Any pics from China trip or new facility?

[Arct1k]

Cheers,

Chris

[Pdelcast]

Here's a couple pics from China:




1515 motor assembly line:



Rotor assembly:

[TexasSP]

That's pretty fancy for a Chinese plant, they actually have ceiling fans and windows.....

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by TexasSP

That's pretty fancy for a Chinese plant, they actually have ceiling fans and windows.....

Yeah, and we have EXHAUST fans to protect the workers from solder and solvent fumes too. And we require them to wear safety glasses (which was actually a hard sell) when using power equipment...

I wish I had pictures of the machine shop, it's really impressive.

[TexasSP]

Originally Posted by Pdelcast

And we require them to wear safety glasses (which was actually a hard sell) when using power equipment...

I remember that issue arising at our plant in China. In fact I had issues keeping the idiot Americans at our plant in Houston wearing them too.

[simplechamp]

Very encouraging to see Castle committed to fair and safe business practices, especially overseas.

[phatmonk]

Very cool but some of the workers look under age

[What's_nitro?]

Originally Posted by phatmonk

Very cool but some of the workers look under age

I know what the laws are here, but what are they in China? Would US laws apply there since CC is based in the US?

[TexasSP]

Many Asian's look much younger than they are. Asians typically have smoother skin and less body hair which aids is this effect. We had people in their 30's in our plant here in the US that looked like teenagers. We also had people in their 50's and 60's that looked to be in their 30's and 40's.

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by TexasSP

Many Asian's look much younger than they are. Asians typically have smoother skin and less body hair which aids is this effect. We had people in their 30's in our plant here in the US that looked like teenagers. We also had people in their 50's and 60's that looked to be in their 30's and 40's.

+1 -- sometimes I'm surprised at how young the people look in our plant.

However, we don't have anyone working who is under 20 years old. We require people to be at least 20 years old even to apply for a position.

The average age of assembly-line workers in our plant is about 27 years old.

If you look at the picture with Jonathan in the center (the tall white guy who looks really out of place) you can see the tiny chinese woman standing next to him. That's Rose, and she's our engineering liaison, and is 26 years old (but she looks 17 or 18!). She has college degrees in English language and physics. She's the youngest person we have working in our offices (but speaks perfect English and understands at least as much about engineering as our best engineers!)

We really try hard to promote a fair and safe work environment for our workers in China. We pay about 50% higher than average wages in the area AND we pay room and board for the assembly line workers -- we want to KEEP good people, and keep a very well trained work-force.

We don't have to use under-age workers, we don't have to have poor working conditions, we don't have to cut corners everywhere because we can't afford to. We have to produce a very high quality product, with very high consistency. We have enough margin in the product to afford to treat our employees well, and make sure they have everything they need.

We also run our company a little differently than many Asian manufacturers. Our engineers work closely with the production employees, and we've worked hard to break down the class division between management and workers. We want our managers and engineers to listen to the assembly line workers, and learn from them. We are constantly improving quality through communications.

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by What's_nitro?

I know what the laws are here, but what are they in China? Would US laws apply there since CC is based in the US?

In the Provence we are in in China, 16 is the minimum age when people can work a full-time job. But, my plant manager doesn't like to hire anyone under the age of 20 -- he thinks they aren't mature enough, and cause too many problems. He requires any applicant to be at least 20 years old.

And no, US laws protecting employees don't really apply in China -- but we have set up our plant to follow OSHA regulations for health and safety. Castle Holdings LLC is a Kansas company, and the Chinese factory is a WOFE (wholly-owned foreign enterprise.) We made the decision early-on to run the production facility in China the same way we run our production facility in the USA.

I hate to get into the politics of the situation (cause I'm sure some people won't like it!) but wife and I own about 80% of Castle, and we are both very strong proponents of worker's rights (some might even think Brenda borders on Socialist....) We feel like our employees are part of our family, and we treat them like they are. We want a work place that is safe, easy-going, and has a good work environment. And we apply the same philosophy in both Kansas and in China.

[DCastaneda]

And that same caring philosophy carries over to your customers as well

Hey Pat, some thing I've been wondering for a bit, where does your surname originate from? I know a few Castillo's here in FL which is why I ask.

[TexasSP]

Originally Posted by What's_nitro?

I know what the laws are here, but what are they in China? Would US laws apply there since CC is based in the US?

CC may not run into this, but many customers and insurers now require that their vendors meet certain requirements usually labeled as HSE (Health, Safety, & Environmental). At the manufacturing company I was at for 5 years, our customers and insurers kept us much more in check than the government. In fact we had many specific audits to cover these items several times a year. Not to mention the the ISO standards are expanding to cover HSE as well. Companies do a much better job of keeping each other in check than the government ever could.

We had several of these very specific audits by international auditing firms before our Chinese plant ever went into full production. Our customers were very interested in how we operated that plant, even more so than they ever were of our US and European plants.

Even the Chinese government is stepping up their restrictions too. While there are still issues, the images people have in their minds of children working in sweat shops across China simply isn't they case. They have a very significantly sized adult work force to pool from and are also very pro education. This in turn really negates any need or want to employ child labor. One should be more concerned with child labor from our neighbors down south than in China. The African nations are an even larger concern.

The Chinese are great people, very proud, and very intelligent. They have suffered from a communist government for many years but are fairly rapidly rising out of those ashes. I have many friends and some family who live their as well so I keep a pretty decent tab of what's going on over there.

[What's_nitro?]

It's great that CC wants to do things the right way. I was just curious about the way it worked over there.

[nitrostarter]

Originally Posted by Pdelcast

We really try hard to promote a fair and safe work environment for our workers in China. We pay about 50% higher than average wages in the area AND we pay room and board for the assembly line workers -- we want to KEEP good people, and keep a very well trained work-force.

Patrick, need any accountants/beta testers? I'd love to move to Kansas and work for you, especially if Castle pays room and board!