At the Factory
Coming from a quiet European R&D environment and entering an Asian manufacturing plant, was somewhat of a shock.
Most details of my first days at the factory have luckily slipped my memory, but I remember that it started with me being placed on a job other than the one I signed for.
My boss, a Chinese man famous for frightening and firing people, introduced me to all the processes and machines that I have heard of and seen before, but have never become really familiar with. He pointed out that my job was very much unlike everything I've done before and I felt I was going to disappoint him heavily.
Because I would have been perfectly lost in this environment, I was given the status of a section manager plus 9 very beautiful people to support me. They had names that were impossible to spell and pronounce, while the spelling of their names changed now and then. They all looked pretty much alike with the exception of one whose skin was a lot darker than the others' and some who had Chinese faces. Later I learned how lucky I was to have several of these round faces in my team.
A number of colleagues (whose names and faces were as difficult to distinguish) seemed to like me and gave me support and advise. I took it, I could not have survived without.
The stress of the first days was so much on me that I got a fever and went weak every afternoon. In the evenings, I could do nothing but sleep. After a few days I realized that I had a serious disease. At Bangkok's best hospital, they diagnosed Dengue Fever and Malaria. The HR manager came to visit me, and I thought it was a dream. I was out of business for almost 2 weeks.
Once I made it through the disease, I was afraid to go back to my job. I forced myself, knowing that the first half year would be difficult.
It was a time in the life of our factory when orders were high, output could not be met and quality was our last concern. Problems were building up and I was one of the guys who was supposed to fix unexpected problems. My group was considered the fireworkers, a team being on standby to fix whatever problem came up. At that time we were actually more running around than standing by, so when asked "where are your people ?" I often had to admit "somewhere out there on the line..". When things went wrong, my boss loved to call me into his office and explained that my performance was absolutely not acceptable and there would be consequences. The 2nd time he shouted at me, I lost my respect as he reminded me of people I encountered in the army. My grin made him more aggressive but eventually he had to admit that expat contracts (his one was similar to mine) made it difficult to fire someone.
It was my people who made me survive the first weeks. Their professional skill was partially poor and communication with them was not easy, but their attitude was very positiv and they tried to keep things going as good as can. My clerk spend most of her time + overtime on preparation of the documents for the weekly quality meeting. She told me how it was all supposed to work, and eventually I stood there every Tuesday morning, presenting figures that showed the global performance of the factory down to the performance of individual areas. These figures made my boss jump while I didn't understand how they became to be, what they should be and what impact my group had on them.
Soon it happened that people found mistakes with my figures, accusing me of pushing the blame for a poor factory performance to them. Knowing that I had little manufacturing experience, I accepted all blame and promised improvement. My boss talked to me and asked for a stronger performance in the quality meeting. He explained that he's not paying me for continuing the wrong ways of the past, but he wants change.
I wondered: "Am I allowed to change things during these difficult times ?" - "Yes, sure. You are a manager." - "Oh, I forgot."
Eventually, I ended up spending my nights learning Visual Basic programming. I wanted to make good reports, understand them, then with proper foundation shoot at the right people. Yes, the factory was a warzone.
There came a day when I cancelled all existing reports and substituted them for new ones that I could explain and that ran on a computer with little manual involvement of my clerk.
The new reports became a challenge for my clerk who was supposed to run them. For 2 weeks she was fighting hard to understand what to do, while she complained that I had changed everything. I realized how inflexible she had become through year-long repetition of a task that should long-since have been passed to a computer. A few weeks later, she did no more overtime and actually had time left over, while producing better reports.
Soon I had become a recognized force in computer matters, automation and statistics. The accusations ceased and while my engineers were firefighting, I worked to detect potential future problems. Through everyone's effort, progress was steady. At the end of two years, our products had an excellent reputation and quality peaked.
During these two years, I was faced with tasks that I feared would be most difficult: Layoffs and transfers, setting objectives and writing appraisals. In the end, this was not too dramatic as my English language skills were OK, my people usually did a good job and complained little.
Language problems: Oh yes, they were plentiful. I couldn't directly talk to my technicians, they spoke only Thai. Two of my 4 engineers spoke some English and helped me out. My clerk, she picked up English rather well, which made life a lot easier.
Several of my colleagues who came from Singapore used a language very much unlike what we call "English" in the West.
For more on misunderstandings and confusion, see my dedicated language page.
The following year, there were few fires burning and my group had become obsolete. It was dissolved and I did a one-man-show on World-Class Manufacturing (WCM). Though interesting, it was a fruitless job: Due to its low priority and poor funding, there was little support from the people who were called "my team". Not much was moved.
To find out what is behind WCM, search the WWW for keywords: Kaizen, JIT, Changeover Time, Theory of Constraints.
With the start of my 4th year in Thailand, I began coordinating the introduction of new products and a product transfer between Asia and Europe.
My section consists of one guy, that's me. But now I'm not alone. Other sections support me and my projects, so that I work closely with a number of people, as if they were my own people.
This job is not short of elements of chaos, popping up at short notice. With the support of the professionals from our TV factory and the Singapore R&D labs, it's not only a good experience, sometimes I actually feel it is fun.
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