It helps to wear track shoes if you want to catch up with Stanley Wang of Pantronix Corp., Fremont, Calif. We recently caught up (briefly) with the ever-peripatetic president, chairman, CEO and founder of Pantronix, who-when he infrequently comes to a stop-is either between flights or between meetings. Pantronix is now solidly into its 26th year as the dominant independent onshore packaging foundry. Although the company carved out a niche in assembling military parts and sub-assemblies early, a few years ago, Stanley slowly set a course to expand the company's product offerings. Pantronix' major products today are in fiber optics, telecom, aerospace and the company's stalwart military product line. The latter includes both Hi-Rel and assembly of off-the-shelf devices. Military parts alone, according to the Pantronix honcho, account for 1 million units/month. "While military business is substantial, you can't survive on that business alone," he observes, "so we've become very diversified." The Fremont operation, with some 300 employees, is just the tip of the Pantronix domain. Amertron, owned by Pantronix in the Philippines, has reached a workforce of some 3,000 in two locations (Manila and Clark Airbase) with a total of four facilities. Brother Richard Wang is resident GM of Stanley's Asian operations. When Stanley is not in his Silicon Valley office, you will probably find him in the Philippines inspecting the troops at Amertron, or on a business mission to Taiwan, where many Amertron customers produce ICs and systems. Amertron's Products Amertron, says Stanley, "is growing like crazy." Traditional packages, such as PDIP and SOIC, along with module assembly, account for the majority of Amertron's work. The secret of Stanley's success might be a work ethic that includes not only taking a long, fairly conservative business view, but also working smarter and harder. In his "spare" time, he's also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California State University system. The next growth phase for the far-flung Pantronix enterprise is a planned facility in Shanghai, China, set to begin construction momentarily. The plant will open in July with about 1,000 employees, expanding gradually to 10,000.
The estimated price tag in Shanghai is $50 million. About $30 million is targeted for equipment, with the balance for bricks and mortar. "We will offer modules and sub-assembly in Shanghai, not just components." (Pantronix China will move into a city now occupied by competitor Alphatec, which operates a factory in Shanghai.) "I don't think this Shanghai plant will be the last one for us in China," Stanley adds. There are already tentative plans to site additional plants in the country, but probably outside Shanghai. The biggest problem with China today, he says, is the mistaken impression many people have of the country. "China is very good from every aspect, human resources, quality and quantity of people, work ethic, etc.," he says. "The educational system at the engineer level is better than many countries in Asia." When we spoke to Stanley last May about the possibility of Pantronix entering the public markets (a rumor that's been circulating for a few years), he told us, rather obliquely, that he might consider it at some time-if Pantronix needed the money. "I have nothing against taking Pantronix public as a way to raise money. However, while it's easy to get an IPO, the problem for most companies is in sustaining the value of the stock." End Notes The assembly business is nothing, if not fluid. We hear that Pat Verderico is out at IPAC, OSE's San Jose subsidiary [ipac. com]. He's been replaced as president and CEO by Edmond Tseng, IPAC chairman. Assembly industry vet Phil Marcoux, until recently IPAC's vice president of sales and marketing, has been given an expanded role. He's now vice president of business development for OSE Inc., handling OSE as well as IPAC. If you're looking for Larry Sannes at Kingpak's Santa Clara office, point your browser south to 1735 Technology Drive, San Jose, home of Siliconware USA Inc. [spilca.com]. Larry has joined SPIL (Siliconware Precision Industries Ltd.) as marketing director for region 3. Speaking of SPIL, former SPIL marketing guru Jack Snyder can now be found at the California office of #2 (and growing) ASE in San Jose [ase.com], where he holds the title vice president of sales.
Alphatec vet Robert Mollerstuen, executive director; Wally Crookes, general manager; and Willem de Vries, CEO, have all exited the Alphatec organization-which includes Alphatec Holding Co. Ltd. (AHC) and its subsidiary Alphatec Semiconductor Packaging Co. (ASP), Bangkok. [alphatec.co.th] Apichat Natasilpa, AHC director, has moved into the GM post for ASP and the AHC president's job. Somchai Siripan-yanon, senior director of plastic operations at ASP, now handles operational duties at ASP. Anderson Joins Silicon Bandwidth At closing time for this issue, we learned that Steve Anderson, senior vice president-corporate product marketing for Amkor Technology Inc., Chandler, Ariz., has moved on. He joins Silicon Bandwidth, which terms itself a "fabless interconnect company," in Fremont, Calif., as CEO. Finally, Sam Gomez has left his marketing post at assembler ATEC's U.S. office to return to Psi Technologies Inc., a Manila-based chip assembler. Sam now holds forth as vice president of marketing at PSIT's U.S. marketing office, PACSEM Technologies, Santa Clara, Calif.
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