It was late New Year Eve of 1969, when Manny Choy called me to meet him so he could explain to me his plan for KMI. I was then still working at Fairchild Semikor, where I worked with Manny  for 2 years while he was the company's Controller. He proposed that I join him as the Plant Manager at the new AMI's MOS-LSI Assembly Plant to be built in Korea . It was the first time I had heard about MOS-LSI - I had no idea what it was.

After three and a half years of experience with Korean management at Gold Star Co., I had learned "WHAT NOT TO DO".  I had also learned "WHAT TO DO" in a little over three years under American management at Fairchild Semikor.  I had seen both "PUSHING MANAGEMENT", which was the Korean way of management ordering and pushing workers just like army, and "LEADING MANAGEMENT", which was the American way of management listening, discussing and motivating workers. I had dreamed of someday establishing and managing an ideal operation based on these two experiences and it was a very attractive proposal to make my dream come true.

I accepted Manny's proposal, quit the Fairchild Semikor by the end of February and left for AMI on 3/1/70 to receive assembly operation training at AMI's pilot assembly line for two months. About a week later, Kyu-Man Shim (K.M. or Kenny) came on board as the Engineering & QC/QA Manager and joined me for training at AMI. Since AMI was founded by former Fairchilders and both K.M. and I had  joined Semikor at almost the same time in Dec., 1966 as the starting members of Semikor, we were used to the Fairchild system and its way of doing things, and did not experience much difficulty in learning the operation.

While K.M. and I were at AMI, Chung-Kyu An (C.K.) joined KMI, also from Fairchild Semikor, as the Manufacturing Engineering Manager and started building the new plant. While AMI Facility engineers estimated about six months for the building design alone, C.K. proposed using a local Korean design company and committed to completing the design phase in just about one month - typical C.K. style aggressiveness. AMI agreed, and C.K. took over design responsibility, working  with the local building design company and often sleeping in design house office. In early August, KMI hired its first operators and began test operation later that month - less than five months after the start of the building design in April !!

Combining K. M. Shim's excellent technical knowledge and relatively conservative approach to product and process engineering, C. K. An's extremely aggressive personality and excellent human relations with his hard working people in equipment/facility maintenance area, and my operation experiences, we made an ideal combination for leading the KMI operation, and  we called ourselves THREE MUSKETEERS.

Starting Members of KMI - All from Fairchild Semikor

Rear Row (Left to Right) : Miss Kim (Secretary to President), C. K. An (Manufacturing Engineering Manager), Manny Choy (President), K. M. Shim (Engineering and QC/QA Manager), Myung-In Shin (Accounting Manager), Dong-Hee Choi (Administration Manager).

Front Row (L to R) : Kyu-Tae Hwang (Production Section Manager), In-Kyum Kim (Facility Assistant Manager), Doo-Won Park (Administration Section Manager), D. I. Cho (Plant Manager and Production Manager).