Say goodbye to outsourcing and join the global supply chain.

Many Vietnamese products have gone beyond assembly and processing and have penetrated deep into global supply chains in high-demand sectors such as electronics, semiconductors, and aerospace.

Finished cabinet components are manufactured and supplied to Boeing - Photo: PS

There are young Vietnamese people who refuse to accept a "contract manufacturing" role. Through their intelligence and hard work, they have become key suppliers for world- renowned multinational corporations.

Accepting "difficult deals"

Nguyen Trong Dang, Director of Viet Nguyen Precision Machinery Co., Ltd., had his entry into the semiconductor and aerospace industries when he joined an American company. After working there for five years, in 2011, Dang struck out on his own and founded Duy Viet Company, which means "Vietnamese thinking."

"In the early 2010s, the semiconductor industry in Vietnam was still new, mostly focused on mold making. We received a crucial order in 2013 to manufacture components for chip testing machines in Apple's iPhone products. At that time, we couldn't secure bank loans, we had no collateral, and despite the large orders, our partner provided advance payments and allowed us to pay for materials later," Mr. Dang recounted.

Revenue in 2016 was only about 3 billion VND, but by 2020 it had risen to 20 billion VND per year. The company changed its name to Viet Nguyen - meaning the era of Vietnam. By 2025, Viet Nguyen is expected to record revenue in the hundreds of billions of VND, and its factory, which initially measured 200m2, will be expanded to 6,000m2.

According to Mr. Dang, it was a difficult process starting a business with only 160 million VND to buy a machine to handle "small orders" like repairing defective products. With whatever capital they accumulated, the company invested in machinery to meet new orders, including "difficult" items.

For example, the components in the iPhone testing machine (the stand that holds the chip for testing defective products) include modems that are only a few millimeters in size, but there are up to 14 of them, so even a single faulty component means the entire product has to be discarded.

Mr. Dang mentioned that on one occasion, a partner in Germany ordered a connecting cup – a component in an iPhone product testing machine – for 39 euros, but still had a defective unit that was sent back to Viet Nguyen for repair.

One day, a business partner casually asked, "Can you do it?", and he immediately replied, "We can!", even though he hadn't yet figured out what he would have to do. The blueprints were sent, the product was researched, prototyped, and approved by the customer on the first try, and the price was only half.

As a result, the company secured production orders worth tens of millions of dollars, gradually expanding into more complex components.

To date, Viet Nguyen has been able to produce up to 60% of the components in the iPhone chip testing machine, coming very close to core chip processing technology. Simultaneously, the company has entered the aerospace sector, becoming a supplier of cabinet components for companies such as Safran and Boeing.

Finished cabinet components are manufactured and supplied to Boeing - Photo: PS

Mastering automation technology

Introducing the production line in his 2,700m2 factory in Linh Xuan ward (Ho Chi Minh City), Mr. Do Hoang Trung - founder, Chairman and General Director of IDEA Technology Group Joint Stock Company - acknowledged that many people think that most Vietnamese businesses only do outsourcing.

But at IDEA Group, we not only have highly automated production lines, but also manufacture robots, autonomous vehicles, and other products researched, designed, and produced by Vietnamese engineers, exporting them to Japan, the US, Canada, India, Australia, and other countries.

Trung's passion for automation began nearly 20 years ago when he studied mechanical engineering in Japan. Starting as a designer, after establishing his company five years later, in 2015 he began realizing his dream of manufacturing and producing automated production lines to supply FDI businesses in Vietnam and for export.

Trung explained that it was a journey of continuous improvement, process standardization, and investment in the team. In particular, the company faced fierce competition from cheap Chinese products. Therefore, IDEA's direction was to choose the high-end segment with a modern machinery system meeting the high standards of G7 countries. He reduced costs to offer competitive prices, ensure on-time delivery, and professionalize repair and support services.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a Japanese company specializing in manufacturing electric motors for automobiles, unable to invite experts to Vietnam to repair their machines, requested IDEA's assistance. They wanted to build an integrated automated testing system with high speed, accuracy, and data storage and retrieval capabilities.

The IDEA team focused their research and developed a series of solutions. As a result, inspection time was reduced from 5 minutes/motor to 2 minutes/motor; the error detection rate increased by 30%, and 100% of the data was stored.

Mr. Trung said that each year the company allocates up to 30% of its total budget to research and development (R&D) to create truly "Make in Vietnam" products.

To date, IDEA has implemented numerous application projects such as an automated motor assembly line system with a 6-axis robot and an automated inspection system, with a speed of 4 seconds per product; a 3D printing solution using robotic arms; an AMR autonomous vehicle application for electronic component manufacturing plants; and automated pallet transport replacing manned forklifts…

With the Politburo 's Resolution 57 on the development of science and technology, innovation, and the identification of strategic technologies and products; and the Resolution on the development of the private economy, Mr. Do Hoang Trung expects that investment areas such as robotics will receive more support policies and priority for the use of Vietnamese goods, giving Vietnamese businesses and Vietnamese intelligence more opportunities to rise and assert themselves globally.

Finished cabinet components are manufactured and supplied to Boeing - Photo: PS

Growing stronger with electromagnetic wires

According to Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Thinh, Director of Tien Thinh Production, Service and Trading Company Limited (Ho Chi Minh City), since taking over his family's company in 2005, with its traditional industrial production facility in the field of electrical wires, Mr. Thinh has been able to participate in the supply chain of many multinational corporations with factories in Vietnam such as Toyota, Honda, Toshiba, Brother, GE, etc.

Not wanting to stop there, more than five years ago, when he learned that TTI Company - a leading global supplier of hand tools - was moving its factory to Vietnam, Mr. Thinh wanted to become a partner for the company to enter a market worth up to 50 billion USD.

"It takes 2-5 years, even 10 years, to get into the supply chain," he recounted, explaining that when he approached TTI, they set the "requirement" for businesses to obtain international certifications such as ROHS, REACH, and IATF…

Electromagnetic wires – components for high-power, high-efficiency handheld devices – are directly related to human life and health, so their quality must be consistent and meet the highest standards. Tien Thinh accepted the risk of investing heavily in raw materials. Then, through testing and improvements, and learning from the experience of the Japanese, German, and American, Mr. Thinh optimized all stages of the process.

"It took us six years to get involved in the global supply chain. But now we've reaped the rewards with orders from TTI, laying the foundation for seizing even bigger opportunities," Mr. Thinh said.

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NGOC AN

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/gia-tu-gia-cong-vao-chuoi-cung-ung-toan-cau-20260427133938023.htm