First day of week 2! We started the day off with a visit to Cat Lai terminal, though it was very very hot their process and structure for work was interesting. From the outside their systems look like chaos but all the workers know where they should be and what they should be doing at all times. Watching the small cargo ship get loaded up with shipping containers a few of us had noticed that they can load a large container onto the ship in about a minute. The ship that we saw getting loaded was said to be one of the smaller ships that they load and it can get 5x larger than that. When I heard this I was at a loss for words.
One thing from Cat Lai that stood out to me was hearing about how they implement technology into their work. They emphasized how helpful things like the conveyer belt is for their work and how its really changed the game for them. While also talking about how they have looked into implementing more technology into other factors of the process but it’s just proven to be less successful than what they have. They said that “it’s just not comparable to humans”. As the world keeps growing technologically it was nice to hear that.
On sustainability Cat Lai is beginning to move in the right direction. They mentioned how they have electric trucks that they want to phase out they diesel trucks with in the future. We wondered why not just right now but she said that honestly they are still trying to work out logistics because as of now their diesel trucks are just much more efficient than the electric ones. This is super interesting to me because for my research paper I am doing it on the switch to electric motorbikes from fueled ones and its cool to see how its not just motorbikes making this change its all vehicles.
We next headed over to Dan On, which I was excited for because this is the topic of me and my groups project. Dan On was an impressive company to say the least. They company and work was interesting but what really stood out was their care for their people and the planet. Danny was saying how in ever open and free space that they have all they want to do is fill it with greens. As well as hearing how put o 70% of their enormous factory is solar energy was nice.
What really intrigued me at Dan On was their employee benefits. Not things like heath care (which I’m sure are still amazing) but things like their man made river with fish for employees to relax by, a spa, pool, gym, and being fed three meals a day. This is not only something to draw in employees but something that can keep them around for a while. Who would ever want to give this up? A few other interesting things at Dan On were the test kitchen where they said they film shows sometimes and also just how clean they are. They are a company who processes and packages food so cleanliness is definitely important but we can easily see just how they go above and beyond in this aspect.