Background
Barry Lam was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong. His father was an accountant for the Hong Kong Club.
百里 林
Barry Lam was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong. His father was an accountant for the Hong Kong Club.
He studied engineering in Taiwan, graduating from National Taiwan University with bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering.
In 1973, he and some former classmates founded Kinpo Electronics (zh), a manufacturer of handheld calculators. As president of the company he built it into the largest contract manufacturer of calculators. In the late 1980s, he became convinced that notebook computers would be the next big product. He left Kinpo and founded Quanta Computer in 1988. He set up Quanta Computer with the help of a colleague, C. C. Leung, with capital of less than US$900,000. It had a turnover of NT$777 billion in 2007, US$23.7 billion.
After his success with Kinpo, Barry Lam wanted Quanta to be more than a contract manufacturer. His vision was for Quanta to be a design manufacturer, a partner with its clients rather than just a supplier. As an SSDMM Provider, System Solution Design Manufacturing and Move, Quanta is very involved in engineering design for its clients. For Lam, Quanta's ability in combining designing power and functionality into lightweight packages has been the key to its success. Quanta offers combinations of features for each of its products which its clients can choose from. Once the design is agreed on, the next step is to get new, high-quality models into volume production quickly. These two steps, design capability and outstanding supply-chain management ensure profitability for customers and long-term relationships for Quanta.
Barry Lam established the Quanta Research and Development Center at its headquarters in Taiwan. The center works on many collaborative projects with major institutions such as MIT, National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica on producing next generation products.
Quanta Computer's flexibility has become a by-word for Taiwanese competence in the high-tech world, and Lam is seen as the founder of the engineering / design / manufacturing model, which launched Taiwan's High Tech Industry. Lam's visionary view of the PC notebook world can be seen as the driving force behind the success and prolific growth of the notebook in the late 1990s.
In May 2008, celebrating its 20th anniversary, Quanta was named as Taiwan's second largest private manufacturing enterprise. It had an annual turnover in 2007 of NT$777 billion, posting a 45% revenue growth. In 2001, a tough year for most computer companies, Lam led Quanta to world dominance as it became the largest notebook manufacturer worldwide and increased production by 50%. In 2002, Quanta moved production to mainland China where it established a large manufacturing base with the aim of reducing costs.
One in every four notebook computers sold in the world today is manufactured by Quanta, with the company producing an average of 2 million laptops a month, or one per second, and supplying laptops to leading manufacturers such as Dell, IBM, Hewlett- Packard, and Gateway. Lam has also led Quanta to expand beyond laptops, as the company currently manufactures a more diverse array of products, including mobile phones, servers, and storage products. In addition, the company recently teamed up with Sanyo Electric to form a joint venture to produce LCD TVs.
As a leader who is passionate about continuous improvement and innovation, Lam has helped drive innovation in Quanta and throughout Taiwan. In addition, the company has had an enormous impact in underdeveloped areas within China and across the globe. The company established a relationship with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in late 2006 with the ultimate goal of developing and manufacturing the first ever $100 laptop. Known as the ‘One Laptop per Child’ initiative, Lam has led Quanta’s effort to contribute to this global initiative of making technology more accessible to underprivi- leged areas around the world and enabling a way in which ‘nations of the emerging world’ are enabled ‘to leapfrog decades of development.’ As of 2007, the company has already received orders for more than one million laptops.
Lam serves on the boards of directors of 12 companies, including the Fubon Financial Holding Co. Ltd. He is also chairman of the Quanta Culture and Education Foundation, which has supported various charitable activities and promoted culture and arts to enrich people’s life in the greater China region over recent years. In 1999 and 2002, Lam was chosen by BusinessWeek as one of 50 ‘Stars of Asia’. For his achievements in leading Quanta to become the world’s largest notebook producer, he was also highlighted as one of the top 25 managers by BusinessWeek in 2002.