Category: Brandon

As our time here in Ho Chi Minh city comes to a close, many memories are reflected upon and professional growth is finally realized. Personally, I feel that being thrust into a high responsibility role at Tau manufacturing has helped me grow a significant amount. To be specific, I found that my strengths were working as a team to separate tasks in order to complete them efficiently as well as portraying new ideas in a way that my non-engineer bosses could fully visualize. Meanwhile, I definitely found my weaknesses through every day struggle. Moreover, I will definitely need to focus on the business side of operating an engineering company a little more. I quickly realized it does no good to have great designs if you cannot find buyers or lack the business infrastructure to sell these designs.

Over the course of these two months I have gained an immense amount of knowledge revolving around running a small company that relies on selling designs. I believe this internship provided me with a very well-rounded experience where I found myself performing engineering tasks one minute, salesperson tasks the next minute, and a workshop manager the next. I believe now that I have this experience, I can apply these skills to any company in the future and it will be interesting to see how large-scale companies operate differently. One of the main takeaways I have found with this internship was the fact that I would like to eventually work for a medium sized company. I have seen how stressful a startup is and do not believe an entire career at a large company will be fulfilling. I want to eventually go to work and know that what I did that day will have an actual effect on the company.

When working at your first internship, there is bound to be points where you feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and nervous to not make a mistake. I too felt this when beginning this internship, however this feeling has subsided, and I have been making real strides to perform meaningful tasks at Tau Manufacturing. The main reason for this, I have now realized, was not due to me not knowing the concepts but rather a normal scenario in which you need to understand the way the company operates before feeling comfortable. This was done in the first two weeks of the internship for me. As of now, the highest moment of this internship for me was securing an order with a Singapore landscaping company. The reason this stands out to me is because in order to secure this deal we met with a steel manufacturer by the name of Fine Scandinavia. We met at their facility, where me and Carsten began to pitch ideas to the owner, and we were able to begin the foundation for a partnership between Tau Manufacturing and Fine Scandinavia.

This was a very satisfying experience because we made designs, pitched them to the steel manufacturer, and because Fine Scandinavia were impressed, they asked us to create more designs for an ongoing product line. This is the perfect example of what I think is my greatest skill as an engineer; being able to convey a complex design or idea to another without engineering experience and even give them a sales pitch on why this is a good design. Therefore, I guess securing this partnership would be both the moment I felt most proud along with my biggest professional accomplishment. I believe this achievement earned trust and respect from my boss Jason due to the fact he has trusted me and Carsten with operating the company on some levels while he was away. Shifting to the personal side of this summer, living in HCMC and working at a local company has definitely changed my outlook on life. The one thing that comes to mind is how privileged I am to be born and raised in the US. The opportunities that were handed to me just by being an American citizen are unbelievable compared to the opportunities in countries like Vietnam. Seeing this side of things will help me to not take anything for granted and learn from the Vietnamese people by working hard every day to make your living.

It has been just shy of two months in Ho Chi Minh and just over one month of working this internship. Much has been learned about the international engineering field while abroad here in Saigon. Mainly, it became clear very quickly that in Vietnam there is much less focus on engineering standards in things such as detailed drawings and bills of materials. For instance, one of our customers sent over drawings using mixed units between metric and imperial. Seeing this has given some insight into the importance of engineering standards used in the United States that I can bring with me into the field. This being said, Tau is an American company and thus has systems in place to keep the business in order. Tau has strengths that include an organized company database housing all important information, great flexibility to make custom parts designed by clients and good connections within the fiberglass industry. On the other hand, some weaknesses are the lack of inventory, productivity in the workshops, and material wastage. This is why some of our tasks have included creating a system to track material wastage more accurately as well as a productivity metric to gage the effectiveness of the workers.

The biggest opportunity Tau can capitalize on is expanded the customer base to the United States. In fact, the CEO is currently doing this through sales meetings in multiple US cities. As far as threats go, Tau is relatively safe other than one competitor based in the US. However, their business model revolves more around inventory and less on custom designs like Tau. Overall, I believe Tau is in a very good position to grow as a company. Last but not least, one of my favorite moments of living in HCMC has to be my birthday. While living in HCMC is amazing and there is plenty to do, I have found my favorite moments to be revolved around the people on this trip. On my birthday, I did not expect to do much of anything considering it was on a Thursday but to my surprise, all 40 of us had an amazing dinner and reflected on how a month in HCMC has gone by so fast. Seeing the end of the road here in Vietnam is sad but the memories will never fade.

At this point in the internship, I have assumed a larger role in the everyday operations of the company. It is clear to see that my boss has entrusted me after realizing me and Carsten are skilled engineers. While this responsibility is exciting, it also comes with some challenges. First of all, the engineering standardizations are nowhere near those in the US. Therefore, when reading or making design drawings it takes some deciphering and careful consideration to make sure the correct dimensions are used. For instance, one customer requesting a custom-made bench supplied detailed drawings mixing between metric and imperial units whilst omitting some very important dimensions. Another challenge I can think of would be coming to understand the inner-workings of Tau Trading and Manufacturing like the Microsoft Access database system. This is used for every aspect of the company and it was essential to become familiar with this in order to help with everyday operation. While this is my first internship, I still did have some expectations coming into this position.

The main thing I have noticed with this internship that varied from my expectations was the immediate impact that my work would have. I knew the company was small, but I did not know that I would be creating and sending invoices for orders to customers and talking with steel manufacturers trying to create a partnership. This was pretty overwhelming at first, but I have realized these tasks have helped me to grow as an engineer immensely. Specifically, I believe being an engineer is not just about knowing the concepts and software but also conveying those ideas to others outside of your profession. Living in Ho Chi Minh, you quickly realize there is no shortage of food options. Personally, after a long day of work I need a very large amount of food. When walking through the mall one day I found the perfect solution to this need and it involved Korean-Japanese Barbeque. I know this does not seem like a Vietnamese restaurant, but they are scattered all over the city. This has become my go-to food when I am starving as it is buffet style with an endless amount of options. While this may be my current favorite, all of the food here is so good this may change weekly. Saigon has been amazing so far and it actually feels like home for the time being.

Living and working in Ho Chi Minh city has turned out to be a very eye-opening experience. As I am working at a smaller company, I can see my everyday activities effects nearly immediately. These first three weeks have transitioned from learning how the company operates and understanding the issues the tasks that need to be completed to actually creating products and completing meaningful tasks. My goal for these last four weeks is to finish some projects my supervisor has given me. Mainly I plan to finish designing a living wall planter for a company from Singapore and see that project into completion. Also, I have been assigned a project to streamline the production process and find a way to track the raw material usage. These two projects will be the main focus of my last four weeks other than the small everyday tasks such as updating some design files based on the need for that certain order.

Furthermore, my relationship with my boss and co-workers is very beneficial. I feel very comfortable asking questions to any of my peers and they are very willing to help. They also welcome new ideas and are not afraid to point out minor flaws in these ideas which is very important to keep the creativity flowing in the workplace. My boss in particular is a great person to work with. Even though he is usually travelling around addressing every day issues, he is readily available to assist us with any issues we have. The person I have grown closest to, other than Carsten, is Shang the worker that shares an office with me. He is very helpful with relaying my ideas to the Vietnamese workers and helping me understand the daily activities of the company. Not to mention Carsten, who gets along with me perfectly. We bounce ideas off of each other and help solve everyday issues as well as offer useful insight to new design ideas. Lastly, one thing I have learned from working and living in Ho Chi Minh, is that nothing is predictable here. One day you can be operating the company with no issues, and the next day there will be a laundry list of issues. This is also somewhat true with the US, but I feel like in Ho Chi Minh there is much less structure and fail safes, leading to a more unpredictable environment. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it forces you to stay on your toes and ready to solve unusual issues.

Following the first two weeks of my internship at Tau Trading and Manufacturing, I have some more insight into the daily operations and responsibilities of an employee here. From the first day my boss and the CEO of the company, Jason, was very friendly and informative by answering all of my questions and explaining everything thoroughly. As an intern, I did expect to perform some smaller tasks but to my surprise Jason instilled his trust in me and Carsten by assigning us very important tasks such as communicating with customers regarding designs and forming a partnership with a steel manufacturing company. As the CEO, Jason takes on more of a jack-of-all-trades role and bounces around from the office to the workshops. In doing so however, he always makes sure to keep us informed of the tasks for the day as well as being readily available through phone for questions and issues. We work in the office with Jason as well as a couple of other employees and it has been very welcoming so far. The only aspect of Jason that has been slightly difficult to become accustomed to is the fact that he has great ideas but does not necessarily explain them thoroughly, leaving us to fill in the details only to be told to change many of them.

The daily work life is very comfortable working in Tower 3 of Masteri but we are rarely short on tasks. As this is a startup company, not only are we working on new designs but also working to improve and organize the old designs in the database. The interesting thing is that we currently have about 5 projects to work on and Jason lets us know which ones take priority on certain days based on customer response and production times. This is a very cool and interesting way to work and it keeps everything fresh. Otherwise, if we were assigned 2 tasks for the whole two months, the daily grind would become very monotonous. While working at Tau, the most interesting thing for me was visiting the workshops and seeing the vast difference between the industrial part of HCMC. It was interesting to see the entire process from design to final product.

Following cultural week, the first days of my internship were quite eventful. I am working at Tau Manufacturing. A company that specializing is designing and manufacturing fiberglass planters. I am personally working as a design engineer for the new products and also confirm the existing products CAD models are adequate. As soon as we walked through the door in Tau Manufacturing, we were faced with a plethora of information regarding the database used to run the company, potential client’s concepts to be designed, and an overall description of the day to day functions of an engineer at Tau Manufacturing. The entire first day was our onboarding process with our tasks for the foreseeable future being delved out. Following this first day, we traveled to the manufacturing workshops the next two days to visualize the manufacturing processes for better understanding of the requirements of our designs. We were asked to complete tasks from designing a hanging wall to house planters and be hung together for an art piece, to talking to a potential steel supplier regarding design ideas to implement fiberglass and steel structures.

As this company is relatively small, we work out of an apartment fitted to be an office housing five employees. There are roughly 50 workers in the manufacturing workshops that we got to meet and understand the tasks they are given daily. Overall, the company takes more of a freeform organization, however Jason (the CEO) is making it a priority to develop detailed processes and procedures in an effort to maximize the company’s efficiency. Much of the tasks we have been given so far have been to create the groundwork for future developments including SolidWorks model and drawing templates for ease of use in the future. The best part about working for a relatively small company is the fact that you can see the effects of your work immediately rather than feeling like a small cog in a giant machine. For instance, one task I was given was to create SolidWorks drawings for a new product and send them to the workshop in order for the molds for this product to be manufactured. I completed this task on the first day and saw an employee manufacturing this mold in the workshop the next morning. As it is only the first week of this internship, it is difficult to tell how the coming months will unfold but it seems that our boss has already distilled a level of confidence in our skills and has given us the design freedom to make a significant impact on this company. For now, I will try to be as efficient with the small tasks in order to hopefully be granted a larger project.

After experiencing the first week in Vietnam, which was our cultural week consisting of exploring Ho Chi Minh city as well as the surrounding areas, the Vietnamese culture has presented itself as very different from the U.S. Growing up in America and not doing too much traveling, this week has been very eye-opening for me. Specifically, during the walking tour of District 1 was perfect for immersing us in the culture from the Ben Tanh market to the city center. During this event we explored a park where we were taught foot-badminton by a local Vietnamese man. This was a great experience as all of the surrounding locals were very inviting and excited to see us all attempting to assimilate into this common activity. They were very kind, and it felt like they genuinely just wanted to show us how they have fun on an every day basis. Also, following learning how to play the sport a little, the man who was teaching us gave us a sales pitch on the birdie we were using exhibiting the culture of selling items in Vietnam. Everywhere you go, there is street food, markets, and people selling things on the street. This is just their way of life, and it was event more prevalent during the floating market tour. For instance, before we even arrived to the main market area, a very opportunistic salesmen drove his boat up next to us and sold some of us coffee (the best coffee I have ever tasted in my life) and it was clear that many of the Vietnamese are salesmen through and through, some for their entire lives.

Honestly, before arriving to Vietnam, I had little to no knowledge of the country and therefore had no idea what to expect. Upon arriving, it was clear to see that this country has been through a horrific past with the Vietnam War and this was made clear during our tour of the Vietnam War Museum, specifically the exhibit on the Agent Orange chemical. This being said, the people seem very optimistic and it’s hard to not notice that Ho Chi Minh is on the precipice of exploding economically. You can walk down a street that looks like a second world country, make a turn, and see a courtyard that would not look out of place in New York City. It is truly incredible to be in the country at a time where you can tell if you come back in five years, it will almost be unrecognizable. After this first week, I hope to learn more about the culture of working in Vietnam and the more professional side as well as day to day life not in a tourist setting. Overall, I am beyond intrigued and excited to acclimate while living in this beautiful city.