Cultural collision, visit and exchange, the friendship evergreen - MIT LGO teachers and students visiting CLGO program series activities were successfully completed

Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University CLGO (China Leaders for Global Operations) program and MIT LGO program aims to cultivate high-end talents in the field of manufacturing and operation with an international perspective. The two parties have long maintained close ties in teaching and practice, among which, the biennial MIT LGO China study tour is an exciting event.

From March 26, 2017 to March 29, under CLGO warm and thoughtful reception, MIT Sloan School of business led 54 MIT LGO students to make the visit and exchange with CLGO program. Through appreciating the Chinese local characteristics culture, site visits to the operation mode of the well-known enterprises, the high-level professional forms and other forms communication, the students has deepened the perception of Chinese culture and broadened the international vision of the operation field, and reinforced the profound friendship between the two parties. 

A tour of distinctive regional cultures - experience the charm of Oriental culture

The features of Jiangnan water town in China have always been unforgettable to international friends. The pavilions in ancient style highlight the implicitness and delicacy, the small bridges and flowing water are full of elegant customs, the Suzhou soft dialect, the green walls and black tiles reveal the primitive simplicity and dignified. The regional architecture is the essence and intuitive embodiment of regional culture, and the implicitness and inside exquisite, delicate and elegant delicacy of landscape architecture is also the aggregation of eastern culture. In order to enable LGO students to have a deeper experience of the charm of Chinese Oriental culture and deepen their mutual understanding, CLGO students became tour guides one after another and formed three teams of Shanghai culture group, Hangzhou culture group and Wuzhen culture group.  In the process of tour scenic spot, the two parties talked cheerfully and humorously, from the folk culture to the cross-cultural communication, from the clothing and dress, travel experience to feel the famous snacks of the various regions. They were talking each other freely and through laughter, they deepened our understanding and narrowed our distance in the conversation, which made a perfect “icebreaker” for the official start of the study tour and laid the emotional foundation for the following in-depth communication.

Factory tour of famous enterprises -- experience the characteristics of operation and management on site

CLGO program feature is the perfect combination of theory and practice. The operating core courses construct theory system for the study of the students, and the cooperative enterprises build the practice platform for the students. The combination of two complementary and mutually reinforcing makes the training characteristics. With LGO study opportunity, both parties made the visit learning to LEGO, cooperated partner of Li & Fung Group, SanDisk, GM Shanghai General Motors Jinqiao plant, ABB engineering Co., Ltd., and experienced each enterprise in supply chain management practices and characteristics of enterprise culture on site. 

LEGO - lean management brings low cost and high quality advantage

Lego group is a privately owned, family-owned company. The headquarters of the company is in Billund of Denmark, with regional headquarters in Jeremy Affeldt, London of United Kingdom, Shanghai of China and Singapore. Founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen based on the iconic Lego ® Bricks, Lego has become a leading global toy manufacturer. Taking the founding spirit of the company “Only the best is good enough”, Lego is “dedicating to the development of children, aiming to inspire and cultivate future founders through creative play and learning. The Jiaxing factory was completed in 2016, covering an area of 300,000 square meters. It has been operating for just over a year, and now it has 1,200 workers, among whom about 200 are in the management level. The LEGO toys produced in Jiaxing factory account for about 1/6 of the global LEGO toys.

Firstly, the teachers and students of CLGO and LGO in the meeting room of LEGO watched the short video of LEGO safety visit to ensure the safety of everyone during the visit. Then, the students were divided into three groups and started the factory visit under the guidance of the staff. The first stop was the history gallery of the LEGO. It showed the development process of LEGO that has been nearly eighty years of history. Then, they visited the LEGO packing and molding workshop. The lean management of workshop made the students very shocked. First was the highly mechanical automation. The large workshop actual operation personnel were very little, but the machine was in the orderly operation. The second was the cleanliness of the factory, which looked very comfortable. The third was the process design. The waste materials can be effectively used. The ingenious product design made both adults and children loving admiringly in LEGO products.  The comfortable working environment made it to be regarded as the own home by the employees, so that to contribute their creativity, which were the key factors for LEGO to become a toy leader. After the visit, the students went back to the meeting room for friendly interaction with LEGO executives, and got more and deeper understanding of LEGO.

The cooperated partner of Li & Fung Group - build quality brand to ensure customer satisfaction in the global thinking mode

The former of Hong Kong Li & Fung Group was Huazi Trade (1906-1949). Li & Fung is one of the oldest exporters in Hong Kong. Up to now, the subordinate of the group have Li & Ya (Retail) Limited, Li & Fung Group, Trinity Fashion Co. Ltd, Li & Yue Fashion Co. Ltd, Li & Fung Trading Company Ltd. The two companies in this visit were two cooperated partners of Li & Fung Group in Shanghai: Shanghai Longfang Clothing & Textiles Co., Ltd and Shanghai Kaixiya Textile Co., Ltd. Shanghai Longfang Clothing & Textiles Co., Ltd was founded in 1995, mainly undertakes foreign trade orders fashion brand processing, brand clothing OEM processing business. Shanghai Kaixiya Textile Co., Ltd is affiliated to Zhejiang Kaixiya International Stock Co., Ltd. Zhejiang Kaixiya International Co., Ltd. (Kaixiya Group) is a joint-stock enterprise group, is a share ownership enterprises group mainly specializing in silk textile international trade, with the combination of multivariate property rights and industry trade.

The two companies gave a warm reception to the CLGO and LGO teachers and students of visiting. Through the enterprise visit activities, the students were not only intuitively understanding the strong sense of social responsibility and efficient operation process of leading enterprises in the industry, but also tried to use various operation theories learned in class to analyze the operation process sequence, process time, product batch and other parameters design reasons in the actual production environment, and fulfilled the teaching requirements of combining operation management theory with practice.

SanDisk - ultrahigh automated production and field management

SanDisk is the world largest provider of flash data storage card products, was founded in Palo Alto, California in 1988. SanDisk now employs more than 8,000 people worldwide and is headquartered in Milpitas, California, USA. SanDisk opened its first manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China at the end of 2006, using state-of-the-art manufacturing technology to produce the industry's leading products.

It is impressive that SanDisk production process has a super high level of automation and refined field management. All the production processes are completed by robots and equipment with high level of automation, which can realize less and even unmanned operation. The production site is clean and standardized, and the man-machine operation is efficient.  According to the staff of the company, the manufacturing process of semiconductor chip can be generally divided into several processes, such as wafer processing and wafer needle testing, assembly testing and other procedures etc., among which wafer processing and wafer needle testing are the former process and wafer assembly testing are the latter process. The enterprise staff carried on the scene detailed introduction to the above procedure.

GM - strong assembly line production system

GM persists in taking “customer-centric, market-oriented” as the operation principle.  Shanghai general motors constantly creates quality products and services, now has three big brands of Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac, covers the each gradient markets from the high-end luxury car to the economy cars, and the high-performance luxury saloon and sports cars MPV, SUV and hybrid power and electric vehicles and other market segments. The CLGO and LGO teachers and students, under the guidance of the staff, visited the GM Shanghai Jinqiao production base, which is located in Jinqiao development zone, Pudong district, Shanghai. As the first manufacturing base of Shanghai GM, jinqiao has the world's advanced automated production lines and manufacturing processes. Shanghai General Motors has built China first internationally advanced flexible production line in Jinqiao base, covering the whole vehicle manufacturing process such as stamping, car body, paint, final assembly and finished automobile link and engine, transmission and other powertrain manufacturing processes, which realizes the co-production of different platform models.

The entire production base includes four main areas – stamping, car body, paint and final assembly. CLGO and LGO teachers and students visited the two main areas: car body shop and the final assembly. The car body workshop has the world leading car body manufacturing technology and connection technology. There are 514 robots in the workshop, which achieve a welding automation rate of up to 99%. Through laser soldering, plasma brazing, mixed gas shield welding, rivet welding, rolling edge and other body connection technologies, the rigidity and safety of the whole vehicle are greatly improved. The leading robot sealant coating technology greatly enhances the body strength and torsion resistance. The application of these advanced processes and equipment, In addition to meeting the quality of solder joint body appearance more beautiful to ensure the strength and safety of the body, at the same time, it also is more environmental protection and energy saving. At the end of 2015, the key cooperation program of car body workshop “Key technology and complete equipment of high quality and high efficiency laser welding and cutting in automobile manufacturing” were awarded the national science and technology progress award by the state council. The final assembly workshop is another important process to achieve the high quality cars of the new brand Excelle of Buick and Chevrolet Cavalier. The workshop is composed of 136 main work stations. On the chassis line, the high stability and high precision EMS+VAC system is used to precisely adjust the pitch of the work station, so that the connection of each screw and each part can be perfectly sewn. The high-precision AGV bracket fixture is used for precise positioning, precise assembly and accuracy up to 0.1mm, so as to ensure the accuracy and solidness of chassis installation. The combination of these intelligent technological processes and equipment eventually presents the high-quality car image the new brand Excelle of Buick and Chevrolet Cavalier.  Every vehicle that steps off the assembly line has to go through various functions including vehicle startup, lighting, air conditioning, sound, and the coordination of internal and external decorations, as well as strict quality inspection such as four-wheel positioning and headlight detection, dynamic vehicle testing, braking, sideslip, rain testing and etc.

ABB - modern robot manufacturing plant

ABB was formed in 1988 by the merger of two international companies with more than 100 years of history: Sweden ASEA and Switzerland BBC Brown Boveri. As the world leading supplier of industrial robots, ABB offers a range of small, medium and large 4-axis robots to five series of spray robots, and is dedicating to helping customers to improve production efficiency, product quality and safety level. Guided by the staff of the company, the students first visited the robot exhibition center. A six-axis robot on playing the Rubik's cube attracted the attention of students. It was performing the demonstration of restoring the Rubik's cube according to the established program.  In addition, there was a six-axis robot that can draw portraits, which was quite novel to the students. Afterwards, during the visit to the final assembly workshop of industrial robots, the students had an in-depth communication with the operation manager on topics such as 5S visual management, standardized lean production site management and quality management.

High-level forum “tour”

In the morning of March 29th, all CLGO and LGO teachers and students gathered in the building of Antai College of Economics and Management to participate in the forum held by CLGO program. The forum invited APPLE's vice President of Asia-Pacific Operations to give a keynote speech. Through this forum, the students had an in-depth understanding of Apple's supply chain management in the Asia-Pacific region and the acquisition and development of human resources.

So far, MIT LGO teachers and students ended their visit to the CLGO program and flew to Singapore to continue their international factory visit. This visit and exchange activity of MIT LGO teachers and students in the United States was a complete success. Although it only lasts for a few days, the teachers and students of LGO and CLGO have deepened their understanding of each other and established profound friendship through the Lion Team program enterprise cultural tour and other activities. They are looking forward to having more in-depth exchanges and cooperation in the future. At the same time, LGO expressed his sincere gratitude for CLGO's careful reception over the past few days, and warmly welcomed CLGO teachers and students to visit MIT at the end of June this year.