Ready for another long and interesting day around Shanghai we met early in the morning in the lobby and boarded the bus for heading to the first company visit of the day. After driving out of Shanghai for quite a while we arrived at the VW factory where we had the chance to have a look at one of the company’s high-quality production plants producing the brands VW and Skoda for the Chinese market. We had a quick instruction by a video-tap followed by a ride through the production and they showed us two of the three main production areas. It was fascinating to see all the robots working on the cars and especially the pure form of just-in-time production was impressive. Unfortunately it was kind of a standardised visit and it was not possible to ask detailed questions about VW in China.
After boarding the bus again Dr. Rüttimann told us about the ´Rüttimanns Choice No. 2´. It was another company visit that was definitely worth it. The company Artwell produces clothes of cashmere from the spinning over weaving to the end product ready for shipment. We arrived at lunch time so the company organized a lunch for us and ordered 30 Big-mac meals from Mc Donalds for us. After the lunch and an introduction about cashmere and the company we were taken to a visit of the production. At the moment they are producing the new collection for Burberry. We saw the process of dyeing, spinning and weaving as well as the assembling of the parts all the way to the finished product where they labelled and packed it for shipping.
In the afternoon the formal visits were done and we were looking forward to the ´Rüttimanns Choice No. 3´. Mr. Rüttimann showed us an ancient style village called Wuzhen. The village lies next to the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the longest artificial river in the world. Wuzhen offered us an insight of how the Chinese lived hundreds of years ago and was a pleasant hangout for the evening before we returned back to the hotel.
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