International MBA Program
Internship Web Journal
Shaun Abraham
IMBA Class of 2008
Delphi
Shanghai, China
shaun_abraham@moore.sc.edu
Journal Entry #3 - July 3, 2007:
Time is flying by here in Shanghai. I can't believe two months
have past by already. With only a month and a half left, I've realized my goal of traveling
to inner China might have to wait till my next trip over. Well, let me fill you in on what
I've been up to the past month.
David Hudgens, one of my favorite advisors (Cynthia I didn't forget you), setup a dinner for all the alumni and current students upon his visit to Shanghai. It was a great opportunity to meet everyone at one location. I was impressed with the number of alumni we have in Shanghai. Most of the alumni I met were either upper management in large MNE's or successful business entrepreneurs. I believe, the connections I was able to make both at this dinner and at other Expat events, have been vital in building the necessary networks for my future goal of doing business in this region. And as I soon realized, you can never have too many business cards!
As far as daily life in Shanghai goes, I've been adjusting and immersing
myself more and more. As much as I feel I am adapting though, there are constant reminders of
how different I am. Here is a little story of one of my many unusual experiences in this
city. There I was, traveling back home from work on the company bus when all of a sudden, we
hit bumper to bumper traffic. Now in the U.S., this meant a short delay, but in this
wonderful city, this resulted in a permanent stop. We waited in the bus for about an hour
before I got fed up with the situation. I had no idea where we were at that time, but I knew
I didn't want to spend my evening in row 19 seat B. So, I told the driver to open the door,
and I exited. To my surprise, the bus cleared out and everyone followed me. I thought
to myself, so this is what Moses felt like when he led his people out of Egypt and into the promise
land, a diesel Volkswagen taxi, in this case.
Before we reached the cab, we walked up to a huge crowd of people surrounding the local KFC. Yes, my first reaction was also excitement, "half price buckets of chicken?!" Unfortunately, I was wrong. It was a hostage situation in downtown Shanghai.
Basically, a local farm worker was holding a young girl at knife
point. This went on for a few hours before the cops decided to bring in the snipers.
This would have been all of over the news in the U.S., but it was given little airtime here.
In some cases, our sensational media could learn a thing or two from the Chinese. Now, on the
other hand, if the girl happened to be the heiress to the Hilton fortune, then it would only be
right that she were interviewed by CCTV's version of Larry King….
This month Delphi decided to send me to our Guangzhou plant, which is located in the south of China, to help validate a few processes I had identified specific to their plant production. I was pretty excited since this was my first domestic plane trip. I was pleased with the ease and cleanliness of both airports. Most of the staff spoke enough English to assist me, and the masses of people flowed pretty efficiently throughout the airport. You see what is happening to me? I start working with lean systems, and now I have lean vision!
The massive 8 lane highway I traveled on from the airport to the city centre justified Guangzhou's place as the 3 rd largest city in China. Sitting on the famous Pearl River, Guangzhou is considered the gateway of Capitalism into the mainland because of it's proximity to Hong Kong.
During my day at the Delphi plant, I noticed both the drastic difference
in language (Mandarin to Cantonese) and company culture. I would have never guested the
magnitude of how these regional differences affected company wide business processes. As a
guest for the day, I was welcomed with open arms by my colleagues who supplied me with my own
corner office and "welcome to Guangzhou" fruit basket! My co-worker Kevin Liu was kind enough
to give me a quick tour of the city in the afternoon. This tour included the famous Temple of
the Six Banyan Trees, which is known as one of the last relics of "Old Guangzhou".
The next morning I made the three hour trip south to one of China's
newest additions, Hong Kong. This being one of the world's most developed cities and busiest
shipping ports; I had to see it for myself. I decided to stay on the Kowloon (mainland) side
with a beautiful view of the Harbor from my hotel room. I spent my two days touring the city
on foot for the most part. I took the Victoria Harbor Star Ferry for the nominal fee of $1.70
HK to get a nice look from both sides of the bay. The best view of Hong Kong comes from
Victoria Peak. I had to take a tram from the base up to the peak which made for a unique ride
considering the tram climbs at an approximate 45 degree angle!
What a great trip. Too many experiences to mention here, but this is a must for anyone visiting the area. A little taste of "freedom" if you know what I mean. Oh well, back to Shanghai….
Journal Entry #2 - June 1, 2007:
I enjoyed the "Golden week" off by settling my living arrangements and learning about my surroundings. I took a one day trip to beautiful Hangzhoutoo.
This is a famous historical city two hours south of Shanghai. The
well-known Chinese saying is "we have heaven in the sky and heaven on earth which is Hangzhou and
Suzhou". I purchased what is called a "standing only ticket" which turned out to be a great
idea after meeting a few friendly Chinese people who offered me a seat. I was able to chat it
up (in English) with an IT professional from Shaolin and a High School student from Shanghai. This
experience gave me an insight into the common person's opinion on life, politics, and
business. I visited Hangzhou's famous West Lake which holds a series of small islands within
it. We paid the small sum of 50 Yuan to take an island to island boat tour. I should have
figured visiting a tourist area when 1.3 billion people are on break might not be the best idea. We
had to wait in long lines for each ferry, but at the end of the day it was worth every Yuan!
My work at Delphi has been great so far. There is a steep learning curve when it comes to understanding the processes needed to do my job efficiently. I have put extra effort into learning everyone's name and proper pronunciations because of the "losing face" phenomena in Chinese society. This is defined as a loss of respect in front of their colleagues which can cause them to become more rigid and confrontational to your demands. Continuing on with other Chinese cultural traits, I have seen actual examples of "Guanxi" or personal connections within Delphi.
After spending the time to connect with employees, I feel they become much more responsive and pro-active in conforming to the goals or milestones I have set for them. I plan on continuing this during my time at Delphi to see how effective this is across different personalities and atmospheres.
I cannot explain the variety of items I have eaten at my company
canteen. Sometimes it's better not to know I guess. This is the "water cooler" of Delphi, so I get
to hear the real opinions being spoken freely among my colleagues.
One of my responsibilities during my internship is the Lean system implementation within the sales process here at Delphi. I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Kaz Nakada, a founding member of the Toyota Lean manufacturing system, when he came to Shanghai for a Lean System Conference. His Socratic method of producing answers was very unique and stretched the limitations of many of the employees thought processes. His seminar proved how much I have still to study. I plan on spending the next few weeks taking this knowledge, learning and implementing it into my EOS team. I'll keep you posted on my progress….
The third weekend of May, I took a trip up to Wuxi to see David. I was
so impressed with the cheap price of goods compared to Shanghai that I decided to pick up a few
things including a $31 DVD player. We traveled to the Buddha Temple located in the outskirts of
town. This amazing 300 foot Golden Buddha was built recently, but has already become one of
the major tourist attractions of Wuxi.
I took the opportunity to travel outside of the city when possible, but there are many things in Shanghai I've visited--like the weekly Entrepreneurial Expat gathering atop the Le Royal Meridien (Amazing View). This is a great spot to meet fellow Expats with a similar business sense. Last weekend, David Dreyfus and I attend an "Indian Party" at De La Coast Bar located in the Bund area on the Puxe River. My Jewish buddy and I at an Indian party in Shanghai. Now that's global. More to come…
Journal Entry #1 - May 7, 2007:
After spending the past 6 weeks in France, Italy, Austria, Czech
Republic, Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal and Madrid you would have thought I'd seen it
all. But once I arrived in Pudong Airport, I realized this was nothing like I had
experienced before. The friend who I am replacing at Delphi volunteered to meet me at the
airport. I enjoyed an authentic Chinese bus ride to his place in the Xuhui District. Similar
to my experiences in India, the buses were full to capacity. My friend has it rough living on
the 20th floor of a high rise with a spectacular view of the skyline. I hope to find a
similar apartment around this area in the near future.
My first day of work began bright and early at 5:45am. I catch the 6:40am company bus to the Delphi Shanghai office which is located one hour and fifteen minutes northwest of the city center. I've learned to use my time on the bus to catch up on some much needed reading. Leaving work on the same bus is a bit of challenge, since the routes are in Chinese. It's a good thing I took Art in high school because my personal notebook (a must in China) as become full of characters, equal signs followed by the English equivalents. Since the individual I am replacing was returning to the U.S. to begin his MBA in three days, we had a limited amount of time to transition. Since my boss is currently in Florida, it will be a few weeks before I get to meet him.
Within a few hours of my arrival at Delphi, I introduced myself at a company meeting. The HR department sent out a preliminary e-mail as well. I was amazed at the transparency throughout the different functional divisions of the company as many staff members welcomed me as I passed through the 400 employee facility. During my initial tour, I had a chance to see the "Wire Harness" and "Connectors" factory next door. I'm sure Professor Malhotra would have been proud of their thorough implementation of the "Toyota Lean Manufacturing System." It was astonishing how much automation and standardization went into each labor-intensive step. The head of project management gave me some good insight into the depth of analysis Delphi has taken to improve every movement within each process. Their commitment to Lean System Implementation is very strong and seems to be one of the key factors to Delphi's success. In the coming months I am looking forward to diving deeper into the lean implementation process.
On that note, I would like to speak a bit about my duties at
Delphi. My official title is "Sales Lean Process Implementation Lead of Asia Pacific."
My job is to coordinate the lean system methodology through one of the phases of the complete
Delphi customer transaction process. This will require me to organize and lead meetings with
different functional areas to analyze and debate to either retain value-add processes or trim the
non-valued ones. In addition, I will be in charge of monthly evaluation metrics
coordination. This week being Labor Week, I have some free time to settle in, find an
apartment, and prepare for my upcoming duties at Delphi. Did I mention I received free
tickets to the Shanghai AutoShow?!