By Karen E. Thuermer, AJOTSingapore has developed a strong foundation for the electronics industry over the last 40 years with this sector now being a major industry that underpins Singapore’s economic growth. Motorola is one of its key players, having located to Singapore over 30 years ago. It is from this city-state that Motorola, in fact, manufactures some of its new and hot RAZR V3 cell phones. Motorola is so innovative that it recently won the Gold Award for its Finger Writing Recognition Technology on its A668 mobile phone at the 8th Asian Innovation Awards banquet in September, an event organized by the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). The Asian Innovation Awards honor individuals or companies that improve quality of life, living standards or business productivity. This breakthrough technology was developed by Motorola Labs in Shanghai with the Chinese consumer in mind to make Chinese text input easier, faster and affordable. Singapore serves as Motorola’s headquarters in the region. It is here in the Ang Mo Kio Industrial Park that one finds Motorola’s Centers of Excellence, including its Design Center for mobile phone devices. Nearly 2,300 people work for Motorola in Singapore in four business units: Mobile devices, Government and Enterprise Mobility Solutions, Networks, and Connected Home Solutions. This AJOT reporter toured Motorola’s manufacturing plant and Design Center, which happens to be located across from an Apple Computer tech center. The plant in Singapore is one of the key manufacturing sites for Motorola’s mobile phones globally, as it produces some 60,000 units a day. At Motorola’s site, some 200 engineers are at work developing software. El Tay, president of Motorola Singapore and corporate Vice President of the Asia manufacturing operations integrated supply chain, commented that these engineers are an elite group. The plant’s manufacturing functions there include assembly, testing, packaging, and distribution of mobile phones. Distribution as innovation The brains behind running such a high powered innovative operation is also reflected in Motorola’s procurement and distribution schemes. Two years ago, Motorola consolidated its world-wide procurement operations into a single administrative entity based in Singapore, known as the International Trading Center (ITC). “By doing so, we have simplified all communications with our suppliers,” said Tay. The ITC manages Motorola’s global third-party component procurement activities that includes trading services and the development of related e-procurement tools. The next step is to centralize 80% of Motorola’s total procurement purchases for third-party manufacturers from Singapore by 2006. In late September, approximately 50 to 60% of procurement purchases were being done in Singapore, Tay revealed. Motorola expects to handle at least S$3 billion (Singapore dollars) worth of activities a year by 2006. The goal is to put in place an efficient buy/sell process to allow Motorola to capture cost advantage on cost components while preserving the confidentiality of key transactional information. There is currently about 40 staff at the ITC that now work with over 170 suppliers and handle over 100 shipments per day, with at least 10 transactions per hour. Already, Motorola has a full value chain of activities in Singapore on the 3G front, from R&D to manufacturing and distribution of 3G phones. Sixty percent of the company’s global output of third generation (3G) phones are made in Singapore. Motorola is streamlining its distribution process as well. “This is the only site in the world where we are producing these 3G phones with the exception of Flensburg, Germany,” Tay said. The various phone models produced in Singapore are then shipped throughout Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Australia, India, North America, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. For example, the company no longer ships the finished products to a third party hub in Europ