The Transporter

If you have traveled by an SBS Transit bus, an SMRT bus or a Funvee open-top bus lately, chances are, the vehicle had been made by Gemilang Coachwork Sdn Bhd.

Well-mannered, unassuming and soft-spoken, it is hard to imagine that Peter Phang Jyh Siong, 32, is director of the thriving multi-million dollar coach business.

GML was incorporated in Johor Bahru, Malaysia on Sep. 23, 1989 as a joint venture between Phang’s father and his uncle, specializing in the assembling of wooden buses and trucks. In 1999, GML signed a partnership with Alusuisse Aluminum of Switzerland to be the first and only license holder of aluminum bus technology in the Far East, for which they are now renowned.

Aluminum buses are considered superior to the conventional steel buses as they are strong, corrosion-resistant and lighter, translating into greater fuel efficiency. Today, GML engineers construct aluminum buses for overseas export. It has exported over 3,000 buses to locations such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Hong Kong. Their list of partners and clients include Mercedes Benz, Scania, Nissan, Volvo, SBS Transit, SMRT, Cycle and Carriage, Rapid KL and Rapid Penang.

GML was only a small, local business when it started. The breakthrough came two years after Phang joined the company, when SBS Singapore commissioned 1,100 buses from them, signing a four-year continuous contract worth a whopping S$165 million. Soon after, GML entered the China and Vietnamese market.

In 2009, GML was awarded the “Asia Pacific International Entrepreneur Excellence Award.” During the initial expansion, Phang faced several challenges when it came to people management as his employees hailed from diverse backgrounds with differing values. Phang began uniting them under the company’s vision and endeavored to build a strong foundation by instilling in his employees a spirit of excellence amid an environment of trust and openness, values which he learned from church. Phang is an advocate of staff empowerment—training staff to the point where they can handle the work when he is away from the office.

When it comes to management, Phang maintains that actions speak louder than words. He counts continuous prayer and seeking wisdom from God as his management strategies—every morning for the past year, Phang would take a “prayer walk” around his company grounds and pray for his buses. “Whenever I see my buses on the road, I pray for them,” Phang says. “For now, my goal is to expand the company and take it to the next level. I know that this is God’s business—and I will drive it to be as big as He wants it to be.”

Phang is blissfully married to Sally Yen and is a devoted father to Daniel, 3, and a baby girl, Naomi. The family lives near Phang’s parents, who help to look after their children when Phang and Yen are at work.

Among the batch of School Of Theology students who graduated recently, Phang admits it is no easy task balancing a young family, a business and his Bible school commitments. For half a year, he had to brave the infamous Causeway jams, shuttling between Johor Bahru and Singapore in order to attend classes every morning. “The only way to do it all is to set priorities,” Phang advises. “My priorities rank as such—God, family, business and personal enjoyment. Sometimes you have to sacrifice some things in life to make time for more important ones; for example, I’ve had to sacrifice my basketball time in order to be with my family.”

As of today, GML consists of 250 dedicated employees in various departments running the office administration and production processes. The present plant in Senai Industrial Zone occupies eight acres of land wholly owned by GML, and runs on state-of-the-art technology. The GML factory produces approximately 200 buses per year. It’s a business that not only takes people places, but is going places itself.

For further enquiries, GML can be contacted at +607 599 6666 or gml@gml.com.my. GML is located at Ptd 42326, Jalan Seelong, Mukim Senai, 81400 Senai, Johor, West Malaysia.

Source: http://www.citynews.sg/index.php/2010/09/the-transporter