Today we visited Hyundai and TK Elevator companies. Hyundai is a one of the major car companies in Korea alongside KIA. Hyundai is a top five car company worldwide and sells vehicles from cars, to electric vehicles, and buses. TK elevators is one of the largest manufacturers of elevators worldwide and they are developing new elevator systems to be implemented.

At Hyundai we were given an introduction to just how large the company is. Let me tell you, Hyundai is by no means tiny. They produce over 500 million cars annually and the plant we visited today in Asan wasn’t even the largest one they have in Korea. The plant we visited employs over 3700 employees and produces cars every 54 seconds from 6:45 in the morning to 12 and night.

Afterwards we were given a tour of the car making process. The process first involves acquiring lots of raw materials and premade items such as bolts. One raw material, steel, is grabbed in large quantities and shipped to the plant daily. Only then does the making of car parts begins. Later in the process, the car parts are put together one by one in an assembly line fashion. During the process, many robots put the car together automatically saving time and effort by workers. The robots also check the cars for defects and errors saving time on the inspection process. After the car is finished it is painted, test driven, and shipped out to be sold on the market.

Later we visited TK elevators on the other side of Asan. Asan is a newer city well known for its manufacturing capacity. We were given a tour of the elevator making process which again entailed obtaining large quantities of sheet metal that are then cut and shaped to the desired length. These pieces of metal are those that make up the elevator car. TK elevators has designed several elevators to be used such as a twin elevator, an elevator shaft that has more than one car in it, a high-speed elevator, and a smart elevator, an elevator system that uses floor numbers to create efficient flow. We also toured the elevator test building. The building standing at 157 meters tall is one of the tallest in the world for testing elevators. The elevators are tested to see if they work properly, and they are also used to test for safety measures such as elevator failure. Overall, the tours of both companies were very intuitive because they showed how complicated the engineering and business process behind a company is.