The untold story of the first female engineers of Samsung Vietnam

May 2008...

Three young students from the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology successfully applied for jobs at Samsung Vietnam 10 years ago, but none of them dared to believe they would still be laying the foundations for Samsung Vietnam today.

Choose Samsung to … challenge themselves

With her captivating smile, Head of Phone Functional Testing (Samsung Vietnam) Doan Huong Giang seems to become younger as she recalls her early days at the company.

That year, Giang was an intern at a “powerful” telecommunications company in Vietnam, but out of the blue, Samsung arrived at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology looking for talents. At that time, the South Korean group was in the initial planning stages of building a chain of manufactories and production factories in several northern provinces.

With he strong personality and technical gifts, Giang was excited by the challenges ahead. And she decided to apply to challenge herself in a whole new environment.

Similar to Giang, Truong Thi Sam also felt curious about the working environment at a multinational corporation, so she skipped the opportunity to become a State official.

Pham Thi Loan (Head of Software Division in Bac Ninh) also rejected the opportunity to work at one of the country’s largest telecommunications corporations in 2008. Loan recalled: “What drove me to accept the challenge with Samsung was mostly curiosity. At that time, mobile phones were a luxury item. We barely had any knowledge about the production process. So, I thought: I'm young, why not try something new and exciting?”

With the enthusiam and “recklessness” of freshly-graduates, the three friends decided to embark on a completely new journey with Samsung Vietnam, “starting from 0”.

At that moment, Bac Ninh manufactory was still under construction. Therefore, the task of the first group of officers and engineers was to learn. They began to dig deeper into the stages involved in producing a mobile phone, and all components that make up the most "fashionable" communications tools of that time. Young engineers were eager to access new knowledge that they had never studied before. Sam was overwhelmed with the knowledge, and the more she studied, the “drunker” she got. Mobile phones were something miraculous that fascinated all the members of the course.

However, the more fascinating and overwhelming, the more pressure these “pioneer” engineers felt. They were the ones assigned with the responsibility to lay the groundwork for building the world's largest phone manufactory the following year.

To meet the technical requirements, as soon as the training in Vietnam concluded, the three young girls along with dozens of other pioneering engineers, packed their suitcases to fly to other Samsung manufactories overseas to study. Factories were turned into classrooms; the assembly lines transformed into visual tools. For the first time in their lives, Giang, Sam and Loan saw a production line operating in a professional and effective manner.

Stunned is Loan summed up her feelings when facing the modern production chain at Samsung. “I felt that everything worked in a non-stop flow that fitted perfectly. We were stunned by the professionalism and scale of the production line.”

The owners of Samsung Vietnam

Fortunately for Loan as well as other members, while they were bewildered, experts from South Korea had belief in the Vietnamese "students". They said: “Without you [Vietnamese engineers -PV], Samsung Vietnam would not exist. You will become the owners of far bigger manufactories in your own country.”

That statement seemed to “wake up” the entire team during their most confused period. It was the motivation that helped them overcome the difficulties of beginners. After a few months of "overseas training", engineers and staff returned to the land of Kinh Bac, officially embarking on the design and construction of Samsung Vietnam.

"The hardship continued, as everyone had to “stretch” themselves for the challenge once more", recalled Giang.

Due to the lack of experience, the group of young engineers encountered many obstacles during their demo run at the production line.

It was common for Loan to wake up right after she had just dozed to a phone call reporting a problem at the factory.

Sam said that in the first stage, one of the most important jobs was to analyze and detect errors before the line officially went into operation. There were mistakes that even the South Korean partners had never encountered. She and her colleagues were forced to dissect the problems, brainstorming day and night for a solution.

Thanks to their tireless efforts, in April of 2009, Samsung Vietnam’s phone manufactory officially went into operation. At that time, this was also the only manufactory with a modern open-end production line in the country, supplying both Vietnam and the world market.

Witnessing their "brainchild" being born, the three girls shed tears of joy. They hugged each other with unbelievable pride.

Giang added: One of the things that made me so happy during that time was that Samsung not only provided knowledge but also gave decision-making rights to the Vietnamese officials and engineers.

In the past, due to their lack of experience, Vietnamese workers were only involved the final stages of mass production in accordance with detailed instructions from South Korean experts. Now,every single Samsung product, including the most advanced devices such as the Galaxy Note 10 / Note 10+, are initially tested in Vietnam before going into mass production. This means that Vietnamese engineers have taken over the entire production line process, including the technology, testing, analysis, evaluatation and adjustments.

The hallmark of technology ownership does not only lie within Samsung’s giant manufacturing facilities, but also extends by the presence of a Vietnamese software engineers at the Samsung Vietnam Mobile R&D center SVMC. This is where Giang is in charge of testing phones features. Many applications for Samsung production lines, including the most advanced technology convergence products (Flagship), are being developed or devoted by SVMC engineers.

Established in 2012, SVMC has implemented hundreds of projects, including the S Note applications, the "social network" PEN.UP for the S Pen –a part attached to Galaxy Note series, and Smart Switch - an extremely useful tool to transfer data among phones or from phone to computer.

10 years after that historic day, all three female engineers of the first generation are still tied to Samsung with a strong bond. Loan and Sam still travel more than 1 hour from Hanoi to Bac Ninh to work each day. Giang has moved to the company's R&D center in the city. All three became have become respected and experienced managers. Despitethe differences in their jobs,every time they meet, they all seem to return to their younger selves.

For them, their brightest decade was 10 years of companionship and growth, and becoming the true owners of Samsung Vietnam./.