IM Flash works to fill jobs

LEHI — Contractors are preparing the interior of the massive building. Employees are coming on board. Supplier and vendors are setting up shop nearby.

Things are falling into place for IM Flash Technologies to begin production of NAND flash memory chips — used in a variety of consumer electronics, removable storage and handheld communications devices — sometime during the first quarter.

One step is hiring employees, and a Jan. 13 "meet and interview" event is designed to help the company meet its needs for production operators. About 200 have been hired, but IM Flash needs about 300 more.

IM Flash has 1,181 employees — about 400 are engineers — and figures to have between 1,850 and 2,000 by March. Meanwhile, about 3,000 contractors are at the former Micron Technology Inc. building, prepping the insides to accommodate the production lines and prepare other infrastructure for the company, a joint venture of Micron and Intel.

"We are under the most aggressive ramp-up in the history of the semiconductor world," said spokeswoman Laurie Bott. "The site is being developed to compete on a global scale in nanotechnology, and it's just very, very exciting. When you walk through here, it's just a 'wow!' at what's being accomplished."

IM Flash is about halfway through a $2 billion investment over a two-year period to build-out and equip the site, and it expects salaries over the next decade to total about $1.1 billion.

About 60 percent of the former Micron facility will be used to support the chip fabrication operations. So far, about 6.75 million construction man-hours have been spent on IM Flash, and about 4.5 million more will take place. To provide a sense of how massive the project is, placed end-to-end, the fabrication project blueprints would be 26 miles long.

"We're on schedule and are looking forward to being operational," Bott said. "And we want the Utah community to know that we are offering not just a job, but we will train someone and offer them a career."

Entry-level production operators will receive training at either Boise or Manassas, Va.; will receive $11 per hour to start; and will be eligible for performance bonuses for team members plus benefits including a matching 401(k), medical, dental, vision, holiday pay, a time-off plan and night-shift differential. The company also offers development programs for employees to pursue careers in either technical development or production leadership.