Sustainable Manufacturing in China

Yesterday Kuan Yoong and I visited Shanghai Tongji University. It was a day with a lot of highlights. The following of which should will be covered in 5 episodes (to make each post more readable, to give me more time to write the the posts, and to make the reader return to this webpage):

1. The very impressive newly developed Jiading Campus
2. Information exchange and discussions
3. Tour through  the  “Central Lab of Automotive College“
4. Viewing the Advanced Manufacturing teaching and research facilities
5. The first and probably last time that a driver in China was deservedly told that he drives too slow…not too fast

The very impressive newly developed Jiading Campus

The campus is placed in the suburbs of Shanghai, about 40 minutes drive from the more central Siping campus. It is quite big and all buildings are new. If I understood our host correctly only 30% of these buildings on campus are occupied yet. I personally like the architecture, particularly the combination of buildings and nature. As I learned yesterday, Tonji University is very famous for its Architecture and Civil Engineering and the campus has been designed by the University itself (as I think it should be in most Universities, also in different fields). Here a couple of photos I have taken (on my mobile out of the car, hence the quality):

More pictures and information can be found on the Tongji webpage.

A few weeks ago I went to a ‘Dies & Moulds’ exhibition here in Ningbo to get a bit of an overview of the market, perhaps make some contacts, or even spot some opportunities for collaboration… I don’t want to talk about the exhibition here… although, thinking about it, I think I could put quite an interesting article together summarising my experiences at exhibitions in Ningbo.

Anyway, at this exhibition I was kindly invited to visit a Machinery & Moulds company in Ningbo.  When following that invitation, it turned out dimensions here in China are not the same as in Germany and certainly not as in England.

“In Ningbo”, in this case meant going by car for about 2h before reaching the factory (on the way back we took a ferry across the sea…for some reason this was not necessary on the way to the factory…). The place we visited still belongs to the Ningbo Municipal Area and might also have the same area-phone-code (0574…), however, it cannot be called part of the City Ningbo anymore (click on the map to see the route, http://maps.google.com).

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