Shanghai: Where Your Computer Is Made

Nimen Dajia Hao,

Wow, has it already been three weeks...?? This trip has been a whirlwind of great experiences and what a better place to finish than in Shanghai. If you have never been to Shanghai, just imagine a place where all the great cities of the world are joined together in architecture, feel, speed and culture. Walking down Nanjing Road through the Bund and across the river to the Pudong area feels like going through New York, Tokyo, Paris, London, Seoul and Beijing.

From Shanghai, we visited two OEM/ODM (original equipment/design manufacturing) computer manufacturers to speak with their managers and take factory tours. If you own a laptop, it was most likly made at Twinhead or Winstron. The most interesting point about these two factories is how much they differ from one another. For instance, one factory utilizes much, much more animation on their production lines than the other factory and one factory let us view its assembly much more in depth because it has less security constraints. These OEM/ODM's have two very different ways of doing business in the same industry and the on site lessons that we learned allowed us to gain valuable insights about sourcing and HR in China.

We also visited Suzhou Industrial Park which I think is best described as a Green Silicon Valley. It is a place where international technology businesses have heavily invested capital and knowledge to create a city that includes some of the top Science and Technology Universities in China, is the Asian headquarters for many global companies and houses thousands of well educated engineers and managers in LEAD certified, sustainable, buildings. I would not mind living here someday!

The Asia Trip section of my MIM degree has come to an end and I could not have imagined a better way to get a feel for doing business in Asia. This trip has cemented many concepts I have learned in the MIM program thus far and has also allowed me to have a better understanding of the processes and practices of business culture in Japan, Korea and China.

Many of the MIM students are heading back to Portland, but seeing how it is Spring Break, I am going to stay in China for a little while and spend some more time in the two "heavens on earth": Suzhou and Hangzhou.

Zaijian,

He Siyu (Casey)