The CEO Magazine Asia — January 2018

theceomagazine.com | 99

Ahead

of the

PACK

From humble beginnings as a Hewlett-

Packard spinoff, Agilent Technologies is now

inspiring biotechnology’s future leaders.

WORDS ADRIAN FLORES • IMAGES YEW KWANG

C

how Woai Sheng recalls the entire

biotechnology industry was going through

a tumultuous time, as a result of the bursting

of the dot-com bubble, when he joined

Agilent Technologies in 2001. But in a

perverse way, crisis can sometimes be more

of an opportunity than a hurdle.

“A lot of South East Asian currencies were devalued

during the 1997 Asian financial crisis,” he recounts.

“Suddenly we found ourselves having an able and

competitive workforce, a stable economy, and mature supply

bases. All of this became very attractive to American

companies that were suffering because of the dot-com bust.”

On top of that, the rise of enterprise resource planning

during the 90s gave companies the ability to see more

of what was going on in the factories around the world.

“There was a clear opportunity for us to ride the waves,”

Woai Sheng explains.

Since then, he has risen through the ranks to eventually

become not just Agilent’s General Manager for Global

Supply Chain and Logistics but also Singapore Country »

Interview | INNOVATE