Siemens
I was really tired from previous night due to the lack of sleep and was looking forward to a good 8 hour sleep. However I was still jet-lagged and barely slept for 6 hours. This gave me plenty of time to get ready and charge myself with some good heavy breakfast. Today, was our first company visit at Siemens. Siemens has been a very successful company in China with products ranging from medical devices, cordless phones, lighting products, power generation, communications, building technologies, etc.
First, we were introduced to Mr. Waldemar Kolodzeij, General Manager, Siemens One China. The common thread between him and Babson students was the TechMark experience. His presentation started off by giving a brief background about China and the opportunity that it presented. I was not surprised by the fact that he reiterated about China and India being the giants of the future and that Siemens, like other multinational companies, is focusing a lot of its attention in these countries, especially China. To be a successful global competitor, a company needs to align its global strategy in countries that present a successful potential. However, it becomes very difficult for a company to focus its attention in two (China and India) or more fast growing countries at the same time. However, in this case, companies like Siemens are at an advantage since the markets in China and India are similar and they can achieve the benefits of scale.
Next, a market manager gave us a presentation on Siemens Medical. I was really interested in this topic, since it was a related industry to my summer internship that I would start once I return to the USA. She represented a true “Modern Chinese Manager” who was young, intelligent, knowledgeable about the industry, hard-working and moreover a potential leader. She covered topics that ranged from the new Siemens initiatives in the healthcare arena in China to Siemens’ new location in the Shanghai International Medical Zone. The discussion also brought forth the topic of providing healthcare to the Chinese people. Like India, most of the Chinese people pay for healthcare from their own pockets. This puts an immense pressure on the healthcare system to provide low-cost and subsidized treatment to the patients. Moving up the value-chain the health providers (hospitals and doctors) have to keep their costs down to be able to pass on the savings to their patients. Thus, companies like Siemens Medical have to provide medical solutions and technology at costs that are attractive to the decision makers and competitive with the local Chinese companies. Quality assurance does become an issue since we are talking about life and death of patients. Hospitals and doctors cannot afford to compromise on the quality and thus will buy high-end and reliable products.
China is also faced with an aging population and more and more people are suffering from chronic diseases that need treatment in hospitals. The trend of using traditional Chinese medicines is no longer working its charm for such chronic diseases. So the question that the Government of China is faced with is how to support the aging population and the increase in the disease burden and make it affordable to the general population.
After the presentations, we were given a tour around Siemens campus. Most of the buildings around the campus were modern. Siemens realizes the importance of global warming and the conservation of energy. To keep itself as a responsible foreign company in China, their new under-construction building has intelligent technology that will allow them to consume one third less energy than other comparable Chinese office buildings. They are also going to reuse some of the water used throughout the building.
Yanjing Beer
The journey to Yanjing Beer was a long one. We passed by several other construction sites. It almost seemed that all of the world’s cranes were in Beijing to build skyscrapers at breakneck speed. When we arrived at Yanjing Beer Company, it looked like a King’s palace. The buildings were huge and expansive. Green lawns, water fountains, statues, and the sheer size of the factory was a spectacular sight. I admit that I had never seen a factory this gigantic, especially for a state-owned entity. I have always imagined that state-owned entities as inefficient, unprofitable, and bureaucratic. However, after taking the tour of the production plant, that was not the case. The factory had state-of-the-art machinery, highly skilled workers, efficient and well-planned assembly lines, and continuous operations.
It seems that the state-owned operations in China are actually efficient unlike the ones in India. The frustration levels in India have gone to such extreme levels, that the government has started to privatize some of the heavily state dominated industries such as airports.
During our regular bus discussions, someone asked the bus driver about his thoughts on Mao Zedong. The bus driver replied saying that Mao was a bad person and he was responsible for the deaths of several Chinese people, however, he has also done good for the country. He gave people a sense of independence and gave a sense of united China. Was Mao’s role in building China similar to the one of Mahatma Gandhi in India when he united everyone to fight against the British?
At night, Raj, Dileep and I decided to watch “Chun Yi: The Legend of Kung Fu”. The martial arts show was eye-catching, action-packed and it showed the true culture of China.
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