The Hindu Business Line : Growing all the way

THINK China, and you think `Big'. Like most travellers, we were expecting reality to fall well below hype. But, for once, we were surprised to see what we were told to expect. Wide roads, big bridges, great cars, law-abiding traffic were all there. Terms such as `third world' and `developing country' were certainly not top-of-mind recall as we traversed the small city of Zhuhai in China. For the analytically inclined, we may not have data on the kilometres of concretised roads covering Zhuhai, accessible by boat across a 36-mile stretch from Hong Kong. But for someone from India, the ratio of pedestrians and vehicles to the availability of road was remarkably low.

And for a change, we did not hear the usual clichés that you hear from CEOs visiting India - singing paeans for China - only because they want the Indian Government to get moving. We heard words of praise from someone who has worked with Flextronics Technologies, our trip sponsor, and who has seen it being built from scratch over seven years to accommodate 26,000 people now.

Tim Dinwiddie, senior vice-president, Flextronics, Doumen Industrial Park, Guangdong Province, China, says, "It's easy to set up an industrial park here. Not only does the central government give you its nod, but state provinces too go out of the way to help." And sure enough, travelling from the hotel in Zhuhai city into Flextronics' Doumen Industrial park, you see roads and bridges built solely to facilitate access to Flextronics' unit.

The company has so far acquired about 150 acres of land there. Begun in 1997 with a single building, it's onto its 13th now.

The sheer freedom to grow without obstacles - from governments or otherwise - is evident from the polite interruption from Dinwiddie as Gururaj A, Director India operations, (also visiting Zhuhai) was dwelling on the small number of employees that the India manufacturing arm has now - 680. Says Dinwiddie, "You will have to remember that we were about the same size eight years ago." Eight years, 150 acres, 26,000 employees and 14 buildings over 3.1 million sq.ft of built up infrastructure. Gururaj seems determined to set a similar pace of growth at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, where Flex India has acquired 250 acres of land.

Flextronics India intends to make mobile handsets, telecom infrastructure equipment such as base stations and set top boxes. It plans to source components from its factories in Doumen, among other locations. Interestingly, Flex China may not always be a preferred vendor. Says Gururaj, "I am responsible for the India P&L. I will have to source components that come at the best price. I would certainly prefer them to come from our Chinese plants. But, if someone else is better priced, then so be it."

Flextronics took a group of six journalists through its facility at Doumen. We were exposed to the mechanical unit, including the metal stamping and plastic injection moulding units, the printed circuit board assembly operations, the optical lab, the robotic paint unit, PCB manufacturing, the camera modules clean room and the bonded warehouse.

Here are a few nuggets that would interest our technophile readers:

The optical lab clean room was the farthest removed from the roving hands of visitors. It's a room that requires employees to go through a `clean up' shower and dress up in special suits before starting work. Typically, an employee entering the clean room is "cleaned up" for about 20 minutes before he or she can enter the work area. Employees in the clean room are actually `earthed' to ensure that static electricity from the human body does not hamper work on the minutiae of chip wafers.

The PCB manufacturing line is capable of making PCBs with 60 layers, though most applications such as mobile phones require only between 3 and 4 layers each. The width of each layer is less than the width of the human hair. Laser rays are used to make holes on the layers, to facilitate connections between layers. The plant has lasers than can bore a hole through 700 layers every second.

The metal stamping part of the plant would typically interest the lay reader. For, this is where you would find the most visible parts of PCs, such as the chassis, being made. The sight of PC chassis falling off a stamping unit by the hundreds impressed us more than the lines that made some of the smallest circuits.

Some parts of the end products are made or assembled manually, such as the keypads for phones. Flextronics clarified that it uses manpower where automation is costlier.

Manpower and culture

Of the 26,000 people that it employs in Doumen, Flex provides housing for about 10,000 while the rest live in areas surrounding the campus. The average age of employees there is about 24. Says Dinwiddie, "The kind of housing we provide varies and is designed to incentivise employees to stay on with us and rise up the ladder. So, most freshers would share a small apartment amongst four of them."

People who have just finished schooling join Flex in China at the age of about 18. They typically stay for four or five years, save up to go back to college or get married and settle down. He adds, "Turning to entrepreneurship is common among Chinese youth. So, we don't really lose employees for what we'd call the `wrong' reasons." Asked if families tend to depend on children when the latter get employed, he clarified that that is not too common there.

The contrast here with the India story is significant. Gururaj says, "We would typically get employees with an AMIE qualification." Interestingly, even though work is yet to start at the Chennai campus of Flex India, Gururaj has already started getting calls from educational institutions asking him to reveal more of his plans so that they could equip their wards for employment. Likewise, housing developers are also interested in Flex' plans for India so that they can put up housing projects accordingly.

Cultural nuggets

A view of the shopping district in Zhuhai.

The English language has for long been painted as the nemesis for China. It is said to be the one obstacle before prosperity through their software prowess. Our experience pretty much confirmed what we had been told: not to expect even five-star hotel employees to understand English. Evidence came in the form of a waitress who brought soy sauce, when a colleague seated with a cup of tea requested some sugar at an informal dinner. However, road signs are now, we are told, being displayed in both Chinese and in English.

Bargain hunting isn't too difficult without an interpreter. The calculator is all you need to tell the shopkeeper how much you are willing to pay for an item. In fact, being a foreigner helps: You just say what or are talking to a colleague about how cheap it is, and meanwhile the price keeps dropping.

A restaurant where we enjoyed some of the best vegetarian Chinese cuisine proved to have its problems: we couldn't order in English; we couldn't ask for forks and knives; we couldn't even ask for a glass of water to drink. We were fortunate, however, to be helped by one of the Flextronics employees who made sure that we were served only pure vegetarian dishes. Thankfully, the menu had pictures of all the dishes and when a dish arrived, we could actually identify it.

The authorities in Hong Kong and in China have taken the avian flu problem rather seriously. At regular intervals in public places, you find automatic alcoholic gel dispensers. A sign above these urges you to wash your hands frequently with the gel to avoid infection. You also need to fill out reams of forms when you enter and leave South China.

There was one thing we noticed common to India: Jay walking at minor traffic intersections seemed common. There were no signals to guide either you or motorists. If you found a gap between vehicles, you walked. Vehicles tend to slow down when you do that. There is no rude honking or shouting. But pedestrians cross roads only at zebra crossings.

Flextronics in Doumen China, has 13 buildings. But its latest building is numbered 15. For, the Chinese find the numbers 4 and 14 inauspicious. Reports on the Internet indicate that the numeral one is said to indicate `sure' while four indicates `death'. Clearly, best avoided.

bharat@thehindu.co.in

Picture by N. Nagaraj