International relations & International travel & November 2006 trip to China johnnelson on 13 Nov 2006 04:51 pm
Pictures from factory tour
Here are the pictures from the factory tour (click on picture to enlarge). In the first picture you see a worker inspecting a board, in the second one a board is being repaired and in the third picture you see a worker scanning a reel of parts to be used in the manufacturing process. The scanning happens using a PDA with a barcode scanner. The software for this PDA was developed as a Senior Project by a UNH ECE student in collaboration with our engineering staff.
on 20 Nov 2006 at 5:49 pm 1.Zeljko Medenica said …
My name is Zeljko Medenica and I am a student in the ECE department at the UNH. I have some questions about your experiences. How did you make the first contact with these Chinese companies? And what is your opinion about their level of professionalism in comparison with American and maybe western Europe standards?
on 04 Dec 2006 at 1:58 pm 2.johnnelson said …
Hi Zeljko.
My company has an office in China, and our sales team found these companies. Many of the world’s manufacturing companies have facilities in China, because of the small labor cost. For example, China is the world’s largest manufacturer of laptops and cellphones. So, it is not difficult for us to find potential customers.
So far, I have only personally dealt with companies that are joint ventures with foreign companies. So, the management is foreign (Europe, Taiwan, etc), and the shop floor operators are Chinese. These companies are very professional. One difference is that, because of the labor costs, there is currently less automation in the Chinese facilities. So, a Chinese facility most likely will have more people doing manual testing, where a European facility will have everything automated. Shop floor personnel in China are focused on a few tasks, but shop floor personnel in Europe in the US must be expert in several areas.
China is a very fast growing market. The factories have not reached the same level of quality processes as the rest of the world. This is changing quickly, though. Chinese companies are quickly adopting processes used in the rest of the world.
Thanks for the question!