Monday, September 17, 2007
Evergreen Park
Saturday 15.September.2007
Setting out from Paro at 10:15AM on Friday morning, I left Bhutan. Before leaving, a round of thanks were definitely in order—and I thanked David for his wonderful hospitality, for sharing his knowledge, and for a beautiful stay in a beautiful country. We said quick good-byes, and I boarded the plane. After tying up a few loose ends in Flight Operations, David will do the same, so our next meeting is in Sri Lanka on the 24th.
Druk Air has two planes and one has a fly-by-wire system that is now fly-by-having-all-the-emergency-lights-on and is still missing an emergency slide that a flight attendant accidentally pulled back in Bangkok. Despite all this havoc, my plane was ready for take-off at quarter past ten. My props to David in Flight Operations!
The plane flew towards Bangkok, stopping shortly in Kolkuta along the way. We sat in Kolkuta airport with the doors wide open and the air conditioning in full swing—in a cloud of misty condensation. Luckily, the doors soon closed and we were on our way, zooming towards Bangkok in our chilly cabin.
Stepping out into the heat of Bangkok, I already missed the cold cabin air, not to mention the misty mountains of Bhutan.
The day before I left, David and I decided to drive up to Chelela Pass to catch one more wave of fresh Bhutan air. Chelela Pass lies on the road between Paro and the up-until-recently forbidden Haa Valley. At 3,900 meters, the air is cold and the wind pounds at your ears until they whine. But it’s magnificently fresh and you can’t help but stretch your arms out like a bird as you glide between hundreds of prayer flags enshrouded in layers of cloud. The ground was covered with the most precious Alpine flowers—tiny purple bulbs and bright pink petals. We walked higher and higher until our bodies were near-icicles and we turned back towards the car. The Thunder Dragon started to roar across the mountaintops and we decided it was time to go.
Sitting in the Bangkok airport for twelve hours, I was ready to climb two Chelelas. The wait was long, but I filled the time with reading, people watching, and people listening. Behind me, a woman was sitting on the ground and refusing to move. Airport security men were teasing her despite knowing full well she wasn’t mentally healthy. They came and went, and the woman continued to talk to herself and called a few people on her cell phone to say she was in Bangkok. Across from me, two girls were speaking German—one was writing in her journal. Periodically, she read sections to her friend for help with the names of hotels and parks. To my left, a man in his mid-twenties was sitting pretzel-style, playing video games. I was taking it all in.
Prawn chips, instant noodles, soy milk, and Mentos sustained me through the afternoon. My flight was at 3AM and around half past twelve I went to check in. I handed the woman my ticket and she looked quite puzzled. No onward ticket? No visa? Yes, you can get a visa upon arrival, but only if you have an onward ticket. Hmmm. I was getting pretty worried, so I called Alex to see if he could find out more. He said you can get a thirty-day tourist visa upon arrival but you have to have an onward ticket…Luckily, when I called Lalith he assured me not to worry, that I’d certainly get a visa on arrival so I signed a waiver to assure the airline that I assumed all responsibility for what happened next and stepped onto the plane.
The flight was already nearly full and came from Beijing. I was excited to overhear a bit of Chinese, but most of the flight was quiet, as people were trying to sleep. I arrived in Colombo at 4:45AM. When I passed through the passport check, I quickly told the security guard I am staying for a month, he stamped my book, and I was on my way. Getting my luggage was a bigger challenge. A few businessmen brought about forty huge duffle bags full of clothes on the flight. Everyone stood near the luggage belt as the businessmen pulled parcel after parcel of clothing off the carousel. My Chinese neighbors mused that they would take some of the merchants’ clothing if their own suitcases never arrived.
* * * *
Quick Introductions:
Lalith – entrepreneur, electrical engineer, and founder of Aspira, an organization that brings electricity to rural villages through biomass gasification.
Ayanthie – Lalith’s wife, dog-lover, and teacher of speech and drama
Maheeka – Lalith’s elder daughter, avid book-reader, senior in high school, pianist, flutist, and future vet extraordinaire
Hiranya – Lalith’s younger daughter, cricket-fan, wonderful pianist, and violinist.
All is well on Evergreen Park Road. When I arrived, Maheeka was in the back seat of the car, about to leave for class, with Ayanthie and her mother in the front seats. We said quick hellos before they drove off. But Ayanthie was back before long and we enjoyed a cup of tea in the living room and a lovely breakfast before starting the day.
After breakfast, we dropped Hiranya off at piano lessons and I scheduled my first piano lesson for Monday morning (very exciting!!!). The teacher is Ayanthie’s cousin (technically her mom’s cousin’s daughter) and a very lovely woman. We agreed that morning lessons would be best since I won’t always be in Colombo and mornings are most flexible so I could come on a different day of the week if need be.
Ayanthie took me to the apartment on Lauries Lane, which is where I’ll be living starting Friday. We made sure there are pots, pans, essential utensils, etc. Then, we walked around the neighborhood to get to know the area, visiting the fish market and grocery store.
In the afternoon, Aianthe, the girls, and I went into town to see the International Book Fair. It is a weeklong affair and the perfect place to find any book you can imagine at cheaper prices than usual—so long as you don’t mind pushing through crowded rooms that are lacking in oxygen. Maheeka found a good novel and an SAT prep book and I bought a Singhalese phrase book. We meant to be out by 2:45, but by the time found our way through the maze of people, it was 3, and by the time we made it out of the parking lot, it was 3:15 and we were all a bit late to our afternoon engagements.
When I arrived back at Evergreen Park, Lalith and I went straight to Ariasenna’s workshop. We planned to meet Ariasenna at 3, but we ended up arriving around 4PM. Luckily, Ariasenna was still there and the workshop was open. I took lots of pictures of the updated gasifier as a reference (for the SolidWorks models). Ariasenna, Lalith, and I talked about the latest design, manufacturing problems, and possible solutions. We also brainstormed ways of inserting the test probes into the blanking caps on all the t-joints.
On the way home, Lalith explained all the rules of cricket and when we arrived back at Evergreen Park, the TV was on upstairs and I joined Maheeka and Hiranya in watching the Sri Lanka – New Zealand match. Once it all clicks—and you understand all the overs, the wickets, and the runs—it’s really fun to watch and we were hard-pressed to go eat dinner.
After eating a delicious dinner, not even the cricket match could keep me awake and I headed promptly to bed.
Setting out from Paro at 10:15AM on Friday morning, I left Bhutan. Before leaving, a round of thanks were definitely in order—and I thanked David for his wonderful hospitality, for sharing his knowledge, and for a beautiful stay in a beautiful country. We said quick good-byes, and I boarded the plane. After tying up a few loose ends in Flight Operations, David will do the same, so our next meeting is in Sri Lanka on the 24th.
Druk Air has two planes and one has a fly-by-wire system that is now fly-by-having-all-the-emergency-lights-on and is still missing an emergency slide that a flight attendant accidentally pulled back in Bangkok. Despite all this havoc, my plane was ready for take-off at quarter past ten. My props to David in Flight Operations!
The plane flew towards Bangkok, stopping shortly in Kolkuta along the way. We sat in Kolkuta airport with the doors wide open and the air conditioning in full swing—in a cloud of misty condensation. Luckily, the doors soon closed and we were on our way, zooming towards Bangkok in our chilly cabin.
Stepping out into the heat of Bangkok, I already missed the cold cabin air, not to mention the misty mountains of Bhutan.
The day before I left, David and I decided to drive up to Chelela Pass to catch one more wave of fresh Bhutan air. Chelela Pass lies on the road between Paro and the up-until-recently forbidden Haa Valley. At 3,900 meters, the air is cold and the wind pounds at your ears until they whine. But it’s magnificently fresh and you can’t help but stretch your arms out like a bird as you glide between hundreds of prayer flags enshrouded in layers of cloud. The ground was covered with the most precious Alpine flowers—tiny purple bulbs and bright pink petals. We walked higher and higher until our bodies were near-icicles and we turned back towards the car. The Thunder Dragon started to roar across the mountaintops and we decided it was time to go.
Sitting in the Bangkok airport for twelve hours, I was ready to climb two Chelelas. The wait was long, but I filled the time with reading, people watching, and people listening. Behind me, a woman was sitting on the ground and refusing to move. Airport security men were teasing her despite knowing full well she wasn’t mentally healthy. They came and went, and the woman continued to talk to herself and called a few people on her cell phone to say she was in Bangkok. Across from me, two girls were speaking German—one was writing in her journal. Periodically, she read sections to her friend for help with the names of hotels and parks. To my left, a man in his mid-twenties was sitting pretzel-style, playing video games. I was taking it all in.
Prawn chips, instant noodles, soy milk, and Mentos sustained me through the afternoon. My flight was at 3AM and around half past twelve I went to check in. I handed the woman my ticket and she looked quite puzzled. No onward ticket? No visa? Yes, you can get a visa upon arrival, but only if you have an onward ticket. Hmmm. I was getting pretty worried, so I called Alex to see if he could find out more. He said you can get a thirty-day tourist visa upon arrival but you have to have an onward ticket…Luckily, when I called Lalith he assured me not to worry, that I’d certainly get a visa on arrival so I signed a waiver to assure the airline that I assumed all responsibility for what happened next and stepped onto the plane.
The flight was already nearly full and came from Beijing. I was excited to overhear a bit of Chinese, but most of the flight was quiet, as people were trying to sleep. I arrived in Colombo at 4:45AM. When I passed through the passport check, I quickly told the security guard I am staying for a month, he stamped my book, and I was on my way. Getting my luggage was a bigger challenge. A few businessmen brought about forty huge duffle bags full of clothes on the flight. Everyone stood near the luggage belt as the businessmen pulled parcel after parcel of clothing off the carousel. My Chinese neighbors mused that they would take some of the merchants’ clothing if their own suitcases never arrived.
* * * *
Quick Introductions:
Lalith – entrepreneur, electrical engineer, and founder of Aspira, an organization that brings electricity to rural villages through biomass gasification.
Ayanthie – Lalith’s wife, dog-lover, and teacher of speech and drama
Maheeka – Lalith’s elder daughter, avid book-reader, senior in high school, pianist, flutist, and future vet extraordinaire
Hiranya – Lalith’s younger daughter, cricket-fan, wonderful pianist, and violinist.
All is well on Evergreen Park Road. When I arrived, Maheeka was in the back seat of the car, about to leave for class, with Ayanthie and her mother in the front seats. We said quick hellos before they drove off. But Ayanthie was back before long and we enjoyed a cup of tea in the living room and a lovely breakfast before starting the day.
After breakfast, we dropped Hiranya off at piano lessons and I scheduled my first piano lesson for Monday morning (very exciting!!!). The teacher is Ayanthie’s cousin (technically her mom’s cousin’s daughter) and a very lovely woman. We agreed that morning lessons would be best since I won’t always be in Colombo and mornings are most flexible so I could come on a different day of the week if need be.
Ayanthie took me to the apartment on Lauries Lane, which is where I’ll be living starting Friday. We made sure there are pots, pans, essential utensils, etc. Then, we walked around the neighborhood to get to know the area, visiting the fish market and grocery store.
In the afternoon, Aianthe, the girls, and I went into town to see the International Book Fair. It is a weeklong affair and the perfect place to find any book you can imagine at cheaper prices than usual—so long as you don’t mind pushing through crowded rooms that are lacking in oxygen. Maheeka found a good novel and an SAT prep book and I bought a Singhalese phrase book. We meant to be out by 2:45, but by the time found our way through the maze of people, it was 3, and by the time we made it out of the parking lot, it was 3:15 and we were all a bit late to our afternoon engagements.
When I arrived back at Evergreen Park, Lalith and I went straight to Ariasenna’s workshop. We planned to meet Ariasenna at 3, but we ended up arriving around 4PM. Luckily, Ariasenna was still there and the workshop was open. I took lots of pictures of the updated gasifier as a reference (for the SolidWorks models). Ariasenna, Lalith, and I talked about the latest design, manufacturing problems, and possible solutions. We also brainstormed ways of inserting the test probes into the blanking caps on all the t-joints.
On the way home, Lalith explained all the rules of cricket and when we arrived back at Evergreen Park, the TV was on upstairs and I joined Maheeka and Hiranya in watching the Sri Lanka – New Zealand match. Once it all clicks—and you understand all the overs, the wickets, and the runs—it’s really fun to watch and we were hard-pressed to go eat dinner.
After eating a delicious dinner, not even the cricket match could keep me awake and I headed promptly to bed.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Cold Pepsi and Red Roofs
Sunday
9.September.2007
Last night I dreamt about getting a Stirling engine. It was brand new and just like unwrapping a birthday present. The only problem is, I don’t remember anything after that…I don’t even remember its rated power.
So, maybe I’ve been reading too much about gasifiers, but I do believe my dream was a good omen because today, Greg (our electrical engineer expert in Texas) sent an email about a successful 9kW biomass-powered Stirling engine installation in Denmark. Maybe Stirling engines aren’t as inaccessible as they once were!
Why the big excitement over Stirling engines? Since they are heat engines, they present a potentially less messy way of capturing biomass-generated energy. Though the topic is one of contention, many think Stirling engines don’t need as much gas clean-up as internal combustion engines, which means eliminating up to five components in our system and worrying much less over the exact gas composition coming out of the firebox.
However, thinking about Stirling engine application is still on the horizon, whereas engine governor issues and questions of safe operating hours sit on the plate today. Most of our day was spent redesigning the gasfication system. Although the system was originally designed to support a 5kW output, it is currently generating 7kW, and we would like to support 10kW. Achieving 10kW may just be a matter of changing the positioning of the air inlets or the hearth diameter, but it will take a combination of theory and testing to find out.
Diving headfirst into the theory, David and I sat down with an excel spreadsheet and gasification literature floating around us and went through all the calculations—from the Prakash engine’s 1500 rpms to hearth load to nozzle inlet sizing to throat plate/air inlet height ratios. We calculated three sheets of data for three potential designs. Implementing the designs while staying within the budget is a bigger challenge. Some parameters are very costly to change—such as hearth diameter—but other parts are easier (like the throat plate height, which David designed to be alterable).
Around six O’Clock our stomachs began churning and the Scottish porridge and poached eggs from the morning were no longer holding us through. Luckily, we went into Paro earlier today and made our rounds in the Sunday market. We now have enough Sardines—not to mention other more nutritious items like fresh fruits and veggies—to feed an army. David usually goes into market at 7:30AM but we arrived nearer to 10. The day was already hot and the path already covered in squished veggie remains. But the market pace showed no signs of slowing and we meandered through crowds and women with red beetlenut smiles to find the items on our list. After buying all our groceries, I welcomed David’s: what do you say we go find ourselves two bottles of cold Pepsi?
With the arrival of the sun, the roofs around Paro and our smaller village, Bondey, have turned red. It’s chili harvest season and once the little green chilis are picked from the vine, they end up on the roof as villagers wait for the magical transition from green to red.
More shocking than the bright red color of the chilis is the fact that one roof-full may barely last a week in a Bhutanese household!
9.September.2007
Last night I dreamt about getting a Stirling engine. It was brand new and just like unwrapping a birthday present. The only problem is, I don’t remember anything after that…I don’t even remember its rated power.
So, maybe I’ve been reading too much about gasifiers, but I do believe my dream was a good omen because today, Greg (our electrical engineer expert in Texas) sent an email about a successful 9kW biomass-powered Stirling engine installation in Denmark. Maybe Stirling engines aren’t as inaccessible as they once were!
Why the big excitement over Stirling engines? Since they are heat engines, they present a potentially less messy way of capturing biomass-generated energy. Though the topic is one of contention, many think Stirling engines don’t need as much gas clean-up as internal combustion engines, which means eliminating up to five components in our system and worrying much less over the exact gas composition coming out of the firebox.
However, thinking about Stirling engine application is still on the horizon, whereas engine governor issues and questions of safe operating hours sit on the plate today. Most of our day was spent redesigning the gasfication system. Although the system was originally designed to support a 5kW output, it is currently generating 7kW, and we would like to support 10kW. Achieving 10kW may just be a matter of changing the positioning of the air inlets or the hearth diameter, but it will take a combination of theory and testing to find out.
Diving headfirst into the theory, David and I sat down with an excel spreadsheet and gasification literature floating around us and went through all the calculations—from the Prakash engine’s 1500 rpms to hearth load to nozzle inlet sizing to throat plate/air inlet height ratios. We calculated three sheets of data for three potential designs. Implementing the designs while staying within the budget is a bigger challenge. Some parameters are very costly to change—such as hearth diameter—but other parts are easier (like the throat plate height, which David designed to be alterable).
Around six O’Clock our stomachs began churning and the Scottish porridge and poached eggs from the morning were no longer holding us through. Luckily, we went into Paro earlier today and made our rounds in the Sunday market. We now have enough Sardines—not to mention other more nutritious items like fresh fruits and veggies—to feed an army. David usually goes into market at 7:30AM but we arrived nearer to 10. The day was already hot and the path already covered in squished veggie remains. But the market pace showed no signs of slowing and we meandered through crowds and women with red beetlenut smiles to find the items on our list. After buying all our groceries, I welcomed David’s: what do you say we go find ourselves two bottles of cold Pepsi?
With the arrival of the sun, the roofs around Paro and our smaller village, Bondey, have turned red. It’s chili harvest season and once the little green chilis are picked from the vine, they end up on the roof as villagers wait for the magical transition from green to red.
More shocking than the bright red color of the chilis is the fact that one roof-full may barely last a week in a Bhutanese household!
Friday, September 7, 2007
6. September. 2007
New scene: Paro, Bhutan
Characters:
Captain David Young
engineer and mentor
member of…Druk Air Flight Operations Division
thinks about…solar collectors and wind-powered hydrogen generation
designs…gasification systems
fond of…cheese sandwiches and happy-ending movies
Scraggles
companion and house guard
full of…fleas
good at…finishing off our leftovers
less good at…chasing away vagrant cows that come into the garden
Lamu
deep-voiced and kind-hearted
cooks…delicious japati, daahl, and shamu dishes
tries to…tidy the organized chaos that David and I create
Home
cozy Bhutan cabin with Bhutan paintings and Bhutan colors
location…just beyond the Indian road workers’ camp
overlooks…the roaring Pachhu river and some new building construction
comes with…yummy microwave-cooked bread
It’s raining today, just as it rained yesterday and the day before. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Bhutan is having a healthy rainy season. In fact, David says I must have brought the rain, because they haven’t had any all summer. With such a good track record (three straight days of rain in Bhutan and three straight evenings of rain at Barefoot College), David warned me he may have to hire me out to South Africa.
Andi
rain-maker extraordinaire
loves to…make SolidWorks parts
not so fond of…moths that fly into the candles when the power goes out
excited to…be helping on the Sri Lankan biomass project
In the mornings, I keep busy reading about downdraft biomass gasifiers. David leaves very early in the morning to get in his seven hours of work and comes home at two O’Clock in the afternoon. We chop up some of Marion’s microwave-cooked bread, peal some apples, and bring out peanut butter, honey, cheese, and apple juice to the table. Marion is David’s wife. Unfortunately, I narrowly missed her when I arrived because she had to fly out to Laos for work. Her specialty is teachers training and she has been writing her Ph.D. on developing world education programs. She is looking at what kind of education program would be most relevant for, say a student in rural Bhutan or rural Cambodia, where chemistry lessons are perhaps not the best use of time spent away from the family farm. Right now, she is working with EndNote to put the finishing touches on her Ph.D. thesis and is getting ready to defend it in November. Before she left Paro, she cooked up lots of delicious bread (and all without a proper oven!).
After lunch, David and I get down to business. David has patiently been helping me get up to speed with the Sri Lanka project—giving me lots of reading material and answering all my questions. As a starting point, we updated the six-month agenda—adding new design considerations and testing goals. But as the six-month agenda started looking like a year-long agenda, we had to be very judicious in laying down number one priorities.
Yesterday afternoon, we went through testing log sheets and updating them. When I pulled out all of the new test equipment that was wrapped between layers of clothing in my suitcase, David wondered how I had room for any of my clothing.
There are several challenges to setting up the tests…like figuring out a way to stick the thermocouples into the firebox without frying the fabric protective sheath and thinking of how to measure the flow rate of the gas out of the gasifier without inhaling noxious CO fumes.
Between meals and gasifier-talk, David and I are working on translating all the gasifier drawings into SolidWorks. It’s a fun challenge and even gets a bit addictive.
Our goal by the end of the weekend is to start designing a gasifier from scratch. We thought this is the best way for me to get a handle on all the design considerations and for David to brush up on his design-thinking since it has been a year since he first designed the Lanka 100.
Cheers from the land of the Dragons,
Andi
New scene: Paro, Bhutan
Characters:
Captain David Young
engineer and mentor
member of…Druk Air Flight Operations Division
thinks about…solar collectors and wind-powered hydrogen generation
designs…gasification systems
fond of…cheese sandwiches and happy-ending movies
Scraggles
companion and house guard
full of…fleas
good at…finishing off our leftovers
less good at…chasing away vagrant cows that come into the garden
Lamu
deep-voiced and kind-hearted
cooks…delicious japati, daahl, and shamu dishes
tries to…tidy the organized chaos that David and I create
Home
cozy Bhutan cabin with Bhutan paintings and Bhutan colors
location…just beyond the Indian road workers’ camp
overlooks…the roaring Pachhu river and some new building construction
comes with…yummy microwave-cooked bread
It’s raining today, just as it rained yesterday and the day before. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Bhutan is having a healthy rainy season. In fact, David says I must have brought the rain, because they haven’t had any all summer. With such a good track record (three straight days of rain in Bhutan and three straight evenings of rain at Barefoot College), David warned me he may have to hire me out to South Africa.
Andi
rain-maker extraordinaire
loves to…make SolidWorks parts
not so fond of…moths that fly into the candles when the power goes out
excited to…be helping on the Sri Lankan biomass project
In the mornings, I keep busy reading about downdraft biomass gasifiers. David leaves very early in the morning to get in his seven hours of work and comes home at two O’Clock in the afternoon. We chop up some of Marion’s microwave-cooked bread, peal some apples, and bring out peanut butter, honey, cheese, and apple juice to the table. Marion is David’s wife. Unfortunately, I narrowly missed her when I arrived because she had to fly out to Laos for work. Her specialty is teachers training and she has been writing her Ph.D. on developing world education programs. She is looking at what kind of education program would be most relevant for, say a student in rural Bhutan or rural Cambodia, where chemistry lessons are perhaps not the best use of time spent away from the family farm. Right now, she is working with EndNote to put the finishing touches on her Ph.D. thesis and is getting ready to defend it in November. Before she left Paro, she cooked up lots of delicious bread (and all without a proper oven!).
After lunch, David and I get down to business. David has patiently been helping me get up to speed with the Sri Lanka project—giving me lots of reading material and answering all my questions. As a starting point, we updated the six-month agenda—adding new design considerations and testing goals. But as the six-month agenda started looking like a year-long agenda, we had to be very judicious in laying down number one priorities.
Yesterday afternoon, we went through testing log sheets and updating them. When I pulled out all of the new test equipment that was wrapped between layers of clothing in my suitcase, David wondered how I had room for any of my clothing.
There are several challenges to setting up the tests…like figuring out a way to stick the thermocouples into the firebox without frying the fabric protective sheath and thinking of how to measure the flow rate of the gas out of the gasifier without inhaling noxious CO fumes.
Between meals and gasifier-talk, David and I are working on translating all the gasifier drawings into SolidWorks. It’s a fun challenge and even gets a bit addictive.
Our goal by the end of the weekend is to start designing a gasifier from scratch. We thought this is the best way for me to get a handle on all the design considerations and for David to brush up on his design-thinking since it has been a year since he first designed the Lanka 100.
Cheers from the land of the Dragons,
Andi
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
PRL Goes to China - Continued
Chinese Business Dinner
After leaving AFT, the combination of a full day of site visits and jetlag put a few of us to sleep as we drove to dinner. But real sleep was still a long way off. It was time for dinner with Brian and Julie from Merida, a frame manufacturer we would visit the next morning.
We ate like kings, with dish after dish of delicious food: octopus-wrapped shrimps, shrimp with legs and antennae still attached, whole fish with hollow eyes, and dozens of new flavors from sweet to spicy. Between mouthfuls of food and spirited conversation, sounds of “Four dollar” could be heard around the table. In Taiwanese culture, a phrase that sounds much like “four dollar” means the equivalent of “cheers” or perhaps more accurately, “bottoms up.”
Not quite used to the Chinese drinking culture, we tried to toast with our tea whenever possible. However, it was also important not to offend their culture. Drinking is an integral part of Chinese business dealings and drinking between business partners is a sign of trust and breaking down of barriers. Bob told us that Specialized actually keeps a tally of those employees who can handle alcohol well and they are usually the ones who end up making the most trips to Asia for business deals. In fact, Bob said that he always carries a green powder (a type of traditional Chinese medicine) that helps curb the effects of hangover because the last thing he wants is impaired judgment when he makes a deal the next morning.
Needless to say, when we finally made it back to the Dragon Spring Hotel, sleep was the first order of business.
* * * * * *
24.August.2007
Times Are Changing
There are three kinds of manufacturing companies in China: 1) foreign-owned companies that export one hundred percent of their products, 2) joint-owned ventures with fifty percent domestic – fifty percent export products, and 3) locally-owned companies with one-hundred percent domestic sales. In order to build up local manufacturing capacity and adopt modern manufacturing techniques from abroad, the Chinese government has put several foreigner-friendly laws in place. The most popular law is China’s low corporate tax. Foreign-owned companies that export products from China have a corporate tax of only fifteen percent, as compared with the thirty percent tax for domestic companies, and up to forty percent tax that you see in the United States. While the skies look rosy for foreign investment today, the Chinese government is making changes to neutralize the tax structure over the next five years. Ultimately, they hope to settle on twenty-five percent for both local and foreign-owned enterprises. This still gives foreign-owned companies a decent advantage compared to their home turf, but the incentives are becoming fewer.
In fact, the Chinese government has already leveled the playing field where entry into China is concerned. Whereas foreigners could once get an eight-dollar visa to get into the Shenzhen manufacturing region, they now must pay the full visa price. These changes are small, but compounded with abrupt increases in minimum wage and value-added tax, they certainly add up.
Who Works for Specialized?
Mechanical engineering and industrial design students who have just graduated, who are bike junkies, who are attracted to the lunch-time rides and the biking culture. They usually want to get paid seventy-five or eighty grand a year, and end up getting paid fifty grand a year. And once they have learned to take a carbon fiber project from beginning to end, they start looking for a better-paying job.
Sitting in the car between factories, we brainstormed what it is that could keep a young engineer at Specialized. We decided that a huge factor is pride of authorship. I particularly liked Bob’s analogy:
"They say that in your life, there’s this currency that you trade in with different people. To certain people, the currency they trade in has a lot of value based on their personality and what’s important in their life. With your family, you always have debits and credits, right? And there’s a lot of value to this currency that may not be cash."
And at Specialized, you see that currency flowing like gold. There’s a pride of when that tool gets opened up and that frame comes out and you look at it, and you know that you were the one who actually did the design and you were watching that thing go from its inception up to the point when you’re watching in the Tour de France and someone is using that product to win a stage of the Tour de France and that currency is so valuable.
Some engineers at Specialized never earned a formal degree. They are former downhill bike racers turned engineers. And unlike many engineers straight out of college, these self-taught engineers often have an intuitive sense of what designs will work and which ones won’t. Because they have become Specialized experts, they usually end up working at Specialized for twenty or thirty years.
Merida Visit
Six years ago, Merida became a shareholder in Specialized. In fact, the two companies are so close that Bob has been known to stay in the operator’s dormitory. Merida is different from most other Chinese manufacturers because it uses the Toyota Production System (TPS) and pays such close attention to detail. Their main product is welded aluminum frames and they also assemble and package bikes in preparation for export.
Upon entering Merida’s conference room, we saw a completed bike leaning against the wall. It was Specialized’s new racing bike for kids that will be coming out soon. Bob immediately jumped on the bike and started trying things out. He was a fountain of ideas: the handle bars are a little too wide for a kid, and could they please be black rather than silver? And what about the shifter? It’s built for three gears, but it’s only a dual train bike. About four or five Merida engineers hovered around the bike and the conversation floated between English and Chinese. It was Lawrence who came up with the most promising solution: why not leave the shifter as is (since no one makes dual shifters) and have first gear do nothing? Those were the magic words and the bike was whisked away for immediate R&D.
It was time to take a brief overview visit of the factory before all the operators went to lunch. “Brief” is never brief for a group of manufacturing nerds, and it was difficult to get beyond swuagging. Although we had purposefully left all video equipment behind, we still brought a camera and swuagging was far too interesting to rush our way through. Swuagging involves taking pieces of metal pipe and putting them into a machine that hammers the pipe with four long curved hammers. The result is a tapered tube with completely smooth walls!
Once we had our fill of swuagging, we moved onwards and had just enough time to catch butting (both double and triple), tapering, and oxy-acetylene brazing with aluminum before lunch. Any Stanford student who has taken ME 203 with Professor Beach will be stunned at the last item, but it’s true, they were brazing aluminum.
We followed the operators to lunch to have a look at their cafeteria and we would have been more than happy to join them. The room was air conditioned, bright, clean, and the food looked delicious. Alas, Merida had already prepared a pizza lunch for us up in the conference room.
After lunch, Julie gave a powerpoint presentation about Merida. We were surprised to hear that Merida also produces magnesium computer cases. Unfortunately, the case-making machinery is more of a liability than an asset. At the time they installed the systems, Merida was using cutting edge technology. They pioneered the way in magnesium computer cases at the time when the .com boom was happening in the U.S. and business was good. However, the capital cost of the equipment was very high and once the Silicon Valley bubble burst, they were never able to recover the cost. The computer industry is by nature very fickle—many ups and downs—which is one reason why Merida likes working with Specialized. The bike industry is much more stable and based on a foundation of long-term relationships.
Velo Visit
Velo is not a brand in itself. Velo makes grips and bike saddles, but when you walk into their show room, you won’t see any “Velo” label products. Richie, Surface, and all of Specialized’s saddles are made here. In fact, there are over fifty OEM brands produced at Velo.
Globally, there are only three or four saddle manufacturers. Why? The tooling is incredibly expensive. Each saddle requires a different base mold at $20,000 a mold and if you want seat form manufacturing to keep up with the matching injection molded parts, you need twelve of these saddle molds per injection molding machine. It’s easy to see that prices quickly add up.
As a petroleum-based business, prices are already volatile and Stella, the woman running Velo, says that she has seen the raw material double in price since she started. Fortunately, Stella has a deal with the supplier and buys at a discounted rate for the price of having to project out a year’s worth of material.
In order to distribute some of the risk, Stella invested in keyboard pad production and has now become Microsoft’s sole supplier.
* * * * * * *
25.August.2007
Kenda Visit – Tire Manufacturing
If you’ve ever looked at a new bike tire, you’ve probably seen the little hairs that cover the treads and the parting line that runs around the middle of the outside. There is just enough there to make you start pondering how it was made…
Kenda is a public company that was started in the late ‘70s in Taiwan. They only produce tires and sixty percent of the tires they produce are made for bicycles. Although all of Kenda’s R&D is done in Taiwan, it has two manufacturing sites, one in Taiwan and one in China. The Taiwanese factory produces higher end tires. The tire casings range from sixty threads per inch (TPI) to one hundred twenty TPI. They also sew Kevlar into the treads which helps with flat protection and sewing it into the beads helps achieve a lighter weight tire.
Kenda’s China plant produces lower value tires and the casings range from sixty TPI down to as low as eighteen TPI. All the beads are all steel, which means the tires are a bit heavier. At both factories, the tire casings are made out of nylon because Kevlar is exclusively owned by DuPont and getting the license to produce Kevlar casings does not have enough of a performance advantage to justify the cost.
We were surprised to learn that aside from Kevlar beads and carbon-enhanced tubeless road tires, there have been few advances in bicycle tire technology in the past fifteen years. Because most bike accidents are attributed to the tires, there is a lot of liability involved in tire production. As a result, designers are reluctant to innovate or deviate too far from what works.
Still, Specialized was one of the first tire innovators in the bike industry. In fact, Specialized started as a tire company and only sold tires for the first five years of operation. In the late ‘70s, Michael, president of Specialized, was the first to innovate on the classical tubular tires that everyone was using and made a new design, known as the “turbo tire.” Although Specialized is best known for their bikes, it wasn’t until 1984 that Specialized produced its first bike, known as the Stump Jumper.
Today, tires represent seven percent of the overall cost of a bike (not including later assembly costs) and Specialized buys seven million bike tires a year.
So, how are they made?
Tire manufacturing in reverse
• The final product is a complete bike tire, with treads and all
• How did it assume this shape?
o Well, there had to be a mold of some sort
o As it turns out, the tire mold comes in two halves. That explains why you always see a parting line down the center of a bike tire, where it looks like a bit of flash has occurred.
o The molds are made of structural steel (SS 41 type, which means that the tensile strength is 41 kg/mm^2)
o The molds, which include all the tread details and small holes for excess spill-over, have been created through EDM
o Before going into use, the mold has been sand blasted and coated with a thin layer of grease
o Each molds costs approximately $100,000 NT (New Taiwan Dollars) (divide by 35 to get about $3,000 US dollars)
• What goes into the mold?
o A fairly flat rubber ring (a loop of rubber)
o This loop of rubber is pre-formed to assume the correct diameter and make sure that the beads are also the exact diameter they should be (the beads are formed from rubber-coated steel rods that are tacked together by a piece of sticky rubber—not welded!—and are still somewhat malleable)
• How does the rubber ring get cooked?
o A tubular bladder is placed inside the pre-formed rubber ring and this assembly is placed inside the mold, which is one of seven molds that are stacked on top of each other along a vertical rod. All the molds consist of two halves and the seven molds can all slide apart on the vertical rod so that the rubber ring and bladder can be placed inside.
o Steam is inserted into the inner tube and in a chamber around the outside of the tube and it is vulcanized into its final form (including treads and logos)
Back to Merida
There was still a lot to see at Merida and Bob would not let us leave Shenzhen without at least seeing painting and assembly of aluminum welded bike frames. In general, painting creates the biggest bottleneck in frame production and limits Merida to 4800 bikes per day. Each frame needs multiple paint layers and each layer needs a certain amount of time to dry (with bright red needing the most coats). Frames are air-sprayed to remove dust between coats and the final process is to spray on a clear coat which adds depth to the decals beneath.
On the assembly line, immense care is taken to protect the frames. Operators wrap paper tubes around the frame posts and add grease before adding any bolts or pedals. A bike takes 28 seconds to travel down the assembly line and ends up in a Specialized box, ready for shipping. Five bikes out of every batch of 650 goes through comprehensive quality control testing.
Merida implements many more quality control efforts than other manufacturers. After a frame goes through the T4 heat treatment process (at 530 degrees C), it goes through fourteen cold setting adjustments in order to get the geometry just right. Then the frames go into T6 heat treatment (at 180 degrees C). After T6 treatment, the frame is checked again and if needed, it will go through another adjustment and go back into the T4 oven, checking, and the T6 oven. This cycle may happen up to three times before the aluminum must be scrapped.
* * * * * *
27.August.2007
Greenwood Metal Stamping
Walking into the conference room at Greenwood Metal Stamping was like walking into a candy store. Shiny, matted, green, purple, red, blue, bent, curved, textured pieces of aluminum were out on display. In an instant, we were surrounding the table, poking and prodding and trying to ascertain how this or that piece had been made. Questions were flying left and right.
We saw pieces of anodized aluminum that were as shiny as mirrors. But don’t you need to lightly chemically etch the surface of the workpiece before you can anodize? How do you get the surface so smooth?
There was an Apple keyboard frame—a solid piece of aluminum with a hole for each keyboard key. How did they punch so many holes without any warping? Maybe using a duplicator punch press?
We saw a silver camera lens cap with a golden rim. Scott tested us…how do you get the gold rim without masking? We flipped over the piece and saw a tiny fingernail scratch—someone else had apparently wondered the same thing. Just do a double layer anodizing and then use laser etching to remove a layer of silver along the top edge.
Then we saw a piece that really stumped us…a piece of plastic protruded from a piece of aluminum, but there were no fasteners anywhere to be seen...Scott told us this process is called nanomolding. It was recently developed by a Japanese company that came up with a chemical process of attaching plastic to aluminum through insertion molding—no fasteners required!
At about this point, Lawrence Kwok, Greenwood’s Project Manager, and his wife Debbie arrived and Lawrence gave us an overview of Greenwood Metal Stamping (GMS).
GMS began as a PCB manufacturer, but their extensive experience in chemical etching provided the perfect background for sheet metal forming and finishes, which is their main business today. GMS has three thousand employees and their production capabilities include everything from stamping and forming to diamond cutting, sand blasting, hairlining, and laser grounding. GMS also creates almost all of its tooling in house.
Having all these processes under one roof is very valuable, especially for high volume production. If there is a problem with the anodizing because the sandblasting is not quite right, the anodizing team doesn’t need to put the parts in a car, ship them back to the sandblasting factory, and wait for the parts to return before starting over. If GMS were to outsource any of these processes, there is no way that it could produce 500,000 parts per month. (Not to mention the environmental benefits and waste reduction of having everything under the same roof.)
From the day a client first approaches GMS with a product, it usually has three to four weeks to have that product in production—that means having all the tooling completed and all the system glitches ironed out. To satisfy this demand, GMS produces approximately one hundred tools per month. This amounts to about six EDM machines and about twelve wire EDM machines in the tooling workshop.
When it comes to efficiency, GMS has thought through everything—down to the exact layout of the workspace and the location of each department. When you walk into the first building, you see thirty to fifty prototyping presses on the ground floor, the tooling designers sitting on the second floor overlooking one end of the hall, and the tool-making shop overlooking the other end of the hall. These three departments instruct and inform each other and need to be in close proximity.
* * * * * * *
28.August.2007
Final Reflections
So, after one week in China, what did we learn about Chinese manufacturing? The favorite question from friends and family is always “What’s the secret to Chinese manufacturing? What’s the magic formula?”
In and of itself, a Chinese manufacturing plant has no secret and quite frankly not too much value. What we saw again and again throughout our trip is that manufacturing in China is like manufacturing anywhere…some plants are efficient, others have piles of inventory, some are vertically integrated, others are rather horizontal.
What distinguishes one manufacturing company from another seems to be its ability to build relationships—both with suppliers and with clients. We saw this during dinner (and its countless “four dollar”s), from Bob (who has known people like Stella for over thirty years), and in the conference room (where Bill suggested that we embark on a new relationship…a Merida-Stanford exchange program).
In working with U.S.-based design firms, Scott said that most don’t understand that manufacturing is a social interaction every bit as much as design is. According to Scott:
"You don’t just go visit your manufacturer when you’ve got defective parts you’ve received. For the designer in particular, there’s a whole lot to be gained by interacting with manufacturers and engaging them both in the conference room at the whiteboard…obviously walking through the factory (to enlighten yourself about tools and processes you didn’t think about), but also over the dinner table (especially over here in China). The importance to get to know people to see them not as a vendor/supplier/worker for you, but as someone you care about, that you work with is extremely valuable. Because once you’ve achieved that level of relationship, then it becomes really easy whether in person or remotely to engage people in your next projects, your next design. The things that good manufacturers can contribute to the design phase should never be underestimated."
At the end of the day, your manufacturer can only work with what you give them. As more and more manufacturing moves overseas, U.S. design firms are losing touch with manufacturing processes, and end up leaving more and more to be decided by the manufacturing company. It’s no wonder that you see designers eagerly open a sample shipment from their manufacturers only to look crestfallen when they see a product that doesn’t match their expectations. Thus, I leave you with one last Scottism: “The more you assume, the less likely you are to get what you want. The more you understand your manufacturer’s business, the better you’ll understand how they’re responding to what you’re asking them to do.” In other words, go visit some manufacturing plants and really get to know the people working there!
After leaving AFT, the combination of a full day of site visits and jetlag put a few of us to sleep as we drove to dinner. But real sleep was still a long way off. It was time for dinner with Brian and Julie from Merida, a frame manufacturer we would visit the next morning.
We ate like kings, with dish after dish of delicious food: octopus-wrapped shrimps, shrimp with legs and antennae still attached, whole fish with hollow eyes, and dozens of new flavors from sweet to spicy. Between mouthfuls of food and spirited conversation, sounds of “Four dollar” could be heard around the table. In Taiwanese culture, a phrase that sounds much like “four dollar” means the equivalent of “cheers” or perhaps more accurately, “bottoms up.”
Not quite used to the Chinese drinking culture, we tried to toast with our tea whenever possible. However, it was also important not to offend their culture. Drinking is an integral part of Chinese business dealings and drinking between business partners is a sign of trust and breaking down of barriers. Bob told us that Specialized actually keeps a tally of those employees who can handle alcohol well and they are usually the ones who end up making the most trips to Asia for business deals. In fact, Bob said that he always carries a green powder (a type of traditional Chinese medicine) that helps curb the effects of hangover because the last thing he wants is impaired judgment when he makes a deal the next morning.
Needless to say, when we finally made it back to the Dragon Spring Hotel, sleep was the first order of business.
* * * * * *
24.August.2007
Times Are Changing
There are three kinds of manufacturing companies in China: 1) foreign-owned companies that export one hundred percent of their products, 2) joint-owned ventures with fifty percent domestic – fifty percent export products, and 3) locally-owned companies with one-hundred percent domestic sales. In order to build up local manufacturing capacity and adopt modern manufacturing techniques from abroad, the Chinese government has put several foreigner-friendly laws in place. The most popular law is China’s low corporate tax. Foreign-owned companies that export products from China have a corporate tax of only fifteen percent, as compared with the thirty percent tax for domestic companies, and up to forty percent tax that you see in the United States. While the skies look rosy for foreign investment today, the Chinese government is making changes to neutralize the tax structure over the next five years. Ultimately, they hope to settle on twenty-five percent for both local and foreign-owned enterprises. This still gives foreign-owned companies a decent advantage compared to their home turf, but the incentives are becoming fewer.
In fact, the Chinese government has already leveled the playing field where entry into China is concerned. Whereas foreigners could once get an eight-dollar visa to get into the Shenzhen manufacturing region, they now must pay the full visa price. These changes are small, but compounded with abrupt increases in minimum wage and value-added tax, they certainly add up.
Who Works for Specialized?
Mechanical engineering and industrial design students who have just graduated, who are bike junkies, who are attracted to the lunch-time rides and the biking culture. They usually want to get paid seventy-five or eighty grand a year, and end up getting paid fifty grand a year. And once they have learned to take a carbon fiber project from beginning to end, they start looking for a better-paying job.
Sitting in the car between factories, we brainstormed what it is that could keep a young engineer at Specialized. We decided that a huge factor is pride of authorship. I particularly liked Bob’s analogy:
"They say that in your life, there’s this currency that you trade in with different people. To certain people, the currency they trade in has a lot of value based on their personality and what’s important in their life. With your family, you always have debits and credits, right? And there’s a lot of value to this currency that may not be cash."
And at Specialized, you see that currency flowing like gold. There’s a pride of when that tool gets opened up and that frame comes out and you look at it, and you know that you were the one who actually did the design and you were watching that thing go from its inception up to the point when you’re watching in the Tour de France and someone is using that product to win a stage of the Tour de France and that currency is so valuable.
Some engineers at Specialized never earned a formal degree. They are former downhill bike racers turned engineers. And unlike many engineers straight out of college, these self-taught engineers often have an intuitive sense of what designs will work and which ones won’t. Because they have become Specialized experts, they usually end up working at Specialized for twenty or thirty years.
Merida Visit
Six years ago, Merida became a shareholder in Specialized. In fact, the two companies are so close that Bob has been known to stay in the operator’s dormitory. Merida is different from most other Chinese manufacturers because it uses the Toyota Production System (TPS) and pays such close attention to detail. Their main product is welded aluminum frames and they also assemble and package bikes in preparation for export.
Upon entering Merida’s conference room, we saw a completed bike leaning against the wall. It was Specialized’s new racing bike for kids that will be coming out soon. Bob immediately jumped on the bike and started trying things out. He was a fountain of ideas: the handle bars are a little too wide for a kid, and could they please be black rather than silver? And what about the shifter? It’s built for three gears, but it’s only a dual train bike. About four or five Merida engineers hovered around the bike and the conversation floated between English and Chinese. It was Lawrence who came up with the most promising solution: why not leave the shifter as is (since no one makes dual shifters) and have first gear do nothing? Those were the magic words and the bike was whisked away for immediate R&D.
It was time to take a brief overview visit of the factory before all the operators went to lunch. “Brief” is never brief for a group of manufacturing nerds, and it was difficult to get beyond swuagging. Although we had purposefully left all video equipment behind, we still brought a camera and swuagging was far too interesting to rush our way through. Swuagging involves taking pieces of metal pipe and putting them into a machine that hammers the pipe with four long curved hammers. The result is a tapered tube with completely smooth walls!
Once we had our fill of swuagging, we moved onwards and had just enough time to catch butting (both double and triple), tapering, and oxy-acetylene brazing with aluminum before lunch. Any Stanford student who has taken ME 203 with Professor Beach will be stunned at the last item, but it’s true, they were brazing aluminum.
We followed the operators to lunch to have a look at their cafeteria and we would have been more than happy to join them. The room was air conditioned, bright, clean, and the food looked delicious. Alas, Merida had already prepared a pizza lunch for us up in the conference room.
After lunch, Julie gave a powerpoint presentation about Merida. We were surprised to hear that Merida also produces magnesium computer cases. Unfortunately, the case-making machinery is more of a liability than an asset. At the time they installed the systems, Merida was using cutting edge technology. They pioneered the way in magnesium computer cases at the time when the .com boom was happening in the U.S. and business was good. However, the capital cost of the equipment was very high and once the Silicon Valley bubble burst, they were never able to recover the cost. The computer industry is by nature very fickle—many ups and downs—which is one reason why Merida likes working with Specialized. The bike industry is much more stable and based on a foundation of long-term relationships.
Velo Visit
Velo is not a brand in itself. Velo makes grips and bike saddles, but when you walk into their show room, you won’t see any “Velo” label products. Richie, Surface, and all of Specialized’s saddles are made here. In fact, there are over fifty OEM brands produced at Velo.
Globally, there are only three or four saddle manufacturers. Why? The tooling is incredibly expensive. Each saddle requires a different base mold at $20,000 a mold and if you want seat form manufacturing to keep up with the matching injection molded parts, you need twelve of these saddle molds per injection molding machine. It’s easy to see that prices quickly add up.
As a petroleum-based business, prices are already volatile and Stella, the woman running Velo, says that she has seen the raw material double in price since she started. Fortunately, Stella has a deal with the supplier and buys at a discounted rate for the price of having to project out a year’s worth of material.
In order to distribute some of the risk, Stella invested in keyboard pad production and has now become Microsoft’s sole supplier.
* * * * * * *
25.August.2007
Kenda Visit – Tire Manufacturing
If you’ve ever looked at a new bike tire, you’ve probably seen the little hairs that cover the treads and the parting line that runs around the middle of the outside. There is just enough there to make you start pondering how it was made…
Kenda is a public company that was started in the late ‘70s in Taiwan. They only produce tires and sixty percent of the tires they produce are made for bicycles. Although all of Kenda’s R&D is done in Taiwan, it has two manufacturing sites, one in Taiwan and one in China. The Taiwanese factory produces higher end tires. The tire casings range from sixty threads per inch (TPI) to one hundred twenty TPI. They also sew Kevlar into the treads which helps with flat protection and sewing it into the beads helps achieve a lighter weight tire.
Kenda’s China plant produces lower value tires and the casings range from sixty TPI down to as low as eighteen TPI. All the beads are all steel, which means the tires are a bit heavier. At both factories, the tire casings are made out of nylon because Kevlar is exclusively owned by DuPont and getting the license to produce Kevlar casings does not have enough of a performance advantage to justify the cost.
We were surprised to learn that aside from Kevlar beads and carbon-enhanced tubeless road tires, there have been few advances in bicycle tire technology in the past fifteen years. Because most bike accidents are attributed to the tires, there is a lot of liability involved in tire production. As a result, designers are reluctant to innovate or deviate too far from what works.
Still, Specialized was one of the first tire innovators in the bike industry. In fact, Specialized started as a tire company and only sold tires for the first five years of operation. In the late ‘70s, Michael, president of Specialized, was the first to innovate on the classical tubular tires that everyone was using and made a new design, known as the “turbo tire.” Although Specialized is best known for their bikes, it wasn’t until 1984 that Specialized produced its first bike, known as the Stump Jumper.
Today, tires represent seven percent of the overall cost of a bike (not including later assembly costs) and Specialized buys seven million bike tires a year.
So, how are they made?
Tire manufacturing in reverse
• The final product is a complete bike tire, with treads and all
• How did it assume this shape?
o Well, there had to be a mold of some sort
o As it turns out, the tire mold comes in two halves. That explains why you always see a parting line down the center of a bike tire, where it looks like a bit of flash has occurred.
o The molds are made of structural steel (SS 41 type, which means that the tensile strength is 41 kg/mm^2)
o The molds, which include all the tread details and small holes for excess spill-over, have been created through EDM
o Before going into use, the mold has been sand blasted and coated with a thin layer of grease
o Each molds costs approximately $100,000 NT (New Taiwan Dollars) (divide by 35 to get about $3,000 US dollars)
• What goes into the mold?
o A fairly flat rubber ring (a loop of rubber)
o This loop of rubber is pre-formed to assume the correct diameter and make sure that the beads are also the exact diameter they should be (the beads are formed from rubber-coated steel rods that are tacked together by a piece of sticky rubber—not welded!—and are still somewhat malleable)
• How does the rubber ring get cooked?
o A tubular bladder is placed inside the pre-formed rubber ring and this assembly is placed inside the mold, which is one of seven molds that are stacked on top of each other along a vertical rod. All the molds consist of two halves and the seven molds can all slide apart on the vertical rod so that the rubber ring and bladder can be placed inside.
o Steam is inserted into the inner tube and in a chamber around the outside of the tube and it is vulcanized into its final form (including treads and logos)
Back to Merida
There was still a lot to see at Merida and Bob would not let us leave Shenzhen without at least seeing painting and assembly of aluminum welded bike frames. In general, painting creates the biggest bottleneck in frame production and limits Merida to 4800 bikes per day. Each frame needs multiple paint layers and each layer needs a certain amount of time to dry (with bright red needing the most coats). Frames are air-sprayed to remove dust between coats and the final process is to spray on a clear coat which adds depth to the decals beneath.
On the assembly line, immense care is taken to protect the frames. Operators wrap paper tubes around the frame posts and add grease before adding any bolts or pedals. A bike takes 28 seconds to travel down the assembly line and ends up in a Specialized box, ready for shipping. Five bikes out of every batch of 650 goes through comprehensive quality control testing.
Merida implements many more quality control efforts than other manufacturers. After a frame goes through the T4 heat treatment process (at 530 degrees C), it goes through fourteen cold setting adjustments in order to get the geometry just right. Then the frames go into T6 heat treatment (at 180 degrees C). After T6 treatment, the frame is checked again and if needed, it will go through another adjustment and go back into the T4 oven, checking, and the T6 oven. This cycle may happen up to three times before the aluminum must be scrapped.
* * * * * *
27.August.2007
Greenwood Metal Stamping
Walking into the conference room at Greenwood Metal Stamping was like walking into a candy store. Shiny, matted, green, purple, red, blue, bent, curved, textured pieces of aluminum were out on display. In an instant, we were surrounding the table, poking and prodding and trying to ascertain how this or that piece had been made. Questions were flying left and right.
We saw pieces of anodized aluminum that were as shiny as mirrors. But don’t you need to lightly chemically etch the surface of the workpiece before you can anodize? How do you get the surface so smooth?
There was an Apple keyboard frame—a solid piece of aluminum with a hole for each keyboard key. How did they punch so many holes without any warping? Maybe using a duplicator punch press?
We saw a silver camera lens cap with a golden rim. Scott tested us…how do you get the gold rim without masking? We flipped over the piece and saw a tiny fingernail scratch—someone else had apparently wondered the same thing. Just do a double layer anodizing and then use laser etching to remove a layer of silver along the top edge.
Then we saw a piece that really stumped us…a piece of plastic protruded from a piece of aluminum, but there were no fasteners anywhere to be seen...Scott told us this process is called nanomolding. It was recently developed by a Japanese company that came up with a chemical process of attaching plastic to aluminum through insertion molding—no fasteners required!
At about this point, Lawrence Kwok, Greenwood’s Project Manager, and his wife Debbie arrived and Lawrence gave us an overview of Greenwood Metal Stamping (GMS).
GMS began as a PCB manufacturer, but their extensive experience in chemical etching provided the perfect background for sheet metal forming and finishes, which is their main business today. GMS has three thousand employees and their production capabilities include everything from stamping and forming to diamond cutting, sand blasting, hairlining, and laser grounding. GMS also creates almost all of its tooling in house.
Having all these processes under one roof is very valuable, especially for high volume production. If there is a problem with the anodizing because the sandblasting is not quite right, the anodizing team doesn’t need to put the parts in a car, ship them back to the sandblasting factory, and wait for the parts to return before starting over. If GMS were to outsource any of these processes, there is no way that it could produce 500,000 parts per month. (Not to mention the environmental benefits and waste reduction of having everything under the same roof.)
From the day a client first approaches GMS with a product, it usually has three to four weeks to have that product in production—that means having all the tooling completed and all the system glitches ironed out. To satisfy this demand, GMS produces approximately one hundred tools per month. This amounts to about six EDM machines and about twelve wire EDM machines in the tooling workshop.
When it comes to efficiency, GMS has thought through everything—down to the exact layout of the workspace and the location of each department. When you walk into the first building, you see thirty to fifty prototyping presses on the ground floor, the tooling designers sitting on the second floor overlooking one end of the hall, and the tool-making shop overlooking the other end of the hall. These three departments instruct and inform each other and need to be in close proximity.
* * * * * * *
28.August.2007
Final Reflections
So, after one week in China, what did we learn about Chinese manufacturing? The favorite question from friends and family is always “What’s the secret to Chinese manufacturing? What’s the magic formula?”
In and of itself, a Chinese manufacturing plant has no secret and quite frankly not too much value. What we saw again and again throughout our trip is that manufacturing in China is like manufacturing anywhere…some plants are efficient, others have piles of inventory, some are vertically integrated, others are rather horizontal.
What distinguishes one manufacturing company from another seems to be its ability to build relationships—both with suppliers and with clients. We saw this during dinner (and its countless “four dollar”s), from Bob (who has known people like Stella for over thirty years), and in the conference room (where Bill suggested that we embark on a new relationship…a Merida-Stanford exchange program).
In working with U.S.-based design firms, Scott said that most don’t understand that manufacturing is a social interaction every bit as much as design is. According to Scott:
"You don’t just go visit your manufacturer when you’ve got defective parts you’ve received. For the designer in particular, there’s a whole lot to be gained by interacting with manufacturers and engaging them both in the conference room at the whiteboard…obviously walking through the factory (to enlighten yourself about tools and processes you didn’t think about), but also over the dinner table (especially over here in China). The importance to get to know people to see them not as a vendor/supplier/worker for you, but as someone you care about, that you work with is extremely valuable. Because once you’ve achieved that level of relationship, then it becomes really easy whether in person or remotely to engage people in your next projects, your next design. The things that good manufacturers can contribute to the design phase should never be underestimated."
At the end of the day, your manufacturer can only work with what you give them. As more and more manufacturing moves overseas, U.S. design firms are losing touch with manufacturing processes, and end up leaving more and more to be decided by the manufacturing company. It’s no wonder that you see designers eagerly open a sample shipment from their manufacturers only to look crestfallen when they see a product that doesn’t match their expectations. Thus, I leave you with one last Scottism: “The more you assume, the less likely you are to get what you want. The more you understand your manufacturer’s business, the better you’ll understand how they’re responding to what you’re asking them to do.” In other words, go visit some manufacturing plants and really get to know the people working there!
Saturday, September 1, 2007
The PRL Goes to China
“Mattel Recalls 19 Million Toys Sent From China”, “Chinese Tires Are Ordered Recalled”, “China Moves to Refurbish a Damaged Global Image”…
It’s difficult to pick up the New York Times without noticing that Chinese manufacturing is in the limelight. From fatal pet food and toothpaste to defective children’s toys and faulty tires, Chinese manufacturing products of every kind are being flagged for their inadequate safety standards. As discontent leads to action and countries begin placing bans on Chinese imports, many are questioning the future of Chinese manufacturing. Though it is touted as the world’s most promising young manufacturing giant, China is beginning to feel growing pains.
What better time to go to China and check it out for ourselves? After two years of planning and several hiccups along the way, the PRL is finally in China.
The team consists of Professor Dave Beach, recent PhD graduate Lawrence Neeley, and undergraduate Andi Kleissner.
We arrived in Hong Kong on the evening of August 22nd and were soon joined by Bob Margevicius, the vice president of Specialized bikes and our key insight into the world of bike manufacturing in China for the next four days.
From the Hong Kong airport, we took a van with Bob and his colleague Bill Huang. Driving a mere thirty minutes brought us to the border, where we stepped out of the car, walked through customs, only to jump back in the car and head into mainland China. Our destination was the Dragon Spring Hotel in Shenzhen, a manufacturing town that sits just inside the border of the PRC.
The van ride was full of juicy stories. Ironically, our digital sound recorders and video equipment were buried deep inside our luggage as Bob poured out endless tales about Specialized. His story began back in the eighties when the cheapest aluminum frame in China was $150 (as compared to today’s price of $17 and the US-manufactured price of $70). With prices so low in China today, many see Chinese manufacturing as a panacea and forget to consider China’s complex regulatory environment. Specialized must deal both with a local government that increases the value added tax without warning, and with importer countries that can be equally unforgiving. The European Union’s anti-dumping laws strictly regulate Chinese manufacturing plants to prevent “dumping” of cheap Chinese goods in Europe. To ensure good relations with the EU, Specialized only deals with Taiwanese-owned ventures, though Chinese companies are often more cost-effective.
Before long, Bob’s story had reached the year 2000, when Cannondale went bankrupt and Specialized was able to jump into the niche of innovative bike design. It was around this time that Specialized began using experiential design and, much like The North Face, began using story boards and boundless creativity to build not just a product, but a particular experience, whether it be a sprint through the Alps or a weekend workout on your mountain bike.
We arrived at the Dragon Spring Hotel with enough stories to fill a short novel and realized that a) Bob Margevicius is a story-teller, b) never turn off the audio recorder, and c) we might just learn more outside of the manufacturing plants than inside.
* * * * * *
Our trip can be partitioned into two halves and two mentors. The first three quarters was guided by Bob Margevicius, and focused on bike manufacturing. We saw everything from fiber glass and prepreg manufacturing to hydro-forming and saddle manufacturing. The last quarter was led by Scott Bowie, Stanford Mechanical Engineering graduate and president of Zao Technology, Inc. We met Scott in Zhuhai and visited Greenwood Metal Stamping, where we stayed for two days. Our goal was to capture metal stamping, tool-making, and anodizing, but we also witnessed laser grounding, nanoforming, and sand blasting.
* * * * *
23.August.2007
Specialized Sales Channels
As Palo Alto residents, when we think Specialized bikes, we think Mike’s Bikes or Bike Connection, maybe even REI, but usually not Costco or Target. Why not? Specialized isn’t opposed to selling through the mass market. Rather, it’s the task of juggling all three sales channels—mass merchants, mid-merchants, and retailers—that has proven difficult.
Traditionally, Specialized does well at the retail level because it can make deals with the retailer: you cut down on other brands and we will supply you with free window advertisements, sales stands, and merchandise. At the mid-merchant level—mostly sporting goods outlets—Specialized fits right in by selling the explorer experience.
What happened when Specialized stepped into Costco? Local Specialized retailers revolted. Within days after Specialized started selling Full Force bikes at Costco, Bicycle Retailer magazine published an inflamed response: all retailers should stop selling Specialized bikes! In their view, Specialized was trying to do the impossible—how could Specialized expect to sell high-end racing bikes and simultaneously sell dirt cheap bikes to Jane Doe? The main problem was that Costco was only selling the bike at eight percent markup—how could the retailers compete?
Bob Margevicius immediately went back to Costco and wanted to know why it was selling the Full Force bikes so cheaply. With 35 million members, raking in $40 per member means that they only need to mark products up just enough to cover their overhead. Costco’s CEO told Bob:
We’re a merchant. A merchants obligation is, prior to sale, before it comes into this door, you own it. It comes into this door and we just display it nicely. And then someone takes it and puts it in the shopping cart and once they get to the register and they pay for it, as a brand, you own the customer. So you own any of the problems that go on.
As soon as 60,000 Full Force bikes landed in Costco, they put up a huge Specialized sign with Full Force in small letters below. Costco’s role as a merchant is the value proposition they bring to the customer, which in this case was worth eight percent. Needless to say, it was Specialized’s last merchant deal and Bob informed Costco’s CEO that this would be the last shipment of Full Force bicycles to Costco’s warehouse.
Martec Visit
Martec has been in the bike industry for the past ten years. They were first introduced to carbon composite technology in 1981 when they worked with Addidas France. In the early days, Martec produced carbon tennis rackets and they purchased their carbon from Japanese suppliers. But with the introduction of bike manufacturing in 1997 and the resulting increased use of prepreg, they decided to start producing their own hot melt prepreg in 1998. Since prepreg can only be kept in refrigerated conditions and is only good for one week, manufacturing their own prepreg ensures that Martec always has a stable supply of carbon without putting any to waste. Today, they produce an average of 200,000 m^2 of prepreg per month which they use to manufacture front forks, seat posts, and monocot frames.
During our visit to Martec, our two guides were Ivy and Mr. Lynn. Though she grew up in China, Ivy went to high school and college in Canada, where she studied Commerce and MIS. She has been back in China for five years now helping her father, Mr. Lynn, with the Martec business.
When you are in the carbon industry, there are three important concepts to understand: a) carbon is very labor intensive, requiring hours of lay-up and part alignment, b) tooling costs are exorbitant (one tool can only produce x number of items per day and you may end up needing ten tools for one size not to mention six different frame sizes for one model), c) economies of scale are essential to running a profitable enterprise. In many ways carbon is still a black magic and sits somewhere in the realm between art and science. Indeed, Ivy was the first to admit that “for carbon composite, it’s more of a trial and error with the lay-ups, and there’s not a formula like a chemistry formula that we can just get and apply, so it’s very important to have the experience.”
Martec has four cnc machines and five nc machines for in-house tool-making. Between this and their independent prepreg manufacturing, Martec is an unusual gem among Chinese manufacturers. They are always looking for ways to expedite the development process. This comes in handy when Bob visits and gives Ivy and Mr. Lynn ten new ideas, pushing their manufacturing capacity to the limit. Martec’s in-house tooling allows for fifty percent faster development time for Specialized.
Even with forty-two hours of sanding and ten to thirteen days of painting per frame, Martec churns out an impressive three hundred bike frames per month.
Long Hua Visit
On our way to Long Hua, we got lost in the maze of half-finished freeways and gridlocked roads, finally emerging at Long Hua after two hours on the road. Luckily, Bob’s charisma turned our late arrival into a fashionably late arrival.
And after Martec’s video and camera phobia, we were very excited to hear that Long Hua would give us free visual recording reign. However, our excitement died a bit as the tour progressed at lightning speed past steel forging, drawing, punching, and unfulfilled mentions of a chance to see cold forging. After our whirlwind tour, we came back to the conference room, where we looked at catalogs full of every imaginable suspension fork—downhill, mtb, street, city trekking, and comfort suspension forks in every color of the rainbow. The day was quickly coming to an end and we still had one more engagement to catch, so we watched only a small segment of Long Hua’s promotional video before bidding them adieu.
AFT (Advanced Forming Technology) Visit
It was dark outside as we drove through the guarded gates of another Shenzhen industrial park. Factory workers were enjoying dinner at small restaurants that lay wedged between factories. The buildings were all buzzing, and if it weren’t already dark, I would have guessed it were midday, peak production. (the glory of having two twelve-hour shifts)
We pulled up in front of AFT and met Mr. Sigh, a bright young man on AFT’s marketing team. Foregoing a conference-room chat, we went straight to the factory. Though the factory floor itself was quite large, it was home to only two machines—a hydroforming machine and a super plastic forming machine. Both machines insert fluid into a metal shaft and pressurize the cavity to press the metal out against the mold walls. Super plastic forming uses air, while hydroforming uses liquid as the pressurizing agent. As Mr. Sigh soon explained, super plastic forming is better at creating intricate parts because air is a compressible fluid (unlike liquids which are incompressible) and slowly applies pressure to the walls of the cavity. By using 6061 aluminum, AFT is able to achieve more than twelve percent expansion, which certainly inspires one to think of interesting new products.
More exciting than the processes themselves was the ensuing conversation. Back in the conference room, Mr. Sigh had laid a nice piece of bait on the table…a hydroformed metal bike fork lay on the table. It had been welded and then hydroformed. Almost immediately, whiteboard pens were flying and hands were waving passionately through the air. How could we make the fork without welding? Thoughts of triple extrusion followed by strategic cutting gave way to talk of 3D forging.
It was a very animated conversation and the kind of ideation that would make any graduate of ME219 smile.
Deja vous
Bob was first introduced to the world of Taiwanese manufacturing management through AIT (the American Institute of Taiwan). After submitting a list of baseline criteria (such as, “must be English-speaking” or “must be capable of producing x number of products”), Bob received a list of thirty Taiwanese manufacturers that AIT believed would make a good match.
Bob narrowed the list down to eight manufacturers and went to Taiwan for two days, planning to visit four one day and four the next. On four visits out of eight, Bob found himself standing in front of the same exact manufacturing plant (called KHS). Each time, there was a new welcoming sign and a new welcoming committee. But by the third time through the manufacturing floor, Bob had to say he’d already seen it all.
Not only was the trip an introduction to Taiwanese manufacturing, it was a nice introduction to trading companies. A trading company has the contacts, English skills, and knowledge of the products to be able to act as a liaison between manufacturers and western design firms. They also have the guts to cover the manufacturer’s sign and welcome spiel and replace it with their own.
Key lesson: When taking a site visit in China, make sure you’re visiting who you think you’re visiting!
It’s difficult to pick up the New York Times without noticing that Chinese manufacturing is in the limelight. From fatal pet food and toothpaste to defective children’s toys and faulty tires, Chinese manufacturing products of every kind are being flagged for their inadequate safety standards. As discontent leads to action and countries begin placing bans on Chinese imports, many are questioning the future of Chinese manufacturing. Though it is touted as the world’s most promising young manufacturing giant, China is beginning to feel growing pains.
What better time to go to China and check it out for ourselves? After two years of planning and several hiccups along the way, the PRL is finally in China.
The team consists of Professor Dave Beach, recent PhD graduate Lawrence Neeley, and undergraduate Andi Kleissner.
We arrived in Hong Kong on the evening of August 22nd and were soon joined by Bob Margevicius, the vice president of Specialized bikes and our key insight into the world of bike manufacturing in China for the next four days.
From the Hong Kong airport, we took a van with Bob and his colleague Bill Huang. Driving a mere thirty minutes brought us to the border, where we stepped out of the car, walked through customs, only to jump back in the car and head into mainland China. Our destination was the Dragon Spring Hotel in Shenzhen, a manufacturing town that sits just inside the border of the PRC.
The van ride was full of juicy stories. Ironically, our digital sound recorders and video equipment were buried deep inside our luggage as Bob poured out endless tales about Specialized. His story began back in the eighties when the cheapest aluminum frame in China was $150 (as compared to today’s price of $17 and the US-manufactured price of $70). With prices so low in China today, many see Chinese manufacturing as a panacea and forget to consider China’s complex regulatory environment. Specialized must deal both with a local government that increases the value added tax without warning, and with importer countries that can be equally unforgiving. The European Union’s anti-dumping laws strictly regulate Chinese manufacturing plants to prevent “dumping” of cheap Chinese goods in Europe. To ensure good relations with the EU, Specialized only deals with Taiwanese-owned ventures, though Chinese companies are often more cost-effective.
Before long, Bob’s story had reached the year 2000, when Cannondale went bankrupt and Specialized was able to jump into the niche of innovative bike design. It was around this time that Specialized began using experiential design and, much like The North Face, began using story boards and boundless creativity to build not just a product, but a particular experience, whether it be a sprint through the Alps or a weekend workout on your mountain bike.
We arrived at the Dragon Spring Hotel with enough stories to fill a short novel and realized that a) Bob Margevicius is a story-teller, b) never turn off the audio recorder, and c) we might just learn more outside of the manufacturing plants than inside.
* * * * * *
Our trip can be partitioned into two halves and two mentors. The first three quarters was guided by Bob Margevicius, and focused on bike manufacturing. We saw everything from fiber glass and prepreg manufacturing to hydro-forming and saddle manufacturing. The last quarter was led by Scott Bowie, Stanford Mechanical Engineering graduate and president of Zao Technology, Inc. We met Scott in Zhuhai and visited Greenwood Metal Stamping, where we stayed for two days. Our goal was to capture metal stamping, tool-making, and anodizing, but we also witnessed laser grounding, nanoforming, and sand blasting.
* * * * *
23.August.2007
Specialized Sales Channels
As Palo Alto residents, when we think Specialized bikes, we think Mike’s Bikes or Bike Connection, maybe even REI, but usually not Costco or Target. Why not? Specialized isn’t opposed to selling through the mass market. Rather, it’s the task of juggling all three sales channels—mass merchants, mid-merchants, and retailers—that has proven difficult.
Traditionally, Specialized does well at the retail level because it can make deals with the retailer: you cut down on other brands and we will supply you with free window advertisements, sales stands, and merchandise. At the mid-merchant level—mostly sporting goods outlets—Specialized fits right in by selling the explorer experience.
What happened when Specialized stepped into Costco? Local Specialized retailers revolted. Within days after Specialized started selling Full Force bikes at Costco, Bicycle Retailer magazine published an inflamed response: all retailers should stop selling Specialized bikes! In their view, Specialized was trying to do the impossible—how could Specialized expect to sell high-end racing bikes and simultaneously sell dirt cheap bikes to Jane Doe? The main problem was that Costco was only selling the bike at eight percent markup—how could the retailers compete?
Bob Margevicius immediately went back to Costco and wanted to know why it was selling the Full Force bikes so cheaply. With 35 million members, raking in $40 per member means that they only need to mark products up just enough to cover their overhead. Costco’s CEO told Bob:
We’re a merchant. A merchants obligation is, prior to sale, before it comes into this door, you own it. It comes into this door and we just display it nicely. And then someone takes it and puts it in the shopping cart and once they get to the register and they pay for it, as a brand, you own the customer. So you own any of the problems that go on.
As soon as 60,000 Full Force bikes landed in Costco, they put up a huge Specialized sign with Full Force in small letters below. Costco’s role as a merchant is the value proposition they bring to the customer, which in this case was worth eight percent. Needless to say, it was Specialized’s last merchant deal and Bob informed Costco’s CEO that this would be the last shipment of Full Force bicycles to Costco’s warehouse.
Martec Visit
Martec has been in the bike industry for the past ten years. They were first introduced to carbon composite technology in 1981 when they worked with Addidas France. In the early days, Martec produced carbon tennis rackets and they purchased their carbon from Japanese suppliers. But with the introduction of bike manufacturing in 1997 and the resulting increased use of prepreg, they decided to start producing their own hot melt prepreg in 1998. Since prepreg can only be kept in refrigerated conditions and is only good for one week, manufacturing their own prepreg ensures that Martec always has a stable supply of carbon without putting any to waste. Today, they produce an average of 200,000 m^2 of prepreg per month which they use to manufacture front forks, seat posts, and monocot frames.
During our visit to Martec, our two guides were Ivy and Mr. Lynn. Though she grew up in China, Ivy went to high school and college in Canada, where she studied Commerce and MIS. She has been back in China for five years now helping her father, Mr. Lynn, with the Martec business.
When you are in the carbon industry, there are three important concepts to understand: a) carbon is very labor intensive, requiring hours of lay-up and part alignment, b) tooling costs are exorbitant (one tool can only produce x number of items per day and you may end up needing ten tools for one size not to mention six different frame sizes for one model), c) economies of scale are essential to running a profitable enterprise. In many ways carbon is still a black magic and sits somewhere in the realm between art and science. Indeed, Ivy was the first to admit that “for carbon composite, it’s more of a trial and error with the lay-ups, and there’s not a formula like a chemistry formula that we can just get and apply, so it’s very important to have the experience.”
Martec has four cnc machines and five nc machines for in-house tool-making. Between this and their independent prepreg manufacturing, Martec is an unusual gem among Chinese manufacturers. They are always looking for ways to expedite the development process. This comes in handy when Bob visits and gives Ivy and Mr. Lynn ten new ideas, pushing their manufacturing capacity to the limit. Martec’s in-house tooling allows for fifty percent faster development time for Specialized.
Even with forty-two hours of sanding and ten to thirteen days of painting per frame, Martec churns out an impressive three hundred bike frames per month.
Long Hua Visit
On our way to Long Hua, we got lost in the maze of half-finished freeways and gridlocked roads, finally emerging at Long Hua after two hours on the road. Luckily, Bob’s charisma turned our late arrival into a fashionably late arrival.
And after Martec’s video and camera phobia, we were very excited to hear that Long Hua would give us free visual recording reign. However, our excitement died a bit as the tour progressed at lightning speed past steel forging, drawing, punching, and unfulfilled mentions of a chance to see cold forging. After our whirlwind tour, we came back to the conference room, where we looked at catalogs full of every imaginable suspension fork—downhill, mtb, street, city trekking, and comfort suspension forks in every color of the rainbow. The day was quickly coming to an end and we still had one more engagement to catch, so we watched only a small segment of Long Hua’s promotional video before bidding them adieu.
AFT (Advanced Forming Technology) Visit
It was dark outside as we drove through the guarded gates of another Shenzhen industrial park. Factory workers were enjoying dinner at small restaurants that lay wedged between factories. The buildings were all buzzing, and if it weren’t already dark, I would have guessed it were midday, peak production. (the glory of having two twelve-hour shifts)
We pulled up in front of AFT and met Mr. Sigh, a bright young man on AFT’s marketing team. Foregoing a conference-room chat, we went straight to the factory. Though the factory floor itself was quite large, it was home to only two machines—a hydroforming machine and a super plastic forming machine. Both machines insert fluid into a metal shaft and pressurize the cavity to press the metal out against the mold walls. Super plastic forming uses air, while hydroforming uses liquid as the pressurizing agent. As Mr. Sigh soon explained, super plastic forming is better at creating intricate parts because air is a compressible fluid (unlike liquids which are incompressible) and slowly applies pressure to the walls of the cavity. By using 6061 aluminum, AFT is able to achieve more than twelve percent expansion, which certainly inspires one to think of interesting new products.
More exciting than the processes themselves was the ensuing conversation. Back in the conference room, Mr. Sigh had laid a nice piece of bait on the table…a hydroformed metal bike fork lay on the table. It had been welded and then hydroformed. Almost immediately, whiteboard pens were flying and hands were waving passionately through the air. How could we make the fork without welding? Thoughts of triple extrusion followed by strategic cutting gave way to talk of 3D forging.
It was a very animated conversation and the kind of ideation that would make any graduate of ME219 smile.
Deja vous
Bob was first introduced to the world of Taiwanese manufacturing management through AIT (the American Institute of Taiwan). After submitting a list of baseline criteria (such as, “must be English-speaking” or “must be capable of producing x number of products”), Bob received a list of thirty Taiwanese manufacturers that AIT believed would make a good match.
Bob narrowed the list down to eight manufacturers and went to Taiwan for two days, planning to visit four one day and four the next. On four visits out of eight, Bob found himself standing in front of the same exact manufacturing plant (called KHS). Each time, there was a new welcoming sign and a new welcoming committee. But by the third time through the manufacturing floor, Bob had to say he’d already seen it all.
Not only was the trip an introduction to Taiwanese manufacturing, it was a nice introduction to trading companies. A trading company has the contacts, English skills, and knowledge of the products to be able to act as a liaison between manufacturers and western design firms. They also have the guts to cover the manufacturer’s sign and welcome spiel and replace it with their own.
Key lesson: When taking a site visit in China, make sure you’re visiting who you think you’re visiting!
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