Rong Feng Industrial Co., Ltd. Was established in 1970 and, in part as a result of ISO-9001:2000 certification, has grown into one of the top two makers of rocker and pushbutton switches in Asia.

The company claims to have the strongest R&D capability in its field, and as a result is able to offer over 1,000 product items in 60 or so basic categories to big international customers in Southeast Asia, the United States, and Europe. The list of models grows by more than 10 per year.

Rong Feng operates one factory in Taiwan (with 140 workers) and three in mainland China (in Shanghai and in Guangdong Province's Shenzhen and Guangzhou, together employing about 1,800). Monthly production capacity includes 1.5 million to two million rocker switches, an equal number of pushbutton switches, three million to four million receptacles, and 10 million to 15 million sockets.

The company's IC320 sockets are supplied to major international manufacturers of personal computers, computer peripherals, and cellphone chargers. It also offers a comprehensive range of receptacles that meet U.S., U.K., Australian, German, and China requirements.

The firm's sales manager, Alvin Chen, attributes its role as a global leader in the sector and its unmatched competitiveness to several key factors beyond a well-structured division-of-labor manufacturing and R&D system that spans the Taiwan Strait.

The first of these factors is what Chen claims is unmatched development speed and efficiency. "We set what I consider an industry standard that is difficult if not impossible to surpass in this line when we once completed a prototype product and shipped it to our foreign customer within three days of learning the customer's specification requirements," the sales manager reports. "Under normal conditions we can begin mass-producing and delivery of an item, assuming it has been fully certified, within six months of the blueprint stage. This R&D capability and efficiency makes Rong Feng the first choice as a partner for many big customers worldwide."

Another of the company's key advantages is superb technical-service support, including cooperating with customers from the product-design stage, actively providing needed design and specification information, and mapping out the most cost- and time-efficient total solutions for customers. "This kind of technical support," Chen says, "has helped the company transform itself from a mere contract producer in our early days to a specialist in the joint-development manufacturing (JDM) mode of business."

The company currently ships about 80% of its products on a JDM basis to world-class brands, including American Power Conversion and Delta Electronics (for power-supply products), Panasonic (for monitors), OKI (for printers), and Asustek (for notebook PCs).

Rong Feng holds to the principle of "quality first" in its products, which are aimed at the middle and upper ends of the market. "Each item that we produce must be CE-, UL-, CSA-, and VDE-approved, and must meet all of our customers' requirements for special designs or mechanisms," Chen stresses. "We insist on making only the best products, although their prices may be higher than for the general lot."

In its oursourcing, too, the company insists on only the highest-quality parts for its products; the company itself, though, produces all the parts it needs except for metal hardware.