A Working Christmas in China

A Working Christmas in China

Well, it's now February 15th and I've been in Ningbo for 3 months and 3 weeks now but it feels like about a year. I've never worked so much in my life but I've also never had a job that was more suited to my abilities and personality.

Our company is making a new transmission oil pump for Ford. When I came here 3 months ago they were just getting ready go start building the first prototype pumps. We bought off and received two CNC machines - one lathe and one machining center for milling, drilling and tapping. Then we started machining the two parts that we make for the pump. We also bought 3 press machines to assemble the pumps and some simple leak test machines. After we received all of the components we build our first pump on Dec. 14th. It was a big event for the team and everybody was very happy and proud.

In these past 3 months the people in this photo have become my new family in Ningbo. We work very long days starting every day at 8am and often ending at 10 or 11pm. We have meetings with our customer Ford at least 2-3 nights a week and also have meetings with our US subsidiary in Michigan. And we have worked almost every day from the beginning of December to Chinese New Year holiday starting Feb 4th. We were all very tired and ready for the 10 day spring festival and chinese new year.

The woman to my left in the photo is my boss and our program manager Joan Chen. To my right is Jennifer Chen our project manager. I am the Launch Manager. The chinese have a saying "three women one stage". Kind of means "three women do everthing". Actually there are many other great people involved in the team. The general manager of the factory is the man in the leather coat to my left. He is very friendly and supportive of our program. As Joan says, we are the VIP team. We have the full support of the company to make this program a success.

Shenglong makes many spare parts for the auto industry and some low volume production. We make many different engine oil pumps and cast and machine some aluminum parts and we machine some camshafts as well. But this program is the first large mass production product we will export to a large foreign customer like Ford. They have a few people with some good experience but nobody knows Ford's requirements very well. That's why they hired me.

Our first pumps to ship to Ford were due to be shipped on Christmas Day. It was tough but we got 4 pumps shipped by Christmas. Everybody felt bad that I had to work during Christmas so they bought me some gifts and we also had a Christmas Eve dinner to celebrate our first shipment.

Of course after Christmas Eve dinner we ended up at KTV - China's favorite entertainment activity.

I keep telling them that I can't sing and they really love torturing me by making me do it anyway. This evening I sang Jingle Bells at least 4 times. It seemed to be the only thing they could find on the list. Haha