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| He’s a Hiro |
 HISAHIRO Miyake, president of First Sumiden Circuits Inc. (FSCI), walks around the flexible printed circuits (FPC) plant wearing the company uniform and a company ID that says he’s “Hiro.” He takes his lunch at the canteen and promotes safety on the premises with the greeting, “Go Anzen-Ni” or “Let’s be safe!”Seconded by FSCI majority owner Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (SEI), Miyake’s association with FSCI began in 1997 with a 10-day audit of Philippine operations. He was then working as a consultant industrial engineer for SEI, and tasked to identify productivity, quality and process improvements across SEI’s 30 business units. He had done work in support of companies that produced power cables, communication cables including optical fibers, semiconductors, electronic wiring, and automobile wiring including harness assembly, among others. Aside from the Philippines, he had been sent to audit operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, and the United States. After giving his report on FSCI to the general manager for Industrial Engineering in SEI, he did not expect to be assigned to FSCI the following year, beginning March 1998, as representative of Quality Assurance and Engineering. ‘Implement your recommendations’ “My boss told me, ‘Implement your recommendations for the FPC division in the Philippines.’ So instead of just being a consultant telling companies how to improve, I became owner of the management of the processes that needed to be improved,” Miyake recalls. H e stayed in the country until May 2005 when FSCI operations were deemed stable and became general manager of the FPC Plant of SEI in Japan, where he gained a perspective of top management activities for the business. Beginning October 2006 until August 2007, he managed the birth of a new FPC venture in Vietnam. After building the factory and installing the new production line in a period of eight months, he was all set to manage Vietnam operations only to be recalled by SEI headquarters and reassigned to FSCI. The global business environment was quite challenging and FSCI was losing money. H e was tasked to once again help stabilize the FPC division in the Philippines in August 2007 initially as SVP for Quality and Engineering but, eventually, as FSCI president two months after, when Dr. Dan Lachica became director of the electronics sector of then newly-created First Philec. Preparing for another growth “Fortunately, FSCI is making money now. The next task is to prepare the company for another growth. SEI in Japan is always developing new technologies and new products. We are now in the high-end market and they are looking for ways to distribute this new technology outside Japan,” says Miyake FSCI is among SEI units that are candidates for expansion along with business units in China, Thailand and Vietnam. “I must show (SEI headquarters) that if they need to install new machines, there is space available here. If they need good machine operators, good engineers, we have them all here. If they need a new building, we still have space by the car park for a new plant,” Miyake explains. Aside from introducing new technologies, he says the other way to grow FSCI is to increase its higher value FPC assembly business. FSCI is the only SEI plant outside Japan doing end-to-end FPC manufacturing to assembly. He is hopeful that FSCI will be able to manage growth along these two paths. Shared vision with Lopez Group | Miyake believes SEI and partner Lopez Group are bound by something nobler than mutual business aspirations. “At the staging of ‘Undaunted’ where FSCI chairman OML (Oscar M. Lopez) introduced the Lopez Credo, he talked about the Lopez spirit. It made me very, very proud that he said he got the idea from Sumitomo, and this was because the success of Sumitomo is exactly what the chairman aspires for. In Sumitomo, it is ingrained in all of us to be spiritually dedicated to the business, to possess reliability for our customers, to contribute to society, and to not focus on short-term profit but always think long-term,” said Miyake. He has lived by these principles since joining the Sumitomo group in 1981. Though he does not know where his next posting will be, he feels right at home in the Lopez Group with whom he says he shares the same spiritual background. “We share a vision, and that makes us good partners,” Miyake says. Comments (0)
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