Dear participant and other readers,
The Business Tour 2015 was one to remember. In the pre-report I wrote: “the Business Tour 2015 will provide an educational and exiting experience you will never forget”. In my opinion this mission is accomplished for every one of us. It is almost impossible to capture the two weeks Business Tour in a couple of words. With a program absolutely stacked of company visits, cultural activities and amazing evening programs. In this report we are looking back upon this unforgettable trip.
On Monday the 17th we succeed to be all just in time on Schiphol Airport. With a pizza and some beers we were ready to fly off to Dubai. We visited bars and lots of cultural activities and achieved our goal to get more involved around the transportation and logistics disciplines in China. It was very interesting to see what the impact is of the developments in the Chinese economy are on the transportation and production sector. The traditional Chinese production company are also forced to think ‘lean’ and implement the theories. Later in this report this will be explained in more detail.
But what did we do during the company visits? We kicked off at APMT/CES, which is a third party company that provides independent consulting services for crane engineering, quality assurance, commissioning and procurement project management. At APMT/CES we analysed how they interact with the on-going experiences for the maintenance & repair teams to ensure a continuous improvement on new crane projects? Secondly, we visited ZPMC, which is a Chinese company that produces port machinery for example quay cranes. In this case looked at their production process, since the labour cost have been increasing in China during the last couple of years, the 70% market leader ZPMC had to look critical to their production process as well. Then we have PETEC. The production plant that is part of the Royal Dutch Philips Company. They produces different kind of lamps to ship these globally. During this visit we analysed the differences in lean manufacturing of their production lines. Lastly we have visited SEW Eurodrive, which is a manufacturer of motors. Before we went to China we have visited the production line in Rotterdam to compare their production line from a lean perspective to their branch situated just on the borders of Shanghai. Finally we presented our observations both branches (SEW Rotterdam & Shanghai)
A great business tour cannot take place without sponsors that provide the necessary financial support and I therefore sincerely thank all the sponsors who made this trip possible. In fact, the sponsors gave us the opportunity to broaden our view upon the developments in China around Transportation and Production engineering.
Reflecting on the pre-report we can say that our understanding has been enriched, that we learn more about the culture in China, and our friendships have been intensified. To be honest, a couple of weeks later I can say that it took some time to recover from the intensive two weeks trough China. This trip was definitely one I will never for forget.
Kind Regards,
On behalf of the Business Tour 2015,
Jasper Roosendaal
Chairman of the Business Tour committee 2015