FOR 24 years, EMS Group of Companies Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ferdinand “Perry” Ferrer was enjoying his job as a high-ranking executive in the aerospace industry working with different companies in Europe, the United States, Canada and China. In fact, he planned to stay abroad for good.
However, this changed when he got an overseas call from his father, the late Francis Ferrer, former president of the Ayala-led Integrated Micro-electronics Inc., who said he plans to enter into a business after his retirement.
Interestingly, the son did not have the slightest idea that the Ferrer patriarch would establish an electronics company because he thought his father was done with electronics when he retired.
“It was never in my wildest imagination or dream that it would be in electronics. My father used to send me pictures of his produce from his farm in Batangas [which then led me to think he was interested to go into farming],” Perry recalled.
Two weeks later, Perry came back to Manila and discussed with Francis the risks and challenges in putting up an electronics company. Moreover, Francis told Perry the overall objective of putting up a company was to save the manufacturing jobs in electronics from going out to China. “There was no reason for me to say no,” Perry recalled.
Before moving back to the country for good, Perry crafted a transition plan for previous his employer to ensure a seamless turnover.
In 2007, he started his formal stay in the Philippines. Thus, EMS was born. The company started with 800 people. Business was doing great and the work force reached 1800.
In 2009, the global financial crisis struck hard and EMS was not spared. Ninety percent of the production output of EMS was wiped out. Nevertheless, Francis told Perry that as much as possible, there will be no
layoff. Instead of firing people, Francis told Perry to retrain their workers to learn new skills.
“My dad told me we have enough funds to retrain them. Then, I realized it was not all about money. That was my complete transformation,” Perry fondly recalled.
“We only let go of a few hundreds. Some of them were shifted to other jobs, while the rest were retrained for the new jobs,” Perry added.
The gamble paid off as EMS was back on track in 2011.
Perry also realized that the retraining program yielded a substantial pool of man power that can run the idle plants that were shut down during the global economic turmoil. This gave birth to the Alliance Mansols Inc. (AMI) in 2010. The EMS subsidiary offered their trained man power to run their factories. “We offered them all the benefits of the production process from value engineering, quality control, among others,” he said.
As an engineering company, Perry said, EMS made a track record in training people. To share it’s best industry practices, EMS put up Creotec Philippines Inc. Creotec provides solutions ranging from training equipment provision, work immersion, learning systems, technology curriculum, on-the-job exposure for tertiary students, and providing industry-relevant workshops and training sessions.
“In a span of 15 years, we grew to seven companies complementing each other and each one having its own center of excellence,” Perry said.
EMS will celebrate its 15th anniversary this month.
Other companies in the EMS group are EMS Components Assembly Inc.; EMS Resources Technology Inc.; EMS Services Philippines Inc. and EMS Services International Inc.
EMS Services International recently opened its office in Japan.
Just like his father, Perry believes that people should be given continuous training despite the growing presence of automation. “Our objective is to train people to make them better workers. If the worker was an operator before, he or she can now be a technician.”
Moreover, EMS has also an incubation facility for foreign investors who want to know more about the business environment and hopefully start putting up their own facilities. “We want them to experience Filipino workmanship,” he said.
“We tell them [when to invest] because it is a big risk for them. They can run it in our own factories,” Perry pointed out.
“Once they experience the Philippine investment climate, a lot of them will stay,” he added.