If you ask me what I learned this trip and where I learned them, I will a hundred percent tell you things they told and showed us during the company visits. BMW, KUKA, Continental, and SGL. Today, we had our very last company visit – Horauf & Kohler, a company that makes auto parts based in Augsburg, and have five other locations worldwide.

The company was located only about 20 minutes away by the trolley. The first thing that happened was we were told that the H&K staff that knew both English and German suddenly went on a vacation, so we are getting a translator. There is nothing wrong with that, but I know there will be some confusion and the whole process is going to be slow down, and it did. The H&K staff that showed us around were very knowledgeable and seems like he has been around for quite some time. He took us to the warehouse, a couple more injections, a couple machines, a room with three workers making a specific part for BMW, and the spot where the auto parts are packed and loaded on to trucks and sent to their destinations. He told us that BMW can come in and say they need a specific part with the amount they need, and H&K will prepare them and be done within 18 hours. The visit itself wasn’t too long, just the translating took up a lot of time during the questions section. According to the group in charge of H&K and the German students, a lot of the things that the guys said the translator didn’t have a chance to translate. Because there was too much information and he was going too quickly. During the whole visit, we saw less than 20workers and it seems like they don’t have a lot of labor force producing the parts, this includes both human and robots, we saw just one KUKA robot during the whole visit. During the questions section, even himself admits that the patent of a lot of the parts they are making already expired and other companies are starting to produce them at a faster rate with better quality. He told us that he believes this site will turn into an R&D institute within the next 10 years, and the company is not currently innovating in any way. Yea, I know. Sounds like the company is going under within the next couple decades. I wouldn’t be surprised. We were also told that 100% of their products go to BMW, this means that they only have a single customer. And if BMW decides to switch to another company, H&K will be left with nothing.

H&K company visit was decent but significantly worse than the other four. After the visit, each individual group part ways to work on the presentation for tomorrow. Our group went back to the hotel, changed, and then went to the university to meet the German students. We all completed our slides yesterday, so the first half of the afternoon was spent discussing each individual slide and see if there are anything we could fix. The German students really impressed me, they made the slides really pretty and we had to change a lot to match theirs. They were also very professional, having the logo of Continental on each slide and making sure there aren’t too many words on the slides, just like how we wanted to be. Then, the second half of the afternoon we rehearsed a couple times. We pointed out each other’s mistakes as well as information that we should add. The timing was a big issue, we kept going over the time limit by 4-5 minutes and had to cut down a lot of materials.

Jani, one of the German students in our group, told us the way to go to the Mall so we can walk around before going back to the hotel. The mall was pretty similar to the ones in U.S. Similar stores just different brands. We got ice cream again, thanks to Steve. (Because he always gets ice cream).

Since it is my birthday tomorrow and everyone knew I love bowling, later that night we all went to bowling. It was something else. I bowl so often that it became a routine, but it is the people I bowl with changes and brings different excitement every time.

“Three, Two, One, Happy Birthday!” Just like that, my first ever birthday in Germany, and my once and only 19th birthday, began.