manuals viewed via on-bench monitors. Not because they don’t know their work well enough, but because it constantly changes as equipment configurations change due to feedback received from the field.

Each workstation is monitored by CCTV, not to keep an eye on staff, says Černy, but to provide evidence if damage or faults are discovered down the line.

“We can see who built what, and when, and whether anything went wrong, with processes monitored matched to parts serial numbers,” says Černy. “So, if something happens, we can say it is not at the Foxconn site. We’ve had cases where there has been damage and have proved it didn’t happen here.”

After assembly, arrays go through rigorous testing, for general base configuration (“vanilla”) and customer-specified configurations (“chocolate”). The plant runs a constant temperature of 24°C to mimic datacentre temperatures, while there are also 35°C “burn in” chambers where hardware is stress tested beyond temperatures normally encountered.

This happens to all FlashBlade arrays due to their higher performance levels, and the first 1,000 of any new configuration of an array.

At the end of the line, arrays are fully inspected and packaged for shipment to customers. 

That’s not the end of the story, however. As we’ve seen, testing of systems built to replicate customer setups can continue for years after at Pure’s R&D centres. Meanwhile, components and sub-assemblies are also refreshed for those that pay for Pure products via their Evergreen subscription model. All of which, arguably, contributes to lean principles in its operations.