Dear readers,

We started off our morning at VSIP (Vietnam Singapore Industrial Parks). Here we learned about a rapidly growing system of industrial parks throughout Vietnam. The parks have 690 tenant companies that combine for $32 billion US dollars in export value. The company is successful mostly in the south near Saigon, since this is the fastest growing part of the country economically. The company does, however, have a strong presence in Hanoi, though it isn’t as large as its counterpart to the south. The real room for expansion is the company’s presence in central Vietnam. This is an ideal expansion and is strongly supported by the government because at the moment there is very little modern economic production in that area. Most habitants of central Vietnam work as fishermen or other traditional jobs. Bringing industry to the area would help to increase the unity of the country economically as well as balancing the migrating population. For this reason, VSIP is supported by the government as the spread of industry is a focus of the modern government. 

In the afternoon, we visited II-VI (“2-6”). This is an engineering manufacturing company based out of Pennsylvania but has manufacturing offices in Vietnam, China, Switzerland, and Singapore. Their main products about which we spoke were their lasers and optics. There are many others but these were the ones we spoke most about and observed. The lasers are used in eye surgery and have decreased the number of error significantly in preparatory surgery. The optics are what we observed most in the factory floor. The company buys many different kinds of glass with different indexes of refraction. They them up into flat or spherical shapes to be used in different devices. They check the quality of the cuts putting them under a microscope In a dark room. If they pass, they go on to be coated. The coating reduces reflection from light to a .02% loss in light. This makes the glass extremely efficient.

It was very interesting to walk around a factory floor and stuff the process by which a product is made. I know a lot of industrial engineers do process analysis for living. Just as I’ve been surprised on many other company visits, I’ve also been surprised on this one. Although it’s not what I envisioned myself doing, I found the process of manufacturing a product fascinating and think it could be another career option.