Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/564614
September 2015 • SMT Magazine 93 lenge for us is being able to tap the proper re- source at the right time, and then being able to deploy it at the right place. That's always a challenge. Because over a period of time, you will have the resources, but not be able to move them at the right place; or there will not be a need for the resources that you've developed because the market has changed. So to me, managing that between the resources, the avail- ability, and the market itself, is the challenge. Las Marias: what strategies are you implement- ing, or have you already put in place, to address these challenges? Tan: We have built centers of excellence in each of our different operating sites—in Bulgaria, in the United States, in the Philippines, and in China, so that's one way we circumvent it. We tie it up with a very strong backend IT, which means that we have access to these technolo- gies, excellence centers, even though there are geographical distances between the different sites. So that's one way to augment it. Second, we traditionally hold a very open and flat orga- nization so that everybody works very closely with everyone. There's very little barrier that we put among the different sites and among our people. We have a very diverse management team. Even though we are a Filipino company, only about 33% of my executive staff are actu- ally Filipinos; the rest are multinationals. Las Marias: From your perspective, how has the automotive electronics industry evolved over the past decade, and what major changes have you witnessed? Tan: In 2004, we saw that only about 4% of the total value of the car is related to automotive electronics. Ten years later, in 2014, 35% of the vehicles' value was automotive electronics. It's projected that in 10 more years, up to 70% of the value of the car will be automotive elec- tronics. That change in the amount of automo- tive electronics in the value of the car is what drives us. Las Marias: what strategies do you have in place to help automotive electronics customers achieve the high-reliability requirements and at the same time drive innovation? Tan: For us, it's a continuing evolution of strat- egies. We have a very clear vision of what the end-market is evolving to. It's the path of how we get there that we constantly use all the emerging technologies, all the different policies that governments are imposing on, and then the consumer public itself—because you can have the technology that everybody thinks is great, but the consumer public is not willing to pay for. That itself is going to make it challeng- ing. And so those are the different pieces of the strategy that we incorporate on a monthly and FeAture interview DrIvING INNOvAtION continues arthur Tan, president and ceo of iMi.