RAMELI Musa, 57, has been involved in business for nearly half his life, beginning with Pernas NEC Telecommunications Sdn Bhd in 1976.

Trained in Sheffield, the UK, in telecommunications engineering and microwave communications, he was also executive vice chairman of Sapura Holdings Sdn Bhd, and executive chairman of Tap Resources Bhd until 1998.

Rameli’s interaction with Japanese investors and corporations during that time gave him the experience to build a successful collaboration with Katayama Kogyo Co Ltd, Ingress Corp Bhd’s technology partner for its Thailand operations — Ingress Autoventures Co Ltd (IAV).

“When working with the Japanese, personal relationship is very important. Over the years we have become personal friends. That is what lasts, not agreements on paper,” said Rameli, who is Ingress Corp executive vice chairman.

At Ingress, he said, these close relationships are being developed at various levels of the organisation, from the top executives to the senior managers. “That way we hope to continue having good ties among us well into the next generation,” Rameli said.

This relationship is important to Ingress and IAV’s operations, as the car parts joint venture hopes to penetrate alliances of “keiretsu” among Japanese corporations.

Rameli : Ingress making progress in penetrating the 'keiretsu'.

A keiretsu is a grouping or family of affiliated companies that form a tight-knit alliance to work towards each other’s mutual success.

Vertical keiretsu are industrial groups connecting manufacturers and part suppliers or manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. These verticle keiretsu include car and electronics producers (Toyota, Nissan, Honda-Matsushita, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sony) and their “captive” subcontractors.

“We had a choice of several potential partners, but most of them were part of their own respective keiretsu. What attracted us to Katayama was that they were very independent. They supplied parts to various carmakers,” Rameli said.

IAV has duplicated this business strategy to good success, and today about 70 per cent of Thailand’s total car exports have some component made by IAV.

“There are still some carmakers that we haven’t yet penetrated, again because of the keiretsu, Toyota for example,” he said.

But some progress is being made. Ingress recently won a small contract supplying parts to Toyota in Malaysia, which has opened the doors to possible closer contact with the world’s third largest carmaker.

“Toyota is a market that Katayama has not been able to penetrate. Naturally, they are very excited. When IAV got the Honda contract in Thailand, that eventually led to Katayama supplying parts for Honda in Japan and the US,” Rameli said.

During a full-day visit to IAV in Rayong, Thailand, on February 20, Rameli met with Katayama executive vice president Atsutaka Seto. They discussed, among other things, how to improve quality and productivity of IAV’s operations as it seeks to capture more contracts from carmakers.

“Quality and delivery can still be improved, especially for a global company like Ingress,” Rameli said at a briefing to about 160 IAV workers later that day.

In March, IAV will produce 97,000 car sets, its highest volume ever. With production ramped up, there are bound to be problems in quality, he said. “There are not many new projects this year, so our focus should be on quality and delivery improvements,” Rameli added.

For inspiration, IAV can look to Ingress’ Malaysian operations, which have become a total quality management model for both Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Bhd and Perusahaan Otomobil Kedua Sdn Bhd vendors.