Another policy KMI management established was to hire fresh college graduates only as supervisors    and other employees as much as possible. Only initial key members were hired from Semikor, because   we needed a minimum number of experienced people. We didn't want people whose minds had been contaminated by other companies. We wanted to hire fresh people and train them in KMI way to establish a "KMI SPIRIT".

When Supervisors were hired, I trained them for the first hour, explaining what KMI expected from them and what they should expect from KMI. I emphasized not to work any more than 8 hours a day except emergency cases, as longer working hours every day would make them too tired eventually and they could not work efficiently, just following the work without thinking rather than leading the work with good planning. (It had been a common practice in Korean companies - still it is - to work 10-11 hours a day. Most of them did it just to demonstrate loyalty to the company or it might mean no more than that they did not work as hard as it should be during regular working hours.) We did our best to change their traditional mindset to adapt a  strange American philosophy of management, which must have been very hard for them to understand and accept at the beginning. However, I believe we were very successful at establishing "KMI SPIRIT",  creating very cooperative, soft and free family-like atmosphere within KMI, with management and employees trusting each other and ready to help each other.

Next, supervisors (and everyone working in the operation area) were trained to care about details . Whenever  I walked around the production line, I didn't look at the operation itself, but whether all dry box doors in front of operators were properly closed, whether bonding diagram sheets are clean and hung neatly, whether all the tools not in use are stored in proper tool boxes, whether employee badges are always vertically worn, etc. etc.. This kind of details may seem minor and not related to the products, and can be easily ignored. However, if consistent attention is not paid to these kind of details, it could unexpectedly lead to defective products at any time. (This is what I have learned at Fairchild Semikor under American management.)

As a result, KMI achieved a defect rate of 10% at Tijuana Plant in 6 months and only 5% in  one year of operation, saving tremendous amount of material cost for AMI. According to a rough calculation, KMI's material cost savings alone were about 3-4 times that of the KMI's total operation cost in about one year, which means KMI operated totally free of charge and still made a lot of money. This was why AMI management called KMI operation a "MIRACLE OPERATION", which was possible only by   great PEOPLE, their great TEAMWORK, an excellent COMPANY ATMOSPHERE and a great OPERATING SYSTEM. It was not achieved by one or few individuals but was the result of outstanding cooperation from every one at KMI, from bottom to top.

And, we were very proud of having achieved all this without any help from American management expatriate. Not only KMI was operated by all Korean management team, but none of us had any experience in MOS-LSI operation (though we had experience of much simpler transistor assembly in Fairchild Semikor) !! We felt sorry for the Tijuana plant, which was shut down in the following  year (1971) as the contract expired. (KMI built more than 95% of AMI products in less than a year after the operation start.)