By Lee Siew Hua

ARMED with a trade certificate in fitting from the Pasir Panjang Vocational Institute, Mr Tom Chan first joined Qioptiq Singapore as an apprentice 35 years ago.

Today, thanks to the company's policy of developing its workers, the 56-year-old oversees 60 workers in a specialised task - producing plano prisms, where standards of precision are measured in nanometres. A nanometre is one-millionth of a millimetre.

Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam highlighted the Jurong company of 900 workers as an example of one that stayed nimble and was constantly innovating.

Qioptiq Singapore, he said, competes globally in the market for optical products of the highest specifications. It designs and manufactures precision optical components and assemblies for night vision, defence, medical and commercial applications.

When it began production in 1975, things were simpler.

'Their key competitive advantage over competitors in the West was that Singaporeans could use wooden chopsticks to handle delicate lenses without damaging them,' chuckled Mr Tharman.

Thirty-four years later, its production lines require the most advanced optics technology as well as the most experienced craftsmen and engineers.

Qioptiq succeeds because of its good labour-management relations, and because it keeps developing its people, noted Mr Tharman.

He met Mr Chan last October when he opened Qioptiq's new $40 million manufacturing plant in Tractor Road.

Mr Chan told The Straits Times that he has stayed with Qioptiq for so many years because of its caring attitude, plus the 'opportunity and recognition' from the firm that saw him rise through the ranks.

The company trains every production worker in at least two different jobs. So when demand for products changes, they can be quickly re-deployed to different production lines.

The Qioptiq story mirrors the larger Singapore story, said Mr Tharman. 'Qioptiq is, like many of our companies, a description of how Singapore works - flexible, always learning, always improving as a team, so that we move up together.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on January 23, 2009.