Industri-chaos

Warning: This rant, while being mildly educational and occasionally sniping, is probably too "work-related" to be genuinely entertaining. Can you blame me? I worked 85 hours this week.

Let me provide you with some insight on a common misconception about China. What do you know about the country and it's people? Do you figure everyone here who doesn't know kung fu and lives in temples in the mountains is working in a sweat shop, toiling away industriously for pittance a day? Well, you're partly right. Right about the pittance. Right about the toiling. But sometimes I wonder if what they do can be referred to as "work". I mean, labour, sure. But "work" for me sort of indicates a systematic and intelligent approach to a project, with rules and deadlines and...order. Obviously nobody told most of China.

Let me say that I'm only basing what I write on 3 months experience with 4 supplier factories in South East China. To generalise the whole state of the nation on just this would be a mistake, but I still think a lot of it is valid in a lot of the country. China has to be one of the least industrious industrial nations around. You'd be surprised. It's not because they don't work hard, it's because they don't work smart. It's like building a giant brick wall in record speed, only to find you left your car keys on the other side. Ask China. They know a lot about giant walls.

Some of it is people being stupid. We lost production for 2 days in one of our factories at a crucial time. Why? Someone forgot to order the packaging materials. Did you think we were just going to stuff all the products in a duffel bag and carry it to the customers? Here's your (out-of-)order, sirs.
Some of it is just how this funny old country seems to operate. The same factory fuelled our frustrations further the other day, by suddenly reporting
"oh, we're due to increase production, but we don't have electricity..."
I'm sorry? How are you planning to run the machines? On rice (and bad Asian stereotypes)?
Admittedly they couldn't have seen this coming. Or maybe they could have. They had applied to the power company 2 months in advance, asking for more power by the required date. But when they called up to see where it was, they were told they had to wait a month. Warning? None. Options? Well, a healthy bribe was only able to reduce this delay to 10 days. Reduce loss to only around $70,000 in production. So complain to the government or legal system? Ahem. The power company is owned by the government. They ARE the legal system. This is why I love communism. All equal, some deified. Sure, trying to organise the electricity for over a billion people must be a bitch. But that's no reason to change the rules at will.
C'est la vie? Well, if you work here long enough you should be able to pick these things up before they cause you strife. Ask for power "now" one month in advance. Surely this isn't the first time the government has broken promises.

Some of what is going on here is good, it's just done in such an intense an unrealistic way. A factory somewhere else in China was recently exposed to have heavy underage labour. Not the only one probably, but it made waves. Suddenly the local government turned around here and said "Over-16 year olds can be hired, but if they're under 18 they must only work 8 hour, 5 day-weeks, and only day shifts." I agree. But how about some warning? I think everyone would like to know a several weeks beforehand that they are going to have to find 70 new staff.

This week has been a hectic juggle of problems to try to balance product quality with quantity. One factory, scheduling to be making 25,000 units a day by now, are too busy repairing the product molding machines to produce more than 300 pieces. Not that they reported any of their problems to us. Nor is there any real desparation, or intelligent thinking about how to solve this problem. It's as though they figure they'll make what they're supposed to, on the timeline of "eventually". They're sad they're not getting paid yet, but their first reaction is not to solve the problems quicker, but to ask us "can we ask you to pay for all the materials we used to make bad products?" What, so essentially give you money for screwing up? Sure. Let me write you a cheque. I'll sign it "jackass".

Some Chinese are very intelligent. Some work their asses off for little money. But it would appear that there is rarely a combination of these two traits in one person. Which probably makes sense. If I was smart and Chinese, I wouldn't work a crap job for bugger-all either.