As with Pure Storage’s research and development (R&D) efforts, its final product assembly also rests on a three-site system. Flash arrays put together at regional sites – two in Texas and one in Czechia – cater for regional demand. We visited its European assembly location in Pardubice, Czechia, to see how it works.
Pure occupies a small part of a site run by Taiwanese contract manufacturing giant Foxconn, which is Czechia’s second largest exporter after Skoda and employs 4,500 people in the country.
Its relationship with Pure stretches back 10 years at the Pardubice site, which is built in part of a former Tesla (the Czech electronics company) factory that dates to 1964. The facility covers a vast area devoted to Pure Storage FlashArray and FlashBlade assembly, of which 30 and four are produced per shift respectively.
Pure’s Pardobice operation forms one third of its global assembly capacity, with arrays made to order on a lead time of less than two weeks from customer order to fulfilment. The plant also produces upgrade components for customers on the Evergreen subscription model, as well as replacement units. Ordinarily, it runs only one eight-hour shift, but can take up the slack from Pure’s other two facilities should the need arise, as part of its business continuity/disaster recovery provision, by running three shifts.
Components come in as sub-assemblies, such as controllers and power supplies, and components, such as central processing units and memory, from plants in Vietnam, Mexico and the US, by air. China is not on the supplier list, says Pure Storage supply chain manager Jiri Černy, or at least it won’t be soon.
“We’re working to have zero from China, because of the geo-political situation,” he says.
Production is “almost just-in-time”, says Černy, referring to the tight timescales used to deliver components directly to production. In Pure’s case, a larger warehouse on the Foxconn site – “thousands of pallets’ worth” – but some distance away holds stocks of parts that are delivered to the assembly area twice a shift, with two days’ worth held there.
Work in the facility runs on lean manufacturing principles, and the kind of upstream-downstream information flows that implies.
“Six Sigma and lean are built-in to make sure we learn from mistakes,” says Černy. “It’s OK to make mistakes, but stupid to do it twice or three times.”
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 Jiri Černy, Pure Storage
“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.
