Sensor and instrumentation industry leader Dynisco LLC has seen the departure of its first China general manager, who happens to be a 30-year-old Chinese entrepreneur who sold his own sensor business to Dynisco in 2012.
Wu Hao, the former Dynisco China general manager, told Plastics News that his last day with the company was June 12.
Dynisco Group President Ken Brown confirmed the news. “Wu resigned,” he said in a June 25 phone interview, and the terms are confidential.
Having traveled to China twice in the last month to discuss the structural change, Brown said: “Clearly Wu is well known in the industry.”
Wu started his career in the sensor industry as a 16-year-old high school dropout, working on the factory floor in his cousin's sensor company. Wu said he orchestrated an initial attempt to have Dynisco acquire his cousin's firm.
After that acquisition fell through, Wu started his own company, Shanghai Hao-Ying Measurement & Control Technology Co. Ltd., in 2006, largely based on what he had learned about what Dynisco was looking for in an acquisition target in China.
Wu managed to quickly build Hao Ying into a leading domestic supplier, which was indeed acquired by Dynisco's parent company Roper Industries Inc. in 2012. He stayed on as general manager of Dynisco China.
“When I sold Hao Ying to Dynisco, my mission was to grow Hao Ying into a global brand and help Dynisco to localize in China,” Wu told Plastics News.
Wu's wife, Jessie Yu, is staying in her role as the marketing director at Dynisco China.
Brown stressed that Dynisco's leadership team in China will remain local. Wu's successor is a Chinese national who received education from Nanjing University and the China Europe International Business School.
Brown, who runs seven Roper companies including Dynisco, added that the incoming Dynisco China general manager has been working in the larger group company for more than two years.
In a June 23 statement, Dynisco announced a structural change that “allows its Shanghai management team to have direct lines of communication to their global senior management counterparts.”
“This improved structure will increase the speed by which decisions in China are made allowing for faster customer responses,” said Dynisco President John Biagioni.
Dynisco China's sales have been growing an average of 20 percent annually in the past five years, Brown said in the phone interview, including both locally manufactured products and exports into China.
“It's been our fastest growing market, and we remain dedicated to it, we will continue to focus on it,” he said.
Dynisco will continue to manufacture at its Shanghai factory. In the meantime, in an effort to ensure safe operations and meet Chinese environmental and other regulatory laws, it has transferred manufacturing activities that involve the handling of mercury from China to Malaysia, where Brown said the company has “invested over 15 years worth of controlled environment.”
“That's really to make sure our employees and the environment in China stays as safe as it should be. We've got one place in Asia where everything is fully under control,” he said.
“We believe in China. We believe in investing [there]. We believe in building things there.”
In fact, the company is rolling out new products specifically for the China and Asia Pacific market, including the soon-to-be-released eVisco on-line rheometer.
The China market is becoming more global and requiring higher quality and productivity, Brown explained, adding that Dynisco is committed to serving customers there with the broadest and strongest sensor line in the global marketplace.