Industry

Sorry I've been seriously slacking on my blog! The UEF students have been keeping us up late and I keep falling asleep too quickly, so here's catching up. Also, sorry in advance that I may miss a few specifics...

This morning was an early start to make the drive out of the city to Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) in Binh Duong. VSIP is a large "one stop shop" industrial park that includes power, water, sewage, customs, and other amenities for operations in the park. Companies can choose to move into pre-built factories or buy land and build their own facilities. A variety of Vietnamese and foreign companies have factories in the park,E including Siemens, Nokia, P&G, Nissin Foods, and Foster. We also had a briefing from a Chief Engineer, David Baker, from II-VI (one of the companies in VSIP), a precision engineering company that is based in Saxonburg, PA. II-VI focuses in three main sectors: laser solutions, photonics, and performance products. The briefing also included information about the global expansion of the company and the benefits and challenges that come with growth. The company entered Asia to be price competitive with their products by using cheaper labor. We toured two II-VI facilities; one facility manufactured optics for medical instruments and laser application, and the other factory built electric thermoelectric coolers for aircraft, power generation, and telecommunication. It was interesting to see the processes of fabrication and how they utilize labor skills in Vietnam. Mr. Baker also informed us of the original difficulties with employee turn-over at the factory. It is common practice for people to work for several months leading up to Tet holiday, receive their bonus, stay at home until they run out of money, and then look for a new job. II-VI has developed strategies to prevent this from happening and has lowered the turn-over rate to less than one percent. Our visit to VSIP included a large rainstorm; the sky went from clear to pouring and flooding the streets within minutes. The storm settled down as we were leaving and we went to lunch at a restaurant nearby. The chef was actually from Hong Kong so the food was closer to Chinese, including sesame and orange chicken. We drove back into the city and to the hotel to wrap up our day. I went up to the pool for a quick dip and then went out with the group. Mr. Baker recommended an Australian sports bar that his son runs, so of course we had to check it out. I had a great milkshake and some onion rings for a little piece of home. The street had a host of other expat bars which we stopped in as well (found out I'm pretty bad at darts). We got a taxi ride home and everyone crashed for the night. This was a solid day.