Leadership Profile: Tom Werner (Part 5)

Tom joined SunPower in 2003, and the IPO occurred in 2005. Here we review the steps the company took in that timeframe which led to not only a successful IPO, but also laid the foundation for its current success.

SM: Between the time you showed up and the IPO, what was happening to the business in terms of scaling? TW: That is a fascinating story in and of itself. In April 2003 the technical team made their first cell that was 20% efficient in production size and format. They did that in a Cypress fabrication site in Texas. At the time we had five people in the Philippines who were essentially the core crew that was going to set up our manufacturing operations.

When I showed up full time in June, we called a summit and polled the team in the Philippines, the team in Texas and the team here to find out exactly where we were. We learned that we were not as organized as we could have been but we had the existence proof that a high efficiency solar cell could be fabricated in the right form factor.

In June we got serious in the Philippines and added some new people there, and the head of R&D spent a lot more time in Texas for the balance of 2003 and 2004 and did two things; first, they made more than one of the solar cells in the fabrication site, and second, they also started to define the equipment which would allow them to make 1400 per hour.

At the time that was a daunting task, because we were making 1400 per year, we needed to make a factory and we were under pressure by the board because we were burning cash, but the market was beginning to take off. We bought the equipment in early 2004 which at the time was a very risky decision – credit TJ Rogers and his board for being willing to fund a risky decision to build a $100M factory which ended up costing $150M, while, in parallel, sorting out the equipment and technology.

The equipment lead time is 9 months, so in early 2004 we bought the better part of $100M of equipment before we knew a lot of the variables associated with production, and the associated process parameters. We were ramping up the number of people, we started with 40 in California and 5 in the Philippines and by the end of the year we had 50 in California and 50 in the Philippines. Equipment started to arrive, and we were building out the factory. By September 2004 the equipment was in and it was time to make a solar cell with production equipment.

We had a textbook worth of challenges at that time. For example, when we turned on our DI Water, essentially our clean water, it was green. The pipes and the source of the water were grossly contaminated. Towards the end of 2004, we were starting to make production solar cells and starting to ramp the line. In the first quarter of 2005 we started to ramp production in earnest, and we were convinced we could produce this in volume so we began adding significant head count.

From that first quarter of 2005 until today, we have grown to the point that we now have 1400 people in the Philippines and 300 in the Bay Area. There has been radical growth in both headcount and revenues.

(to be continued)
(Part 4)
(Part 3)
(Part 2)
(Part 1)

This segment is part 5 in the series : Leadership Profile: Tom Werner
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12