Publication date: 17 December 2009
Kyzen’s new facility in Penang plays a noteworthy role in helping us to better support our global customer base. We have all heard, “Think globally and act locally.” Many of our customers have local factories but global operations. Our new facility makes us part of the home team. Being the home team means that we speak the local languages, know the local culture because it is a part of our culture, and are in the right time zone to support and service our local customers. That allows us to act very locally. When combined with our teams in Europe and the US, we have the global team to support and service our customer all over the world. The Penang facility will certainly benefit our customers in Asia, but is also building recurring quality and confidence in our operations, giving our customers choices when sourcing for their businesses.
Kyzen customers will see several benefits immediately from this facility. The most significant is the local support and service that will be available from the excellent team we have put together in Penang. We have a tremendously talented team that, when combined with the teams in Europe and the US, allows us to work on customer problems 24 hours a day and nearly 7 days a week. Furthermore, our Penang facility will afford our customers a much shorter supply chain. With long supply chains there is always a risk ― pirates in the water off Africa, typhoons in the Pacific, or simply misjudging the amount of inventory needed are all real threats to the supply chain. Not only does this help to mitigate some of the risk to our customer in Asia but speeds up our response to their needs. Additionally, manufacturing in Penang allows our customers to reduce inventory held in-house, which makes the accountants happy because this is helps to reduce working capital.
The applications and evaluation laboratories will offer a full range of test and applications support. Customers will be able to come into our facility and run tests in a wide variety of cleaning equipment and with different Kyzen cleaning technologies. Our staff will also be able to run tests for customers that are not able to attend personally. Our facility has added capability to our facilities in the US and Europe. Again, this allows us to support our customers on a very local level.
This past year has been an interesting year for everyone in the electronics industry, and has been no different for Kyzen. We have been watching the economic weather very closely. Asia is a critical part of our business and this new facility is important to better support our Asian customers. However, when looking at the struggles of the past year, we had to delay our growth and expansion into Asia by a couple quarters. Delayed expansion delayed our growth. While we have not seen much growth from the addition of this facility we are certain that the coming years will bring further growth in Asia.
We are fortunate to be in an industry that is as resilient as ours. There are ups and downs but it always seems to come back strong. While the last year has been challenging, it reinforces the need to enjoy the good times but save for the bad times.
In honor of a long time friend and colleague that passed away last year, Kyzen has opened the Sean McShefferty Training Center (SMTC). This is a facility that will be used by industry partners and associations for meetings and training. Sean was a friend to all and we can think of no better way to honor him than to open a facility that can be used by all to further our industry and businesses.
