Economic Daily Newspaper Group interview Alan Yang

--Interview with Mr. Alan Yang, General Manager of Amphenol Assemble Tech

Xiamen, an opening-up coastal city in the Southeast China, has attracted numerous famous foreign enterprises thanks to its characterized geographical position and favorable investment environment. These enterprises, like bright stars, show their charms for this beautiful city. Amphenol AssembleTech, an extremely dazzling star among them, discloses its secrets to the Multinationals in China through Mr. Alan Yang, its general manager.

Yang, a humorous and amiable person, has obtained his MBA degree from Canada. In 1992, he made great efforts to introduce the world-famous home furniture supermarket, IKEA, into China, and succeeded finally due to a lot of pre-stage market researches. Long-term management experience creates his rapid thought, chipper personality and outstanding courage and insight. According to his introduction, Amphenol Group, was founded in 1932 and now is one of the biggest connector manufacturers in the world. This listed enterprise (in New York Stock Exchange) provides connection solution and interconnection products for all industries through 9 business divisions. Its annual sales reached USD 2.1bn in 2005 and ran businesses all over the world through over 16,000 employees in more than 60 plants, of which 16 plants are established in China. Amphenol Group ranked the 60th in the Global IT Industry Assessment of Business Weekly in 2005.

As a China-based sole-investment enterprise of Amphenol Group, Amphenol AssembleTech specializes in designing, producing and marketing communication equipments like electric apparatus, electronic and optic-fiber connector, coaxial cables, flat cables and other connection series products. These products are widely used in communication and information processing sectors, including cable-TV, mobile-communication, date exchange, aviation and other traffic and industrial sectors.

Before Yang taking the post, Amphenol AssembleTech was always in the state of deficit. Under his leadership, through drastic reform, systematic innovation, optimized management, broadening sources of income and reducing expenditure, the enterprise steps into a healthy development track. Yang resolutely cut off the production of AST Division in US, only leaving sales, after service and research departments there, and transferred all productions to Xiamen; meanwhile, the former foreigner-based management team is changed into a native-oriented one. On the aspect of raw material purchase, Yang emphasizes local purchase instead of foreign-oriented one in the past; on educational resources, Yang inclines onto the domestic staffs to enable them master professional skills, so that the staff training and in-job study are improved and thus an effective and united workgroup is established. In his early leading period, Yang put forward a slogan for the staff, namely “to fight, to learn, to win”. Once the enterprise stepped into a right track, this slogan turned to “Happy Work, Happy Life”. In terms of management, moderate tension and relaxation as well as objective-oriented view were advocated. Yang put forward four requirements for the staffs: the first is to love your motherland, the Chinese in the foreign enterprise should win glory for China; the second is to love your post; the third is to devote for your occupation, to keep rigorous style and pay attention to details; the fourth is to grow, making the staff believe that it is the best option to work in Amphenol, encouraging them to learn constantly at work and thus making progress and grow up in constant study. In Yang’s opinion, a successful enterprise needs 5 kinds of staff: the staff with pressure-bearing ability, the staff with strong study ability, the staff with creative thought, the staff with good execution ability and the staff with leading ability. The enterprise ought to create conditions for staff to enrich their knowledge structures and improve their comprehensive diathesis, to realize the development of the staff in an all-round way.

Besides staff’s work, Yang also cares their leisure-time life and often organizes entertainment activities to improve the relationship between managements and tier-one workers. Yang sets himself an example to others, going down to the tier-one units and caring the sufferings of the staff, advocating the equality in front of the job, and implementing transparent management, to create a fair, open and just competition environment. The talents nowadays have already risen to “human capital” from “human resources” in the past, which cannot be imitated and duplicated by competitors, Yang says. Speaking of competitive advantages of the enterprise, Yang says, the core competitive power of the enterprise mainly represents in four aspects: price, quality, just-in-time delivery and engineering ability. Through constant innovation, optimized management and effective reconstruction of various resources, Amphenol AssembleTech has formed unique competitive advantages and won reputation among customers both home and abroad, including IBM, CISCO, DELL, HP, EMC and LENOVO, providing high-quality electronic assembly service for them for a long time.

Throughout one year and eight months since Yang took the post, Amphenol AssembleTech has represented enormous changes: its plant is removed to Xiamen from Zhangzhou; the staff quantity rises to over 700 persons from originally 150 persons; the turnover rises to USD 25m from USD 13m; the foreign-oriented purchase is changed to local ones, cutting the cost off sharply; and the enterprise starts to make up the deficits and get surpluses.

With confidence to the development prospect of the enterprise, Yang says: "we will continue to increase the turnover, improve the enterprise, upgrade internal industry, develop high-tech products, increase the support parts for consumable electronic products such as notebook PC, flat TV, home theater etc. By 2008, the turnover will reach USD 50m, and Amphenol AssembleTech will become a successful example of industry strategic transfer to China by Amphenol Group." environmental actions; (2) conduct pollution control throughout the whole operational process, from material purchasing to product processing, thus controlling the total amount of pollution; (3) keep improving techniques to save energy and resources and reduce consumption and waste; (4) work hard to improve the skills and environmental awareness of the whole staff and enhance their sense of social responsibility; (5) establish external communication paths which are available to the public.

In regard to occupational safety and health: To ensure the safety and health of its employees and related personnel, and protect the safety of both company and individual property, Amphenol AssembleTech promises that it will (1) strictly comply with laws and regulations on occupational safety and health published by the state and government authorities as well as the industry’s standards and other requirements; (2) provide proper training about occupational safety and health to the whole staff, make efforts to control risks to health and safety during producing and operating, prevent the occurrence of accidents and persist in improving occupational safety and health management system; (3) establish external communication paths and make them available to interest-concerned personnel.

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