All Our Bags Are Packed!

Asia Blog # 6

January 24, 2016

We have been working with Santron (Taiwan based company) for close to 20 years. Although we have a lot of trust with the company and its staff, it is still important to visit the facility, audit the processes, talk to the staff and make sure that the communication continues.

It was raining the day we drove to the factory.

All motorcycle and scooter riders wear a unique type of pancho

Looks almost like a French Impressionist painting

Parked "cycles" and scooters make a pretty picture

Everyone honks in China. Listening to the all of the car and truck horns sounding off at one time reminded us of Neil Diamond's song, "Beautiful noise."

Chinese drivers wander from one lane to another - often without warning. The driving patterns looks as if everyone has been drinking. Most likely, the real reason for the poor driving is because there is no understanding about driving protocol.

Check out the road sign: This is why we do not drive in China

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Everything is large in China - Typical apartment complex - Many square miles of housing.

Santron factory:

"Large" in China is also the factories!

Santron is a multi-storied, multi-facility company located on 25 acres of property.

Due to economic issues in China combined with the young workers wanting more to work at "McDonald's" rather than on an assembly line, the employee count has dropped from 1500 employees to 250!

Typical assembly line producing our power supplies

Test station

There was an interesting aspect about auditing the factory at this time of year. Similar to Mexico, many of these factories are not heated nor are they air conditioned. In the case of Santron, all of the employees wore sweaters and jackets over their normal shirts and/or blouses. Some job descriptions allowed the employees to wear gloves. Building lights are turned off during breaks to conserve electricity.

We had lunch at the company cafeteria. One of the employees made a variety of homemade dishes. The "chef" prepared local (and very) fresh fish, pork and beef dishes as well as assorted veggies, regular rice and fried rice. This was quite a culinary experience!

Lunch for 5 people: Rice and the Fried rice had not yet been placed on the table!

We were invited by our hosts for a special Chinese dinner. We politely declined. Between our exhaustion and the huge lunch (and by the time we got back to the hotel), a snack at the lounge and bedtime was what we needed. Sleep was more important than food especially since we had to get up early (again) the next day for a flight to Shanghai.

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Bottled water is handed out everywhere we go. Airlines freely hand out water. Our hotel room continues to get water. Water is in our host's car. Water was offered during our factory tour. We were getting bottle water faster than we could drink them.

Below are the bottles left over from the last two days.