All Around Beijing

We spent our last two days in Beijing touring some of the less famous sites (especially compared to the Great Wall and Forbidden City trips of last week). On Friday we trudged through the Beijing Zoo, mainly to see the pandas. They have a few there, and the students really enjoyed getting to see them up close. The rest of the zoo is pretty depressing, though. I remember seeing an entry in a guidebook four years ago that said, "All zoos are prisons for animals, but the Beijing Zoo is like Death Row!" I'll spare you the pictures of lions and tigers in prison-like cells and solitary bears stomping around concrete jungles. After that we went to the Lama Temple to see the world's largest wooden carved Buddha, at least according to the Guinness plaque outside of the building. We finished the day by switching up our shopping schedule and went to the Pearl Market (instead of the Silk Market as usual) to finish off our shopping lists.

On Saturday we started at the Temple of Heaven, the place where the emperor would come to worship. The complex is huge, and many locals come to the large parks surrounding the temple to practice Tai Chi each morning. We got a short introduction from a (short) Tai Chi master about some of the major poses. After that we went into a Hutong (neighborhood alley) on rickshaws to have lunch in a family's home. We all agreed that it was one of the best meals that we've had in Beijing. In the afternoon we visited the Olympic Park including the Bird's Nest stadium and the Water Cube aquatic center before heading to our farewell dinner with the students from Beijing Jiaotong University at a revolving-top restaurant.

 

We are all packing now to head to the airport around noon today. Next stop: USA! We hope you enjoyed following our Chinese trip of a lifetime!

Best,
Professor Drake

With Apologies to Alice Cooper...School's Out!

Wednesday and Thursday were the last official class days of the China trip. On Wednesday I gave the students a whirlwind introduction to Physical Distribution, covering transportation, warehousing, materials handling, customer service, and reverse logistics. It's material that usually takes me about three or four weeks to cover, and I was able to induce a round of applause from the students after finishing it in two hours. After the final lecture on Wednesday, we visited Lenovo, which purchased the IBM personal computer business about five years ago. We got to see some really innovative new computers, and many of the students were like kids in a candy store playing with some of their new offerings that were on display. That evening the students largely stayed in the hotel because they had to study for the final exam on Thursday.

After the final exam on Thursday, we went out to Hyundai's manufacturing facility near the Beijing Airport. After a brief presentation about Hyundai and its joint venture structure in China. We then toured the assembly facility where we saw cars assembled from start to finish. It was as close as many of us (me included) have ever gotten to an automobile assembly line, and it was very interesting to see the principles of lean production that we discussed in class being put to action in the plant. Unfortunately they didn't have any gift bags that included new cars for each of us. I guess they ran out of those before we arrived!


Best,
Professor Drake

There Was No Joy in Mudville...But There Was in Tianjin!

On Tuesday morning we boarded the high-speed train to Tianjin to visit Joy Mining Machinery's Chinese headquarters. The train is similar to the Bullet Train in Japan and can travel about 200mph at top speed. After about 55 minutes, we arrived in Tianjin's Tanggu Station and boarded a bus to Joy's headquarters. We listened to a few presentations from the Director of the China Supply Chain and the Manufacturing Manager, and then we donned our reflective gear to prepare us for a tour of the facility. It was almost as if I set up the presentations, because they mentioned a lot of the concepts that we had been discussing in class over the past two weeks. Many of the students were surprised to see that the manufacturing facility was spotless and had an orderly flow of materials from one station to another. After the tour they provided us lunch on their metal trays that made us feel like a cross between prisoners and factory workers, but we all appreciated the fact that they gave us lunch. We then made our way back to the train station and then to Beijing.

Best,
Professor Drake