Life As An Engineer
Hi,
Time flies, I’ve been working as a Supplier Manufacturing Engineer for almost 2 years, technical wise the 2-year at this position is not a long period of time to be considered as a senior, but it’s enough for me to have quite a few of insights about the job and the industry, so I would like to take a chance to share some of my thoughts to you all, my lovely readers!
My responsibility
I’m a part of a project team, we bring the 2D/3D sport carbon bike designs to life, the company that I’m working for is a branding – designing – managing standard. For the manufacturing part, we completely outsource different suppliers. When it comes to bicycle, you might think it’s kind of a simple product with frame – fork – handlebar and other small components. That’s partially correct, but if we go further detail into the “small parts” it’s consisted of dozens of components. The manufacturing process of these components are not complicated but controlling the standard is not an easy task. “Carbon bike” the word sounds like a high-tech stuff, in fact it’s a manual process, hugely depends on the skill and carefulness of the workers. You might know, human related task is always the most tricky part when it comes to quality control.
Anyway, about my daily job, the majority of my time I visit supplier factories, support them in R&D process, approve tooling to produce trial samples, monitor the process to make sure all standard requirements as defined in project charter are followed. I consider myself as a problem solver, it’s the core value that I bring to the organization in which I work for. Luckily, as the current position we have tons of issues need to be solved in our daily basis.
One fact, all the suppliers which partner with our company are Taiwanese manufacturers, to be honest, Taiwan is such a paradise of manufacturing, they are excellent on the job. As a Vietnamese I hope in the near future our local companies can step in and even take over this sector of the supply chain.
The company culture & colleagues
When it comes to culture, this is a US company but it’s not thing related to the US culture. The design team is based in our Europe office and the manufacturing team is in Vietnam (suppliers are Taiwanese fellow partners and based in Vietnam as well) so it’s kind of a mixed culture. One thing I highly appreciate about our management team is that they always emphasize the respect across the organization. People having different culture, race, and perspective. Above all we are here to make a successful project, bring a high quality bike to athletes and customers.
For project team, due to the geographically spreading most of the time we work online, in-person meeting is something rarely happens in the company, only when project kick off meeting.
It’s a whole ‘nother story in our Vietnam office, we meet offline all the time and bonded well together, we group into three main departments: Engineering – Quality – Laboratory, in the office we only gather once a week on Monday, and occasionally meet up at supplier sites. If you know Vietnamese culture, we especially bond well during happy hour or so-called drinking hour. Having good relationship with your colleagues is on of the most crucial factor which keep you stay in an organization. My own point of view, in order to create a healthy working environment each of the person need to treat each other based on the respect and be able to differentiate between chit chat and professional way working.
What’s next?
Again, I’m not sure!
For me a company is always a temporary environment, I’m doing my best to contribute to the success of the organization. I will stay, work and learn until the moment I run out of motivation of working at the job, the moment I don’t enjoy getting up and feel excited about the working day anymore. Until it happens, I still like what’s I’m doing and enjoy staying here.
5 tips to stay focused on learning, working
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