After a very long trip and stopover in Dubai, I finally reached Ahmedabad India. I managed to have a few hours of sleep before heading out the first factory of my trip.

India is so different. In every way, India is different. I always thought, coming from a 3rd-world country and growing up around millions of other South Africans of Indian decent, that I would find many similarities between the two countries. How wrong I am.  Although India is also racked with poverty and a myriad of other structural challenges, the culture is very well-suited for development – especially in Engineering.

The country I visited, no names mentioned I’m afraid, is the largest and one of the oldest design and manufacturing companies in India. Their facilities are simply astounding. They have a HUGE factory, in house testing facilities that put my university lab to shame. Every machine-operator has a mechanical engineering diploma and every designer a masters degree! They create customised designs for the customer’s specific purpose and their quality systems are world-class.

The only thing they can still work on is their safety. Unbelievably, you will find people sitting on moving cranes, or dodging forklifts as more people mill about. This is something that would be unheard of in SA as our safety procedures are paramount. Strangely enough, nobody has been hurt despite this reckless outlook on occupational health and safety. But its the same all over India. You just have to be driven through the streets, witnessing women perched on the back of a motorcycle carrying 2 or even 3 others, children and men literally hanging onto the back of riskshaws while hooting cars and trucks whizz by, gapping through traffic! It is a crazily horrifying and at the same time exhilarating experience.

The other thing is the weather. Trust me to have a snazzy haircut the week before coming to India during Monsoon Season! Wow, what a mistake – between the heat and the humidity, the hair never stood a chance.

Well I have most of the day tomorrow free before my flight to China – so I guess I’ll get to squeeze in some sight-seeing after all!

Oh – and did I mention how awesomely chivalrous and helpful everyone is? I could definitely get used to this!

Travelling again – I find myself in transit on the way between South Africa and India, then on to China. By some uncanny stroke of brilliant luck, I was asked to go and inspect a highly critical piece of equipment. Our supplier is using Chinese and Indian-based fabricators for portions of the work. Lucky me!

Through my particular niche in the project team I am working in (mechanical equipment selection and purchasing) I have been simply astounded at how many SA-based companies are importing major components from Asia – in particular China. Due to SA’s good relationship with the exporting super-power and our open business environment, imports in recent years have skyrocketed. This is maybe not such a great thing for local factories – but a condition that they have obviously adapted to extremely well – turning their production facilities to overseas-based factories and capitalizing on the affordability of equipment through trying economic times.

One barrier to relationships between Chinese fabricators and SA industries (end-users) is the challenging quality issues experienced. Unfortunately, quality is a concern, but one that is fast-becoming obsolete. As Chinese companies engage in more and more business from countries the world over with developed industries (like the SA mining industry), Chinese companies are themselves developing advanced quality protocols and procedures to match the best. Through continuing to pursue relationship-building and effective communication between companies, quality issues will soon be a nightmare of days gone by.

Understandably, the huge amount of expansion and exploration work being done North of our border in Central Africa has been extraordinarily good for SA design consultancies and EPCM houses, along with fabricators from both SA and China alike. The amazing thing is that even through economic crisis in the last 5 years, development in Africa has remained on the up-and-up. With the slowdown of Chinese growth and difficulties European investors will face in African developments, it seems Africa will need to take her growth into her own hands.

Either way, its bound to be an exciting trip – I may even have to learn Mandarin shortly!