SHENZHEN – Kasion Automation Ltd. on Sept. 28 celebrated its 15th year in China.

More than 150 people were present, including all employees of Kasion from offices in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen and the company’s Hong Kong headquarters; its subsidiary colleagues; customers Artesyn (Emerson), Celestica, Chung Nam, Computime, Elcoteq, Flextronics, Hasee, Hip Fung, Honeywell, Huawei, Konka, Refined Industry, Sangfei, Vtech, Zastron, and manufacturing suppliers, including Assembleon, BTU, BPM, CASIO, PVA and VJ Electronix.

Abby Tsoi, director of Kasion, kicked off the celebration with a welcome speech and presentation of the Long Service Awards, Excellent Performance Awards and Outstanding Performance Awards for employees.

Stephen Wu, area manager of North China, received awards for 15 years of service and sales performance. Kelvin Sze earned award for sales, and Rebecca Tse received a performance award, in addition to their service gold medals.

More than 20 employees were presented with service and performance awards, while Kasion’s customers and principal manufacturing suppliers received the Excellent Partnership Awards, presented by GM SK Chiu.

Kasion has grown more than 10 times since it was established.

 

NEW YORK -- The World Trade Organization this week opened a formal investigation on allegations that China is providing a safe haven for product piracy and counterfeiting.

The WTO panel's scope will be limited to whether Beijing has taken sufficient action to protect IP rights, but it could ultimately authorize U.S. trade sanctions against China valued at billions of dollars annually -- the amount the U.S. claims its companies lose because of China's alleged lax enforcement. A final decision could take years.

China publicy complained about the measure, which the country blames on the U.S. It said it is going after companies and invidivuals who infringe U.S. copyrights and trademarks, and the U.S.'s actions could hurt trade relations between the two nations.

China last month blocked a U.S.-led attempt to form a panel. WTO rules prevented the country from delaying the investigation a second time.

NASHVILLE — Kyzen Corp. today announced the inauguration of its Know the Score! database, a single point of reference for the extensive test data the supplier of cleaning materials has built over the years.

Over the course of years, Kyzen's labs have conducted extensive test protocols, collecting tens of thousands of data points from legacy IT systems that are spread throughout the company's global operations. The new tool permits real-time access to these vast data, permitting an accurate, statistically validated product and process recommendation.

“We now have real-time access to every data point Kyzen collects worldwide — in one place,” said Ram Wissel, engineering manager, in a prepared statement. “This will speed both product development and technical support on a global basis, adding value to our customer development programs and routine daily operations.”

Kyzen is the winner of the 2007 Circuits Assembly Service Excellence Award for Cleaning Materials, based on direct feedback from users.

SINGAPORE – EMS revenues in Southeast Asia topped $20.7 billion in 2006 and are on track to reach $38.4 billion in 2013, Frost & Sullivan said today.

The region is benefiting from migration of multinational providers from the U.S. and Europe looking to reduce their manufacturing costs and underutilized capacity, says Frost.

EMS providers generally prefer making investments in larger markets such as China and locating near OEMs customers. However, with long-term growth expected, they are likely to set up or expand their existing bases in Southeast Asia to minimize the risks of concentrating on just a few geographical areas, says the firm.

Medium-volume products such as medical equipment and automotive electronics are seen as the better fit for Southeast Asia, since EMS providers will have sufficient volume to cover fixed costs. These products contain a high degree of IP specific to OEMs, thereby presenting a significant entry barrier for original design manufacturers (ODMs) and any new participants. Hence, specializing in low-volume products can prove advantageous to EMS providers in the long term, Frost reports.

EMS providers can also benefit from pursuing collaborative design with OEMs and share any IP created, rather than providing complete design services to prevent any conflict of interests. This arrangement can also provide EMS providers with the knowledge and skills gained during the design phase to the manufacturing phase of a product, reports Frost.