The first factoriesMonday 17 September, at 7 a.m. we were waked by the alarm. After a fine breakfast at our hostel we found ourselves quickly outside to leave with the bus to the company Technotion. But after waiting for 30 minutes it seemed that there was a misunderstanding and the bus would not come. Therefore we went back to the hostel to arrange a different bus and with a delay of 2 hours we were on our way! Once arrived at Technotion we were a little bit let down by the building, but inside it turned out they did their very best to cheer everything up by placing balloons everywhere. We were warmly welcomed by the director himself. He gave his presentation about Technotion in Dutch. The company is specialised in making linear motors, because of the time lunch was served during his story. The lunch was very tasty. Afterwards he showed us some movies of several applications, but also from the production. Here's the interesting part: we could visit the production hall! The factory was pretty large, but for an international company it was a small disappointment for me. You could also see these factories in the Netherlands. Most of the components were supplied so the staff was mainly busy with measuring and assembling all the components. However, they did make the coils by hand. It was interesting to see that all the staff had clearly their own task, the one was wrapping coils 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and the other was only busy with glueing components. Officially they only work 8 hours a day and the rest are paid as overtime. After this awesome visit we had still two more company visits to go. These were both suppliers from Technotion. The first one we visited was a metallurgy company. There were about 10 machines of which 6 automatic milling machines. This company looks like a Dutch factory hall as well, except that this company had much free space. More than half of the building was empty. The one who was giving us a tour spoke only Chinese and thus we were again really grateful that Xiaoying could help us with translating! The company visit at the PCB manufacturer was really crazy. Both companies had reasonably good work environments, at Technotion they even placed an exhaust above the glue department. At the PCB manufacturer we were received by the director in a beautiful room with a big table and big leather chairs. The director didn't speak English, so Xiaoying translated again. After a short talk we got a tour through the factory halls. It was all huge. It stinked of chemicals. Big machines automate the whole process. It was crazy to see in which huge volumes the PCBs were produced. All PCBs were checked by hand as well as with a camera piece by piece. It was super awesome to see how such a big company functions. After these super awesome company visits we went eating at a snake restaurant. The living snake was presented to us by the cooks. The snake was about 1,5 meters tall. From what I have heard, the cook cut the head off with a scissors in the kitchen. For the final activity we went to Shanghai World Financial Center to enjoy the skyline in the dark. It is the highest tower in Shanghai, its almost 500 meters high and has 100 floors. The lift only took 30 seconds to bring us all the way up. The view upstairs was very impressive, exactly like the pictures on the internet, but then in real life! Labrinus van Manen |