GSK Visit Reflections

Prior expectations:

I think GSK is going to be really exciting and cool. It’ll most likely be like the 3M visit, which was really cool, but this time they have one big land area with all the awesome equipment. The tour experience is going to be very different from the 3M journey!
I am also expecting to visit some of the labs there to see what goes on, like how products are invented or how the manufacturing process is improved. This will be fun!

Post-journey reflections:

GSK certainly didn’t let me down!
We were given a short introduction about the company, much like 3M. However, what struck me was their “Future Factory” project or something like that. To figure that such an industrial facility is planning to cut down up to 30% of its carbon footprint is certainly ambitious but achievable. Since manufacturing facilities like this produce so many waste products, especially since GSK deals with organic chemicals, doing their best to reduce wastage and pollution would certainly have a very good impact on the global environment. I’m relieved to see such a company taking steps to reduce global warming!
We were then given tours of their labs, namely their Technical Applications lab and Quality Test lab. The equipment was super-cool, unlike any I have seen in the SRC labs back here in HCI. From HAZMAT suits to spin coolers, these bad boys were “armed to the teeth”! This is the sort of place I want to work at in the future!

We met one of the scientists there. Can’t remember his name, but I think it went somewhere along the lines of “Andrew” or something. This guy is quite awesome, and I found it quite comical for him to have scribbled notes and calculations on his protective glass shield where his experiments were situated at. I thought he would use paper or something.
Lastly, we had a tour of the manufacturing facilities, and it was a blast! The tour guide told us that some of the stuff here they made were so expensive that when you dropped a small pinch on the floor, you could buy a condominium with the money that was wasted. Really expensive! I imagine the workers there have to be super-careful here or risk being sacked for wasting a condominium’s worth of chemicals. Some of the products here were also made in a kilo-scale, which means demand was only at a few kilos annually. These products mostly consist of active ingredients for medicines of rare diseases. These must be absurdly expensive, then. The facility was mostly automated: we were told that Production Building 2 could be operated with 7 people at minimum! And they had so much equipment there. I’m really impressed with this.
Turns out this place is also really high on safety as well. We had to surrender our phones so none of the chemicals in the plant would explode and potentially kill us all. They also handle extremely volatile chemicals that need to be “isolated” so that no one and nothing makes contact with it aside from the intended chemicals. I’m quite relieved that this company takes care of workers’ safety.

LifeTech Visit Reflections

Prior expectations:

I’m not so sure what to expect for this visit.
LifeTech is much about biological sciences, and I don’t have much interest for biology. If this turns out to be too much about biology, this might turn out to be boring.
However, there are things to look forward to. There will be a Product Development and Commercialisation workshop, which I think will definitely be fun. There is always the manufacturing line tour, which will be cool as well. Then, we will have a look around the LifeTech labs. Can’t wait to see what’s in store for me.

Post-journey reflections:

The trip was a lot better than I expected!
The day started out with a brief introduction of the company. I’m quite surprised, really: some of the work they do here can prove to be revolutionary to mankind. Better medicines, more advanced crime forensics, and even cures for previously incurable diseases. This company can make things right!
At 50,000+ products and US$1b+ in revenue, LifeTech is the 2^nd-highest earning biotech company in the world. Cool!
We then had hands-on with some of the company’s equipment, which was really exciting for me! I never expected the company to actually let us meddle with their equipment. Well, not really meddle, just get our hands on the equipment and try how to operate the interesting devices. There were some really cool devices that really “wowed” me. A sample tray with 3,000+ wells! That is really technologically advanced.
After having a good time in the LifeTech labs, we proceeded to have lunch and then had our Product Development and Commercialisation workshop. I learnt that many things and processes go into making a successful product. From product conceptualization to assembling the different products and testing the finished prototype, much effort is put into a product, successful or otherwise. Now I’ll appreciate something more when they suck! XD
After this, we went to have a little chat with a few of the workers at LifeTech here. A pretty educational discussion: I learnt that you don’t really have to specially study an area to be able to work in a certain job. There are some with a Chemical Engineering degree now working as a Digital Engineer. So now I can be assured that anything that I learn right now can definitely be applied to any job I end up in, provided that it has some relevance…
The final activity of the day was a tour around the assembly lines. Some of the products there take up to 2 days to produce per unit. That kind of shocked me since I thought assembly lines were supposed to be heavily automated. But they had manual workers there, and the products were mainly assembled by hand. I can still understand that, though, since demand for the devices isn’t so absurdly high that they need to produce like 10,000 units a day. The products LifeTech produce are mostly not for everyday consumer use, they are targeted at hospitals and other relevant organizations that actually have a use for the high-tech devices. So to have quite a slow rate of production is still acceptable under these circumstances. And I thought every assembly line was supposed to be automated with minimal manual labour!
It was a very long day, but certainly very meaningful!

3M Visit Reflections

Prior expectations:

I think the visit to 3M will be very epic. It will be my first time at a manufacturing facility, so I expect to be able to learn a lot from this place. It is especially exciting too, as 3M has so many products ranging all kinds of uses, from home applications to industrial equipment. The factory facility won’t necessarily manufacture a whole lot of products, but this will still be a good experience.

Post-journey reflections:

That was some awesome stuff!
When we arrived at 3M, the place looked a little old, kind of like 90’s interior design. I have to admit, though, some of the rooms look really nice, really modern. I can’t complain about the looks of the place, then.
We were taken into an auditorium where the staff there gave us an introduction to the company. Wow! 55,000+ products… and 3^rd choice company among Singaporeans to work in. That’s something! Maybe I want to work here… This place is great!
I learned today that companies like this have their own set of ethics and values to follow. So not only do schools make students follow rules and values, even multinational companies do such a thing as well. At least 3M isn’t obsessed about making big money…
Next, we were given a tour of the manufacturing facility: the highlight of the visit! There were 2 floors that we were taken to: one had labs where new products would be developed and tested, the other had all the heavy equipment for product production. It was awesome! Seeing all that high-tech equipment makes me really excited. They had clean rooms where not more than 1,000 particles were allowed in one cubic meter of air. We didn’t really go in that room, though. That was somewhat disappointing…
I have learnt that safety comes first in a manufacturing plant. There were so many safety protocols to follow: for example, no photo-taking. All these measures were meant for the safety of us and everyone in the building, I understand, but being so limited in what one can do is somewhat irritating and frustrating for me. I don’t like following rules! XD
3M also has Kaizen rooms: little rooms which anyone (I mean ANYONE) can use to let their creative juices flow.  I like this idea: even factory workers operating heavy equipment can make a difference to society with a good idea. Of course, no one can slack off here, but at least, workers can take a bit of time off of work to be creative. This just goes to show how much emphasis 3M places on creativity and innovation. I’m impressed.

QiOptic Visit to School Reflections

Prior expectations:

I honestly think it is going to be tough. Doing something that no one else has ever done before is not exactly my strong suit. I had tried to generate ideas prior to the workshop but I always think none of them are ever going to work. Making something like this needs lots of application of our physics knowledge. I’m not so good at that, but I’ll still give it a try. No pain, no gain!
I also think this will be interesting. Seeing what others make is something I like a lot. Mr. Siew has also never done this before, so this will be fun to watch how he does it. Doing something new and unique may be fun and exciting, but it will also be difficult! Can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Post-workshop reflections:

Well, that was interesting.
If there’s one thing I have to criticize about what happened is that none of the ideas were original. XD
The student body was basically split into groups of 3-4 guys. Mr. Siew was an awesome man. Nice accent and cool sense of humor. What went on was that Mr. Siew recapped our lenses concepts briefly before letting us do our own thing, which was to create a device that allows people to examine teeth using our mobile phones.
The basic specs of our “original” device are as follows:
A biconvex lens of focal length of 9 mm was pasted to my iPhone camera 4.5 mm away from the camera lens. It was secured with a coil of Easy-tac and the resulting device was protected with a layer of tape. It is very simple. Probably too simple… XD
But the other groups’ innovations aren’t any much better. So maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad about the simplicity of my product.
The course lets me realize how difficult it can be to apply knowledge we learn in school into real life. In the midst of making our product, almost no planning was done. It was mostly trial and error, messing around with equipment here and there until we could get a sharp image on my phone screen. It just goes to show that what comes to innovation, we’d rather just try stuff along the way. That’s not very good…
But in overall, this workshop was really fun and interesting. We had lots of laughs when each group took turns to describe their innovation, especially when David went all-out to “praise” our produced. Marketing strategy for the win.