Modenas (Gurun)

Website: www.modenas.com.my
Industry: Motorcycle Manufacturer
Address: Kawasan Perindustrian Gurun
08300 Gurun Kedah
Tel: 04-466 8067

Modenas (Motosikal dan Enjin Nasional) is located at the Gurun Industrial area. It is very near the Gurun highway exit, and you can actually see the plant from the highway as it is located just beside it. Modenas have quite a large area with several buildings. Most of the time, you will use motorcycle to move from one building to another building (obviously easy to obtain a bike since they are the bike manufacturer.

In term of facilities, Modenas have a sport complex that houses several court including badminton, takraw and volleyball. They also have a football field inside the facilities. Parking won't be a problem since most of the employess commute by bikes and they have a large areas that can be converted to car parks if have to. In the engineering section, you will have to share the computers if you want to use CAD/CAM software, since they have only a few fix licenses installed. The main CAD/CAM software is Catia.

The community are mostly Malays with a very few percentage of Chinese and Indians. Mostly political oriented culture. During those days when I was there, if you are a PAS supporter, you better lay low or face the consequences, but since Kedah has been taken by the opposition now, I don't really know how it is nowadays. Most of the labour workers are men, obviously due to the nature of the product which requires heavy machining and heavy lifting. Because of there are a lot of heavy machining, it is also important that you are careful in your daily works, otherwise, you'll end up adding yourself in the accident statistics.

It adopted japanese work culture since they partnered with Kawasaki, which means, if you want to look good, you must come very early and leave very late ( so that you seems to be very hardworking guy). It has punch card system, so better have a good reason if you punched red. The starting salary for a fresh graduate is around RM 1700, with and extra fuel allowance of RM200, so makes it RM 1900. But you can live with that since you are staying in Gurun. The cost of living there is quite cheap. Modenas does not offer a good benefit plan at that time (not sure now, before I left, the HR manager told me that they want to add mode benefits, so if any Modenas staff read this, I hope you can send me an email so that I can update this blog). It only have 1 month contractual salary. The yearly increment also is quite low.

The main business model is manufacturing. They have in-house Low Pressure Die Cast (LPDC) facilities to produce the engine blocks. Also several milling machines to produce other engine parts. The painting house is also available in-house as well as welding. If you are a manufacturing engineer there, your main role is mostly to assist production by fabricating jig and fixtures as well as troubleshooting machine or machine settings. There is also an R&D facilities in Modenas, but it is not really a full fledge R&D centre yet. Just doing minor design changes here and there to fit the Malaysian market requirements. I think it will be a good practice ground for those who are interested in pursuing R&D career path.

All in all I would say it is not a bad company to work if you want a relaxing life in Gurun. But if the money that you are after, then better look for other company. My rating 5/10.