Once again, we started off the day with a morning lecture from Professor Minh. I wish he became a professor at Pitt; I really love his lectures. I learned more about what makes Vietnam so attractive for business despite neighboring countries like Cambodia and Laos having even cheaper labor. This is actually something I had wondered about before. We made posters as a team again and I took some pride in making it and I think it went great. I love learning about geopolitics, supply chains, and so on from around the world. The company my group chose was TSMC. I originally thought that they had produced 100% of the market share for semiconductors, but 70% is still high and makes the world still very reliant.
After that we had another amazing lunch. With everything from seasoned French fries, pumpkin soup, and steak with eggs. I had a lot of fun just hanging around with everyone and talking to Hannah about Vietnamese life and customs. We then took a bus to Dien Quang an electrical supply manufacturing company that makes a wide range of products. I was very intrigued and wish I understood more from the tour, but most of it was covered in the video they played for us. We were shown how they test their electrical products too which I thought was unique. They sprayed water on lights exposed them to extreme heat, humidity, and cold to see how they would react. I thought this was awesome to see, but what I found strange is that these machines were doing everything and operated by anybody in the lab. Then we saw the factory workers and they were working in an insanely humid room that was 97 degrees. This would not be allowed in America or Europe because of the standards we have when it comes to working conditions. I felt like I was seeing the cheap labor in practice. Lastly, they took us to the Smart Bar downstairs which had rooms of fake living areas where they could demonstrate their products. I felt like I was in an IKEA. They had a similar device to Alexa which I thought was interesting and I brought that up when I did my interview. I loved the tour and learned a lot from it.
