CHATSWORTH, Calif. -- Tandon Corp., the world's largest manufacturer of disk drives for microcomputers, said Wednesday it will lay off 1,000 people in a consolidation that represents the second major cutback in as many months.
Tandon, which operates eight plants in California, a subsidary in Singapore and a contract operation in Bombay, India, said the cutback resulted from consolidation of two of its five Southern California facilities.
The cutback at the firm's Thousand Oaks plant will reduce Tandon's total U.S. work force from 2,575 to about 1,575. Last month, Tandon laid off 400 workers in Simi Valley.
The Magnum Division at Thousand Oaks will be moved into the headquarters plant at Chatsworth, a company spokesman said, and the separate disk drive divisions will be combined.
Tandon, which began operations in 1975, went public in 1981 with shares traded over the counter.
The cutback 'is essential to maintaining cost-effectiveness in an extremely competive marketplace,' president Sirjang Lal Tandon said. 'Because of increasing price competition from our competitors manufacturing offshore, we are being forced to rely on our production capabilities in Singapore and India more than we originally intended.'
He said an increasing number of customers and potential customers are involved in offshore production and require direct delivery to plants in the Far East and Europe.
Special production of magnetic recording heads for floppy disk drives will be phased out at Chatsworth to eliminate duplicated manufacturing of products made in larger numbers offshore, Tandon said.
He said the company had contacted more than 170 technology-related companies in Southern California to place people being laid off.
