China Through Fresh Eyes - 16 June, 2014

As part of the growing operations team here at GDP I was recently lucky enough to have flown across the world to explore the wonders of Asia. The key for me was to understand more about our factories, how they work and how they differ to manufacturing in other parts of the globe. I wanted to take the opportunity to learn more about our team and spend time understanding what their daily work life involves. So as I land in China my mind was buzzing with the opportunities, challenges and cultural opportunities that were the other side of the airport doors. No one warned me about the sleep deprivation however …… Visiting several of our main manufacturing hubs, the initial observation was the sheer scale of the factories and it became quite clear to me why capacity and capability are rarely a problem. They calculate the factory size by the number of football pitches that would fit inside. Seeing the set up of factories was eye opening, going from process to process really has made me fully understand how much work goes into the production of each individual unit. Our team have worked hard to develop our supply base and the hard work has really paid off.photo 1 All of the factories were very welcoming to me. It was great to build on our relationship further and understand each other’s points of views on certain issues. This is a very important part of our business culture for success in work. Face to face negotiation and problem solving is very different to my usual email and telecommunications. If only I could fly to China every time._ Overall, I had an amazing trip with a great deal of new found knowledge to take away with me and put to good use in my role here at GDP.