9th January 2023 · Taipei, Taiwan
全國創新創業總會 (National Association of Innovation and Entrepreneurship) | 45th Model Entrepreneur Award — Chairman Jerry Lin’s hands-on leadership opens a new chapter for Taiwan’s automotive electronics industry
Jerry Lin grew up in a flat-panel display family, absorbing from an early age how hard his parents worked to build their business, and developing an independent, driven character through his studies and early career. When the global financial crisis hit the panel industry, he seized the moment to pivot: combining a lifelong love of cars with several years of hands-on experience in displays, he moved into automotive electronics and founded JET Optoelectronics in 2010. In the early years he was alongside customers almost daily, going into the plants himself to solve problems, and used a culture of persistence and zero defects to win places in the supply chains of Ford, GM, Nissan and Panasonic. Through market swings he kept investing in production upgrades and vertical integration, built new capacity in Kaohsiung, and used strategic partnerships to take Taiwan’s automotive electronics supply chain international. Leading the company with an attitude of “out-working everyone”, and shouldering the responsibility of looking after his people through a philosophy of shared success, he has opened a new chapter for Taiwan’s automotive electronics industry.
Full article
For twelve years JET Optoelectronics has focused on automotive electronics, serving major brands including Bentley, Lamborghini, Audi and Cadillac. Looking ahead, the company hopes to link Taiwan’s automotive electronics supply chain and strategic partners so they can step onto the international stage together.
From the financial crisis to automotive electronics
Jerry Lin’s father, Lin Chen-yuan, was once chairman of Chunghwa Picture Tubes (中華映管), one of Taiwan’s “five tigers” of panel making, and later joined JEAN (美齊科技), the company founded by his wife Wen Ching-ju. Jerry watched his parents build JEAN in the display ODM business from a two-person operation to a listed company, and saw first-hand how difficult entrepreneurship was. Growing up, he never saw himself as the privileged second generation: he attended a public elementary school, walked to school and ate the school lunch like his classmates. Even when he later studied abroad, his weekly allowance in high school was only US$30 — and to get another US$10 he had to write his mother a proposal, which is where his enterprising streak took root.
He studied electrical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, transferring after two years to business economics. Practical experience in both fields, he says, only began to accumulate after he returned to Taiwan and joined JEAN. “I started in sales and touched everything from the customer side to RD and PM. In 2008 I was posted to the plant in China to deal with the fallout of the financial crisis, which gave me a much deeper feel for management.”
It was precisely the crisis’s impact on Taiwan’s panel industry that led him, after talking it over with his parents, to build the business he actually wanted. A car enthusiast since childhood, he combined three to four years of display-industry experience and chose to move into automotive electronics. In 2010 JEAN acquired the automotive display ODM Yin Chiao Optoelectronics and renamed it JET Optoelectronics — Jerry Lin’s first step into the supply chains of the major car brands.
A hands-on attitude and zero-defect production win a place in carmakers’ supply chains
Recalling those first years, Lin is blunt that they were hard: he had to turn around the losses Yin Chiao had run up before the acquisition while holding on to its existing US and Japanese customers. “I was making one day do the work of two. Besides visiting customers constantly, if a customer went to the factory I went too, so decisions could be made on the spot.” To move the company into profit, those early years were a succession of specification and price negotiations, bringing orders in one at a time — and he worked alongside his colleagues on every stage from project kick-off to mass production.
That hands-on, driven approach is what allowed JET Optoelectronics to find its footing in automotive electronics. Knowing how hard a closed carmaker supply chain is to enter, he first won ODM work for the US automotive display brand InVision, shipping to Ford and General Motors. When InVision was acquired by VOXX, the leading US automotive audio-visual brand, he took the opportunity to visit customers relentlessly, demonstrating a track record in automotive display manufacturing along with design and production capability, and delivering on what customers asked. After more than a year of qualification, JET Optoelectronics became an approved VOXX supplier in 2012.
In Japan, working with VOXX, JET Optoelectronics beat Panasonic in 2013 to win the rear-seat entertainment order for Nissan in North America. Lin did not stop there — he set out to “turn the competitor into a customer”. He flew to Japan every month to call on Panasonic, and it took more than a year before he finally met the head of its automotive business. “We were given a chance to work together, but before mass production we still had to clear every kind of stringent test and qualification gate. Panasonic came to inspect the plant roughly every two to three months and supervised the line for more than seventeen hours a day. That is exactly why everything we finally shipped was zero-defect.” On the strength of that record, JET Optoelectronics became an approved Panasonic supplier in 2015. That same year it also acquired NEXTBASE, Europe’s number-one dash-cam brand by UK market share, entering the automotive aftermarket in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. On this steady footing, the company continued to expand its production lines and diversify its products.
Integrating the supply chain, stepping onto the world stage
Twelve years on from founding, Lin has taken every step with care. Beyond the record his parents established before him, many people also see him as “the fourth generation of the Tatung family”. “I don’t want my family background to make anyone think I can get away without working hard — that is exactly why I out-work everyone.” He also remembers his father’s advice while he was alive: “Looking after every employee is a boss’s greatest responsibility.” So Lin makes a point of getting to know each colleague and always shares the company’s gains with them — it is their trust and effort, he says, that made today’s JET Optoelectronics.
With global vehicle sales hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years, Lin used the time to build strength, setting up a plant in Kaohsiung’s Qianzhen Technology Industrial Park with SMT and assembly capacity, and investing in upstream supply-chain technology to achieve vertical integration. “Products that used to be exported to the United States can now be assembled at the Kaohsiung plant and shipped from Kaohsiung port, giving customers one-stop service.”
Looking further ahead, Lin plans to keep expanding in Europe, Southeast Asia and China, and has brought in a range of strategic investors through capital increases. “Many of our investment partners are involved in the automotive industry. I hope that by working with them we can integrate Taiwan’s supply chain and then compete internationally together.” In Lin’s view, JET Optoelectronics will become a development platform — one through which partners and suppliers in Taiwan’s automotive market can take their own products to more customers, grow the pie together, and claim a place in the international market.
Source: 全國創新創業總會 (National Association of Innovation and Entrepreneurship)
PDF
Full Article
