Story of a Big Player from Gangnam

At the moment, President Song's smartphone started ringing.

"Oh, I have to take this one. It's from H Group."

President Song answered the phone, and he said yes and yes several times. After getting off the phone, President Song said to Gun-Ho, "They want me to come to their office this afternoon."

"Is something wrong? Is it about a defective product claim or something like that?"

"I don't think it's about defective product claims, but they just said that they want to discuss something with me."

"Really? Well, you'd better go then."

"I'm not sure why they want to see me. If it is about a product order, they can communicate with us through the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. They want to talk with an executive officer who is in charge of purchasing. Well, I will let you know right after I find out what it is about."

"Are you going to go there by yourself?"

"No. They want to talk with our chief research officer as well. Maybe it's about some changes in the specification of their products that we are manufacturing."

Gun-Ho went to Dyeon Korea that afternoon. When he arrived there, a large forklift truck was taking one of the machines in the production site to the front yard. Manager Hee-Yeol Yoo, and Manager Ahn from the maintenance team were there to supervise the work. When they saw Gun-Ho, they greeted him. Gun-Ho asked them, "Is that the machine that will be shipped to GH Mobile?"

"Yes, sir. I actually asked Director Park to come to help us with repairing the machine because Manager Ahn is having a hectic day, and Director Park told me to send the machine to him instead. It seems that Mr. President Song made a request for it to Mr. Director Kim directly."

"Hmm, I see."

"I think that Director Park wants to totally dismantle this machine and then reassemble them, so he understands the machines inside and out before starting building one."

"Hmm."

When Gun-Ho walked up to his office, Director Kim came into the office.

"As you probably saw it on the way here, one of our machines is being shipped to GH Mobile. That machine is out of work anyway. They will fix it before sending it back to us. Because our machines here are all second-hand, they break down sometimes which is not surprising."

"Hmm."

"So, we wanted to share the repair work with Director Park because Manager Ahn is extremely busy these days. And then, President Song told me that GH Mobile wants to try to build the machine themselves."

"It looks like they are bringing essential parts— twin screws— from America to build the machine themselves."

"Right, that's what President Song told me. President Song also told me that Mr. Adam Castler shouldn't know about it, and I'm keeping it that way."

Gun-Ho nodded his head quietly.

Gun-Ho said as he crossed his legs, "Last Friday, we had a visit from the branch manager of a stock brokerage company. You were not here at that time, so I couldn't introduce him to you. That stock brokerage company will handle our registration process with KOSDAQ."

"I was informed about it, sir. Mr. Internal Auditor is the expert in that field, he will handle it perfectly."

"I believe so."

"By the way, Dingding is planning to move to our new location in the industrial park in China as soon as she vacates her current office. We will then need to send the machines to that location. I think we can send two of our machines there as a start."

"Two machines sound good."

"The factory building in Chennai, India is still under repair, so we still have time before we have to send the machines to them. But, we will probably have to send the machines to the China location soon as the factory building is almost ready to work."

"Will it be okay if we send two of our machines here to China? Won't it affect our production capacity here?"

"We have 16 machines in total, so we should be fine without a few machines among them. We will have to break the machines down into several pieces before shipping them. It will take too long to get a new machine from the U.S. or GH Mobile assuming that they would succeed to build one, so we have to send two of ours to them for now anyway."

"I agree with you."

"And, once the machines arrive in China, we will need to train the workers in Dyeon China, who would be handling those machines. I'm thinking about sending the maintenance team's Manager Ahn to China for a month to train them."

"What about here? Don't we need him here?"

"We have new hires who have been working in the maintenance team— low-level managers and supervisors. It should be fine. If they need help, we can always ask GH Mobile's Director Park to help them. So, you don't have to worry about it, sir."

"Hmm."

"The problem is the factory in India. Someone has to be there to train the workers there too once the machines are in place."

"That's true."

"I was initially thinking of suggesting that Director Park be there, but since he is working on building the machine, I guess I will have to find someone else. What if we send GH Mobile's maintenance manager? I believe he could do that job fine."

"You mean the manager who Director Park calls big brother?"

"Yes, that's him."

"I don't believe that he has ever handled Dyeon Korea's machines before."

"Even though he doesn't have direct experience with Dyeon Korea's machines, he has been working with GH Mobile's extruding machines, so it should be okay. Moreover, he's going to work with Director Park in dismantling one of our machines and reassemble it, right? They purchased the twin screws from the U.S. in order to build the machine themselves. He will learn to handle the machine very quickly then. He has been in the maintenance field for more than 20 years."

"Hmm, I see."

"I think it was the right decision to build Dyeon Korea's machine ourselves by bringing twin screws from America. It will greatly benefit us in the long term. Once we succeed in building the machine, we won't have to worry about the cost and stuff in getting those machines in order to expand our business overseas. We can add more locations in China such as Beijing or Guangdong Province later."

"You are right."

"Not just China, but we can expand to Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, etc. as well. It will be good if we have one factory in each country like those listed above."

"Hmm."

"Moreover, once we go public, we will be loaded with funds. We can certainly have more factories abroad."

"That's very true."

"We will have to think about what we are going to do with our compound technology. Once the factories in China and India start running, we will have to train the local workers with some of our compound technology. We should figure out how much we would teach them."

"At first, we will have to produce the compounds that require a high level of difficulty in our factory here, and let the local factories produce the rest for their local markets."

"That should be the direction that we need to take. We have several decent workers at the research center with a management position. They are very knowledgeable and competent workers. I think it is a good idea to send them to our China and India locations, so they can manage each location's compound room."

"Hmm."

"We can give them a promotion in position, and give them a job title such as chief research center or compound room manager, and also raise their salary by 1.5 times of what they are getting paid here."

"That sounds like a good plan."