By CP Liew, Research Analyst, Electronics and Security, APAC

Mr. Shawn Cheah

Shawn Cheah has over eighteen years of work experience in the electronics manufacturing services related activities field which includes quality assurance of assembled products, operation management of manufacturing plants and business development. He has always been considered as an energetic and highly passionate individual. He also has excellent inter-personal skills and personnel management: a highly customer/client-oriented leader.

CP: How would you describe the health and outlook of the EMS (electronics manufacturing services) industry as a whole in Malaysia?

The health and outlook for the EMS industry in Malaysia is still good despite the current economic scenario. The current economic situation does not prevent us from expanding, for example, in Thailand as we already have businesses on hand due to repeating orders from our customers. In addition, we continue to expand our customer base to overseas market. Having said this, however, it is not recommended for new entrants to enter the market unless they have some businesses on hand to begin with.

Customers are more demanding in terms of requirements and additional investments are inevitable to meet these requirements. Competition in the end market causes price pressure hence the needs for manufacturing at a very high efficiency to reduce cost without jeopardizing quality. For our customers, cost and quality need to come in a pair, there is no compromise.

The award gained from our esteemed customer did not happen overnight. It was presented to us in recognition for our quality, support and delivery of services and products. We believe that quality control is an essential element for assuring long-term market survival and increasing repeat business opportunities from our customers.

In order to be in line with the growth of our customers, we must continue to invest in the expansion and upgrading of our production facilities. As SMT Technologies is a relatively small EMS provider in the overall global EMS industry with limited financial resources, we focus on major market segments such as data storage, telecommunication and high-end consumer electronics. These market segments have high demand as well as high replacement rates.

Thailand remains a very important market to us, primarily for the market segment we focus in, that is data storage. Prior to 2008, we served our customers in Thailand primarily through our plant in Malaysia. However, the competitive landscape has changed as our customers are looking for a more local kind of support. As a result, we opened a manufacturing plant in Thailand. This proximity grants us the capability of simultaneous production and timely delivery to our customers, in addition to reducing logistics costs.

In the last five years, we have encountered positive growths in terms of revenue except in 2008 which was affected by the global economic slowdown. Despite this, our customer base continues to grow; hence, we expect the next five years to be great years for us.

Currently, we are looking into collaborating with our customers in the design and development stages of new products. This will allow us to understand our customers' product development strategies and current market trends. In addition, the knowledge gained throughout the design and development stages can be used to improve manufacturing processes, which again transforms to greater cost efficiency for our customers.

SMT Technologies has served the Malaysian EMS market for over 15 years and has established itself as one of the largest EMS providers in Malaysia. It is a highly recognized EMS provider for its quality services to many multinational corporations in the computing, telecommunication, automotive and medical equipment industries. These industries include products such as hard-disk drives, Bluetooth headsets, car navigators, cordless phones, smart phones and so on. The company offers a complete range of electronics manufacturing services ranging from printed circuit board assembly and flexible printed circuit assembly to complete box build.