{"id":266,"date":"2008-12-24T22:54:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-24T22:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/?p=266"},"modified":"2013-11-17T22:32:01","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T22:32:01","slug":"ibm-greenock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/industrial\/ibm-greenock\/","title":{"rendered":"IBM Greenock"},"content":{"rendered":"

IBM built it’s first factory in Spango Valley, Greenock, in 1951; initially making typewriters, printers and other office equipment, the factory began making PCs in 1981. As production of these shfted overseas, IBM Greenock shifted to making servers and laptops.<\/p>\n

IBM sold much of it’s hardware manufacturing to Lenovo and Sanmina, who ran the plant in Greenock until 2006 before pulling out and shifting production to Hungary. 2000 IBM employees still work at IBM Greenock, mostly in a call centre, but the huge manufacturing halls stand empty.<\/p>\n

This site is absolutely huge – several football-pitch-sized halls, some on top of each other, linked by enormous corridors and 4.5km of conveyors. I walked over a kilometre end to end – much further with all the diversions. It felt strangely familiar – a long time ago, I was a mainframe systems programmer for IBM…<\/p>\n

One production hall:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the never-ending corridors:<\/p>\n

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Loads of elderly laptops still lie scattered about:<\/p>\n

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Lots of offices still have equipment and paperwork:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lots of big bits of equipment were also left:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reception was still neat and tidy:<\/p>\n

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Security was a bit lax:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Boxloads of components were sitting about:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It felt very festive in places:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The giant automated warehouse:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which they were very proud of:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I took the obligatory self-portrait:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of the dispatch area:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some places, it looks like they left in a hurry:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A giant strongroom was used to hold processors and memory chips:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Demolition looks imminent:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the offices, a typical nerd’s desk:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And a bunch of old-school Psions:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the canteen was this – I think it was some kind of artwork:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And this was for the posh customers:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IBM built it’s first factory in Spango Valley, Greenock, in 1951; initially making typewriters, printers and other office equipment, the factory began making PCs in 1981. As production of these shfted overseas, IBM Greenock shifted to making servers and laptops. IBM sold much of it’s hardware manufacturing to Lenovo and Sanmina, who ran the plant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industrial"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/3133795580_c448e2887b_z.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3yGoo-4i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}