Finding Insights for Management

New Doosan Chmn. Park tours jobsites at home and abroad for tighter management of Doosan Group

Chairman Park Yong-hyun of Doosan Group believes that the answers are at the jobsites after a long review of strategies to manage the group better while he is the top manager.
The new Doosan chairman toured the jobsites of the group around the world during his first 100 days in office, logging 40,000 km, or 75,000 km if his domestic travel is added. He has made 21 official trips, a total of 40 days in hours, with 120 total hours spent in airplanes.
The new chairman's trip began with a trip to Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, in April to meet with managers and engineers and to inspect the plants run by Doosan affiliates including Doosan Heavy, Doosan Mechatech Motrol and Doosan Infracore, all key companies of the group, which included nuclear reactor production facilities and the turbine production plant of those companies in the Changwon Industrial Complex.
He also toured the plants of Doosan Infracore located in Incheon with his brother Yong-maan who is chairman of the company, which produces heavy equipment including excavators, a foundry production plant and industrial vehicles, among others.
During the tour of the Incheon plants, the chairman said the Incheon factories should play the role of a mother who feeds the group's overseas plants in various parts of the world including DICC in China, DIEU in Belgium and DMA in Norway.
In May, Park travelled around the country to visit Doosan Construction jobsites including those in Cheonju for the Gwangyang Highway, the Daejeon Railroad Station in Daejeon, the We've Zenith Apartment Complex being built in Haewoondae, Busan, and the nuclear power plant construction site in Shin Kori. During these tours he was able to confirm the group's technologies and their capacity to take charge of various construction projects at home and abroad during his tours.
Early in June, he toured the Doosan Technology Institute in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, and he told the research staff they have to develop Doosan technologies that can produce excellent quality goods that consumers will buy despite their high prices.
Park also attended the Hanover Industrial Fair in Hanover, Germany, and flew to Paris to view the InterMat 2009, the third largest construction machinery exhibition in the world, and learned the most recent trends in the development of machinery and plant equipment.
He also toured the Doosan Infracore International European headquarters and Doosan Babcock in London to stress the synergy among Doosan overseas affiliates. Park visited Yentai, China, as well as Doosan Vina in Vietnam to attend the dedication ceremony of the company's plant in the Zung Cat Industrial Complex. He said in his speech that as Sony products were regarded as U.S. products in the United States, Doosan Vina products should be looked at as Vietnamese products.
Park also set up a tight schedule for touring Doosan locations at home and abroad in the second half, too. He is scheduled to fly to the U.S. to visit the Bobcat heavy construction equipment plant and head office in the U.S., which Doosan took over from Ingersoll Rand Corp. in 2007.
Doosan officials said the chairman will oversee the restructuring of Bobcat's operation and its financial structure reform while staying in the U.S. in line with his plan to tour the group's jobsites both at home and abroad.
In the meantime, Doosan appointed Charles "Lee" Hawley, as the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at a Board of Directors meeting on July 28, 2009. He has served as the VP of HR at Pepsico at the U.S. and Hong Kong headquarters for 15 years and most recently served as Managing Director of Cerberus Management's Asian operations in Hong Kong.
Hawley received his BA from Colgate University, and earned his Ph.D. in Industrial & Organizational Psychology from New York University. With the recruitment of an international HR expert, Doosan plans to reinforce its '2G Strategy' of pursuing "the Growth of People through the Growth of Business," while continuing to build up a corporate management system as well as an infrastructure that meets global standards by expanding managerial capacity including the construction and improvement of a global HR system. nw

Chairman Park Yong-hyun checks a plant facility during his recent tour of the Bobcat plant in the United States on a leg of his world tour to visit Doosan Group's work places stretched over a number of countries around the world including China, the U.S., Norway and Britain.