None.

Sharing my experiences from working at this company and the absurd situations I heard about; any resemblance is purely coincidental. Let’s start with the electronic component shortages that began at the end of 2016 and were still severe in August. With supply < demand, some vendors’ costs went up, affecting BOM costs. The first people to suffer were the sourcers, who were under tremendous pressure. Fortunately, some people noticed that something was wrong and happily resigned. The new supervisor, meanwhile, gave the business unit 100% support, which caused many people to become very dissatisfied. After taking over, more than 10% of the staff resigned, and replacements have been coming in one after another. If you don’t believe it, go experience it for a few months yourself.

What was especially outrageous was that this company had no mechanism for controlling the sources of demand when placing requirements—whether they came from customer orders, FCST, or the business team simply being overconfident. This often resulted in excess inventory. One distributor complained to me that they had placed an order for over 100K units for a major project without having received an order, resulting in not only having the order cut but also having to absorb the inventory. Who would agree to that? No one’s an idiot. Later, this company recovered part of the order and asked vendors to ship within a very short time. However, the goods had already been transferred to someone else, so they naturally had to chase and reallocate materials again, causing a great deal of suffering. It was unbelievable.

As for the recent North American customer project, honestly, when I was still there, we treated the quantity for this customer as half of the stated amount. On top of that, when a certain PM was involved, the entire model’s life cycle had to be viewed even more conservatively; projects dying before launch happened often. Sure enough, because of the business team’s poor decision-making and its rush to place demand, the customer did not sell the project well—the monthly rental plan was for an in-vehicle device, but everyone has a phone nowadays, so why use something like this? The project was decided to be EOL. (I remember that formal mass production for this project began around Q4 of last year; I didn’t expect it to be discontinued so quickly.) After the business team hurriedly pulled the demand for the later stages—reportedly around 50K—I really feel sorry for the colleagues who are still there QQ.

In Taiwan, there are shortages of sourcers and buyers. Buyers are basically somewhat like general assistants; every day there are many simulation reports to respond to. However, responding to those reports is useless much of the time, because the BU player is also the referee and has the final say. If the material readiness date cannot meet the customer’s order-increase schedule, the BU head can approve placing the demand and tell procurement to chase the materials. Confused yet? Sourcers often have to cover buyers’ material shortages, and they also have to help handle serious quality issues.

When quality issues occur here, vendors are definitely in a disadvantaged position. Any production-line technician can casually highlight an issue, after which procurement and quality assurance have to deal with the vendor and determine responsibility. I encountered several cases that ended without resolution; it turned out that the factory itself was the problem… Oh, right—supervisors whose IDs start with JU02 are quite emotional. Watching them scold people will make you wonder why you came here to be mistreated. If you don’t have a high tolerance for being treated subserviently, absolutely do not go. For those whose IDs start with JU01, chasing materials should apparently be the top priority, and you’ll be expected to take the blame. As for JU03, their boss does things in a very interesting way—I can only say, interesting.

There is also a GPMC opening. The supervisor is a strong woman who does not really understand employees with families. The position has apparently been open for about six months. The people there only issue reports; they do not coordinate capacity or the placement of material requirements with the business side. I heard that production control and procurement have quite a few criticisms of them, which does not surprise me. From the moment I joined, I felt this was an extremely cushy position: running reports, no performance pressure, and no need to chase materials. High inventory is the business team’s responsibility. Other than highlighting issues, I don’t feel they actually do anything to improve the situation.

Because you purchase the materials and deal with the vendors, whenever there is a problem at this company, you are the one who has to handle it. Material selection is handled by R&D, customers select the products, prices are negotiated between customers and vendors, and quality is audited by VQM—but any problems are all yours. I sincerely recommend that unless you have no other options, don’t go. You’ll be happier at another company.