Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Solectron Corporation
Ko Nishimura joined Solectron in 1988 as chief operating officer and became president in 1990. In 1992, he was appointed chief executive officer and was subsequently elected chairman of the board in 1996. During his tenure, Nishimura has grown Solectron from a regional entity into the world’s largest and most profitable electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company. Under his watch, Solectron received the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award twice – in 1997 and 1991 – after infusing the rigorous certification criteria into the company’s corporate culture and strategy.
Before coming to Solectron, Nishimura worked at IBM Corporation for 23 years, where he held a number of senior management positions in the company’s disk file design, technology and manufacturing divisions.
Dr. Nishimura serves on the boards of Merix Corporation, the Center for Quality Management and the Santa Fe Institute. He also serves on the Baan Company supervisory board, the advisory board of Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, the board of the Santa Clara Valley Manufacturing Group and is vice president of the Malcolm Baldrige Foundation. He is a former board member of the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California.
In addition, Nishimura is known within the Japanese-American community for his support of the Japanese Western U.S. Association and the Yu-Ai Kai Senior Community Center in San Jose.
Dr. Nishimura holds a doctorate in material science and engineering from Stanford University, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering from San Jose State University. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
