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70 SMT Magazine • August 2017 by Stephen Las Marias I-CONNECT007 As the executive director of Zestron Preci- sion Cleaning Sdn Bhd, James Yeoh is responsi- ble for South Asia—predominantly Taiwan and the Southeast Asian region. In an interview with SMT Magazine, Yeoh discusses the challenges in the cleaning industry, and strategies that can help manufacturers address those issues. He also covers the need for continuous education when it comes to cleaning, and how automation can ensure the stability of cleaning systems. Stephen Las Marias: What is your company's sweet spot? James Yeoh: We are one of the cleaning com- panies with seven technical centers to sup- port our customers: one in the United States, one in Germany, two in China—in Shanghai and Shenzhen—one in Malaysia, one in Tokyo, and one in South Korea. Very soon we will have an eighth—in Taiwan—which we hope to start running this this year or early next year. None of our competitors has as many tech- nical centers as we have. And in all our tech- nical centers, we have more than 70 different cleaning machines, most of which are owned by cleaning equipment manufacturers for us to run evaluation and trials for customers. One thing that is unique here is that we can replicate whatever customer parameters are at different sites if there is a need to. This is one of our strongest selling points. We can do as many trials as the customer wants before they qualify our chemistry. Also, we have a very strong application technology team, and these people are so mobile. Take my region for example: Every week, there is a Zestron applica- tion engineer somewhere travelling in our re- gion to talk to customers. And we are continu- ously employing people to cater to the increase in our business as well as customer base. Another strength we have is that we contin- ue the education process for the industry. We call it Zestron Academy. We have highly quali- fied trainers to teach and train the industry. For us here in Asia, we continue to provide free seminars. In my region alone, we orga- nize 30 training sessions every year. Some of them are for the whole industry, while others we do for particular customers. For instance, one customer has 20 engineers interested in cleaning. We will come in and do the train - ing for them. Cleaning that Matters INTERVIEW