Exclusive Interview

Panasonic: The Legacy of Wisdom

Having celebrated its 90th anniversary last year, Panasonic Corporation, one of the largest electronic product manafacturers in the world, is not going to be pulled down by the ongoing economic crisis. With the legacy left behind by its founder, Tan Sri Konosuke Matsushita, the company is confident of pulling through and manages its employees the way the founder always intended.

In fact, employees have always been the greatest asset for the company. Panasonic Management Malaysia Sdn Bhd’s Director, Mikio Matsui recalled that when Matsushita was asked what his company was producing, he replied, “no doubt we are producing electrical and electronic product, but before that we develop people”.

“In short he always maintained that in Panasonic, we develop the people before the product,” Matsui said.

Worldwide, the company has around 305,828 staff force as of last year, and more than 17,000 employees in Malaysia alone. “Of course, we have been in operation here since 1965, for more than 40 years,” said Matsui. “So far, we have been feeling very comfortable with Malaysia, and the people.” He noted that Malaysia, with its multicultural identity has no problem with adapting different set of cultures.

He also pointed out that Malaysians have good command of English language, which is an advantage for global business environment.

Adaptability aside, the company advocates its own set of vision, brought from its founder called Basic Business Principle (BBP), which Matsui notes “a common language” for all the employees in Panasonic across the globe.

The company’s (Malaysia) Assistant General Manager, Wytinne Cheng pointed out that the BBP is made of seven principles for the employees to understand and follow.

The principles are not exactly rules and regulations, it has more to do with what Panasonic and its employees has to contribute to the company and, most importantly, to the society.

“The first is contribution to the society,” said Cheng. “Most important thing is whatever product or service we produce must contribute to the society. When the society appreciates our products and services, they buy them, and that is how we go the next level.”

Cheng said that as soon as the employees “join the Panasonic family”, the company facilitates good training and education on its basic corporate value. “It is important for our employees to understand and accept our corporate values, unless the person appreciates own corporate values, I don’t think the person could enjoy working in the company.  Thus, we are looking for people who appreciate and could share our corporate values,” she said.

With good principles in place and provision of great working environment, it is of no wonder that Panasonic enjoys good number of loyal employees.

“Many of our employees grown within Panasonic Group, and we even have local MD, a Malaysian, who has become MD and served in Panasonic for more than 30 years,” said Cheng. “In fact, many of our local Directors, General Managers, and the Research and Development General Managers started their career with us from fresh graduates.”

Meanwhile, on the ongoing economic crisis, Matsui noted that the company has always been ready, come rain or shine. And this year, they are fresh from good performance in their previous fiscal year (ended March 31, 2008) Panasonic Corporation achieved its 6th consecutive year profit with US3.89 billion of operating profit and US$86.2 billion of total revenue.

In handling the economic hiccups and worse, downturn, Matsui said the founder has left behind a scroll that has the remedy for difficult times.

“There are ten guideline points for overcoming tough times,” Matsui said. “Among them is going back to basic, evaluate and understand your current abilities. We must also be aware of individual responsibilities to the company.”

He said the founder had always reminded them of the possibility of challenges all the time. “In good time, you should never relax, you should go for more,” said Matsui. “
This is kind of DNA we inherited from our founder. Good time is good and bad time also acceptable. We should use the bad time, to get ready for the next booming time.”

In fact, Cheng added, hardship can be a great teacher. “In times of recession, we should devote your time to human resource training.  Because in good time you are busy due to sales and production.”

“In tough times, our management always find answer in our founder’s words, with this bible (the scroll), which is a great guidance to all of us,” Matsui said.

The company’s reacted positively to the ongoing economic turmoil when it announced that it is looking to expand its R&D talent pool in Malaysia.

“Now, Malaysia is no longer a country for low cost labour, compared to other countries in this region,”  Matsui said, “Panasonic understand this point, at the same time Malaysia has been very successfully developing  young talents in R&D.”

Cheng noted that in Malaysian alone there are more than 400 engineers working in the R&D centres. Panasonic has 20 companies in Malaysia consisting of manufacturing plants, R&D centres, sales & services companies and management offices with diversified business segments.

“Not many know this, but we have a software lab in Cyberjaya, which started with 20 staff, and now we are planning to expand it to 200 people,” Cheng said.

Matsui said that with Malaysia’s growth in the technology field, it was about time that R&D arena should be expanded here.

“We are confident that Malaysia can offer more R&D talents,” said Matsui, adding that specifically there is strong demand for engineers specializing in electrical, electronics, mechanical, software, computer science and information technology.