Today was our second to last day in Vietnam and I am not ready
to leave tomorrow. I have made many new friends from Pitt and Vietnam and I
will miss spending time with them. We went on two company visits today, one at
Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) and the other at II-VI. We also had
lunch at a delicious Japanese hot pot restaurant. They had a mix of western and
Japanese food. It is almost similar to the Melting Pot and we cooked our food
at the table in a pot of spicy cooking sauce.
VSIP was a very interesting company and we learned more about
industrial development in Vietnam. VSIP is a company that builds and maintains
industrial parks. Companies lease out the land to build factories and there are
companies from over 30 different countries. Some examples include Unilever,
Microsoft, and Siemens. VSIP is the only developer of its kind in Vietnam and
offers a wide range of services to its tenants. They work with the government
to provide a road system between factories, offer an in house customs office, and have a business licensing services. They also provide services such as waste water
treatment, housing for workers, and an emergency power grid if the government
shuts down the power. The second company we visited today was actually
located in VSIP and we did not have to drive far to get to it.
II-VI(Two-Six) is an optics and thermoelectrics company. They are based
in the U.S. but also have operations in China and Vietnam. We visited two
of their plants and talked to their Chief Engineer. The first plant we visited
was a thermoelectric plant that makes components that are used in applications
such as heated seats and laser cooling systems. It was very interesting to see
applications of what I learned in my chemistry and physics classes. I am also
very interested in the manufacturing process, so I definitely enjoyed this site
visit. The second plant visit we went to was an optics plant that makes glass
tubes for lasers, medical lenses, and other glass products. The production we
saw today was all low value products that take a lot of man power to make. That is
why this type of production has been outsourced to Vietnam where the labor costs are
lower and there are many tax incentives. The products that are produced in the
United States require higher skilled labor, are protected by stricter
patent laws, and are very high in value. It was interesting to see an example
of outsourcing and how it has effected this company. This site visit was a lot
more engineering related than the others and I enjoyed the highly technical
aspect of it.
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