From an engineer on a moving line to the COO who moves them

Mandate

Run five plants as one network, carry the group through the semiconductor cycle without losing capability, and answer customers' growing questions about where and how their parts are made.

Outcomes

• Repaid RM 15.8 million in recruitment fees to 1,412 migrant workers by March 2022; their voluntary attrition fell from 19 to 11 per cent.
• Moved 212 part numbers out of Suzhou in 2023–24; Penang weldment first-pass yield reached 98.4 per cent and won next-generation gas-line work worth about S$60 million a year.
• Cut group cost of poor quality from 2.9 to 1.6 per cent of revenue between 2021 and 2025.
• Reduced Woodlands cleanroom energy use by 14 per cent and installed 4.2 MW of rooftop solar at Batu Kawan.
• Replaced eleven customer visits with a shared annual audit and open records for three major customers.

Decisions in context

I became chief operating officer in April 2021, at the start of the strongest upswing the semiconductor-equipment industry had seen in a decade. Revenue rose from S$790 million in 2021 to S$980 million in 2022, fell to S$860 million in 2023 and recovered to S$1.06 billion in 2025, so much of the job has been keeping capability intact through the swings. Within three months of my appointment a customer's audit found recruitment fees in our Malaysian workforce, and the repayment programme set the tone for everything after it. The Suzhou transfer followed in 2023 and 2024. I report to Martin Oei, our group chief executive, lead nine direct reports and present to the board each quarter. My priorities now are a third building at Batu Kawan and a shared audit that every major customer can rely on.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one independent directorship with the Kelvorne board's consent.

Mandate

Bring the Johor plant into the same operating system as Penang and build the group's first plant in Vietnam.

Outcomes

• Opened Bac Ninh in August 2020 with four expatriates instead of thirty; planned output reached in March 2021.
• Trained 46 Vietnamese supervisors and technicians in Penang before the plant opened.
• Moved frame fabrication for two customers from Singapore to Johor, lowering conversion cost on those parts by about 18 per cent.
• Kept the Malaysian plants supplying customers through the 2020 movement-control period at the reduced staffing the authorities permitted.

Decisions in context

This was my first role with more than one plant and more than one country. Johor had been run separately from Penang, with its own methods and measures, and my first year went into bringing it under the same daily review of yield, delivery and safety. The larger task was Bac Ninh. The board approved a S$52 million greenfield plant in June 2019, and in September I recommended opening it five months late so that Vietnamese supervisors could train in Penang first. The cohort returned home just before borders closed in March 2020, and the plant opened that August with four expatriates. Through Malaysia's movement-control period we ran Penang and Johor at reduced staffing under the permits issued to essential suppliers, rebuilding shift patterns week by week. I reported to Martin Oei and led five plant and functional heads.

Reason for the move

Appointed group chief operating officer.

Mandate

Grow Penang from a machining and frames site into the group's main plant for vacuum and gas-handling parts.

Outcomes

• Halted chamber-lid shipments for nine days after a leak escape in 2015; no leak escapes in 2016 or 2017.
• Won chamber bodies and lids for a customer's next platform, worth about RM 180 million a year by 2018.
• Commissioned a second building with an ISO Class 5 cleanroom in 2017.
• Qualified 64 orbital welders to customer standards and raised plant first-pass yield from 93 to 97 per cent.

Decisions in context

I crossed from customer to supplier in March 2013, when Kelvorne's then chief executive asked me to run Penang. I had audited the plant from the other side, so I arrived knowing its weaknesses and, more usefully, knowing what its biggest customer worried about. Penang then had 1,400 people and was mostly a machining and frames site. Over five years we built it into the group's centre for vacuum and gas-handling parts: orbital welding, helium leak testing and, from 2017, a second building with an ISO Class 5 cleanroom. The defining episode was the chamber-lid escape in October 2015, when I halted shipments for nine days at a cost of RM 7.2 million. Revenue grew from RM 330 million in 2012 to RM 610 million in 2017, and the plant reached 2,300 people. I reported to the group's chief operating officer in Singapore.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead the Malaysian plants and the planned Vietnamese site.

Mandate

Raise the quality of Varunda's Asian supply base while the company moved more of its module and part production to Asian contract manufacturers.

Outcomes

• Kept 58 of 64 suppliers trading through the 2009 downturn, with staged payments and volume commitments agreed with purchasing.
• Added unannounced night-shift visits to the supplier audit programme.
• Reduced supplier-caused defects found at integration by 46 per cent between 2010 and 2012.

Decisions in context

I took over supplier quality and development for Asia Pacific in January 2009, as orders across the semiconductor-equipment industry collapsed. My first year was spent with purchasing colleagues deciding which suppliers we could help through the downturn and on what terms; 58 of 64 survived. As demand returned, the work became auditing and developing a supply base that was taking on more of our assembly. I reported to Graham Pettifer, the vice president for global supplier quality, and led 31 engineers in four countries. The episode I remember best was a supplier whose night-shift weld records had been completed by the day supervisor. It led us to add unannounced night-shift visits to the audit programme. By 2012 supplier-caused defects found at integration had fallen by 46 per cent, and I wanted to run a plant myself.

Reason for the move

Wanted accountability for running a plant rather than auditing one.

Mandate

Shorten chamber and module assembly cycle time, then move frames and weldments out to contract manufacturers.

Outcomes

• Reduced module assembly cycle time by 30 per cent between 2003 and 2006.
• Transferred about 300 frame and weldment part numbers to four Asian contract manufacturers in 2007 and 2008.
• Completed a part-time master's degree in industrial and systems engineering in 2004.

Decisions in context

I joined Varunda's Singapore factory in May 2002 as a manufacturing engineer on chamber and module assembly. The factory built process chambers and wafer-handling modules that were shipped to Varunda's integration plants, and the work introduced me to vacuum integrity, cleanroom discipline and the cost of a part that arrives late at final assembly. I completed a part-time master's degree at Linvale in 2004 and became manufacturing engineering manager in 2006, leading a team that grew to 22. My last two years were spent moving about 300 frame and weldment part numbers out of our building to four contract manufacturers in Singapore and Malaysia, Kelvorne among them. That project made me think hard about what a supplier needs to be told, and what it can only learn by doing.

Reason for the move

Promoted to regional supplier quality and development.

Mandate

Improve yield on suspension-assembly lines, and later help transfer them to Thailand.

Outcomes

• Reduced one line's defect rate from 2,800 to 900 parts per million.
• Spent seven months in Thailand in 2001 transferring two assembly lines.
• Wrote the fixture-adjustment guides the Thai lines adopted after an eleven-week yield shortfall.

Decisions in context

I joined Ferrovale in July 1997, a month after graduating, as a process engineer on suspension assemblies for hard-disk drives. It was a volume business where defects were counted in parts per million and every line ran three shifts. With four technicians I worked on yield, and one line's defect rate fell from 2,800 to 900 parts per million over two years. In 2001 the company moved its assembly lines to Thailand's eastern seaboard, and I spent seven months there transferring two of them. The new lines missed their yields for eleven weeks because the Singapore operators' knowledge of a fixture had never been written down. I wrote the adjustment guides that finally closed the gap. When the Singapore lines closed in early 2002, I moved to semiconductor equipment.

Reason for the move

The Singapore assembly lines closed; joined a semiconductor-equipment maker.