The Factory Life

This past weekend UCHANU found itself in a place where none had been before and everyone has many connections to: the factory. We visited two factories, first a textile and clothing factory called HANOSIMEX, and second a factory producing the ever-popular motorbikes of the Yamaha company. Both were very, very interesting to see not only because of their immense size, but it also gave perspective about how little we know about how the things we have are made or about the people who make them.

Machines making spools of thread.

First off, the textile factory was unbelievably enormous stretching faar into the distance past hundreds of machines each rolling up hundreds of spools of thread, or gathering hundreds of pounds of cotton into large bundles. There was a good number of technicians working at the time of our visit, with a seemingly equal number of men and women in the thread-making factory. All seemed to be between the ages of 18-30 and were constantly moving and working.

The sewing factory where workers are constructing a blue men's Express shirt.

The sewing factory was very different with basically all female workers, with a few males scattered around. The workplace itself seemed very nice compared to the conditions of many sewing factories I have heard of: there were large fans for ventilation, open windows, not too terribly cramped workstations, many lights, and music instead of shouting. Everyone here seemed young as well with some girls who appeared younger than those in the thread-making factory. Many of the articles being constructed seemed destined for the United States, to stores such as Target and Express.

 Our second destination was the Yamaha factory where a little more than a thousand (according to their counters) Yamaha motorbikes are constructed everyday for domestic use. Here we were not allowed to take pictures, presumably to keep the Yamaha secrets from being spread to other companies... But the factory here was also ridiculously large, and most of the workers were men with a number of women to handle small parts and detail work. The company representative said that the average age of workers in the factory was from 20-25, which looked about right when observing the floor. It was miraculous to walk along the assembly line and just watch the stages of motorbike assembly, with the parts looking more and more like a Sirius or Mio Classico with every step. The factory was very clean and organized. The workers themselves had standard uniforms and everyone (as well as us visitors) was required to wear a hat on the work floor. The temperature throughout the factory was cool and it looked like very repetitive and organized work that everyone was doing. We were told that if anyone needed to nha ve sinh (use the restroom) then they needed to alert their supervisor so the production line would not stop. The representative told us that they have never needed to completely stop the production line, nor have there been too many major injuries. Just one or two a year, which I guess is a good ratio.
Both factories created things that anyone confronts in their daily life (though if not motorbikes regularly, we can imagine cars in their place on the assembly line) and it must be very amusing for the employees to see how awe-struck people are at seeing the construction of their daily items. Hopefully I will put more value in my things after reflecting how much work it takes just to make a shirt or the motorbike that gets me from here to there. I guess that there is a second point to these weekend trips besides the educational aspects, which is to foster a sense of place concerning the creating of our things, namely consumer, in order to better appreciate how they came to be in our possession. First rice, and now clothes and motorbikes. Thanks Gerard, EAP, and HANU for getting the permission to get us into these places.