Greetings from South Korea

Well let me start off by saying thank God we finally made it, as you know we left for South Korea last Thursday however we didn't make it until Sat. Upon arriving in San Francisco are plane was delayed 2 hours, however two hours later the whole flight was canceled and what ensued could best be described as a hot ghetto mess by the United airlines staff. Needless to say we eventually left the next morning at 8 without any sleep, from there it was a short 12 cruise across the Pacific and next thing we knew we were in South Korea. This place is truly amazing from the people, to the food, to the buildings, this place is outta this world. We are currently staying at the Lotte Hotel which also contains the World largest indoor amusement park ($7 after 9p.m.), is located in the South side of Seoul. The food is ..... different... exotic.....it just is I have at raw fish just about every night since I have been here, and don't plan to stop. Anyway time is of the essence time for bed... Good Night
Rags

Mercedes Benz and ZF Manufacturing

I recently visited the Mercedes Benz facility in Huntsville, AL. The visit to the porduction site was a very interesting look at one of the premier car makers in the world. The massive size of the facility alone is quite amazing, it's a small city in its self. The facility has everything employees need including, health care, child care, two cafeterias. The facility does everything you could imagine for a brand new vehicle, from paint to road testing everything is done inside the confines of the two plant building.
After visiting the Mercedes plant we the proceeded to the ZF plant also in Huntsville. ZF is one of Mercedes just-in-time suppliers, they make the
chasis for the M-class in Huntville, but also have offices around the world. The production site was alot smaller than the Mercedes, however within the building the attitudes were of the team members were very different. The ZF people looked like they truly enjoyed their job and at mercedes no one really happy, they were just little worker drones.
The trip to the two plants was very enjoyable, and very informational.

Alabama Automotive Manufacturing Association (AAMA)

The trip to the AAMA quarterly meeting on the 2/29/08 was an interesting occasion. Upon arriving at 9a.m. we sat in a workshop to listen to some of Alabama's top manufacturers talk about how they had instituted lean within their organizations. Lean is a process in which the an orginization tries to get rid of the non-value added processes in the dialy routine. The key note speakers for the event included representitives from Lear a company in Montgomery, ZF a compnay that supplies chasis for Mercedes in Huntsville, and several others. The second half of the day was spent at a luncheon where a key note speaker talked about site selection for the large automotive makers. His speach was extremely informational, there are so many aspects of the site selection that a normal person would never think about. Overall the trip was very interesting, and I'm sure that other students will enjoy the opportunity to go to the AAMA meetings in the future.