Don Quixote?

Of course as much as you guys have enjoyed reading these strangely written and obtusely formed ramblings, you always knew that this adventure wouldn’t last forever.

Or does it?

Actually, it ends and starts anew all the same time.

Huh?

I have been asked (and accepted) to help with our Xiangtan Plant project to build Wind Energy Bearings. That’s the fancy business term for wind mill bearings. Only unlike Don Quixote we’re building them and not dueling with them.
I know you have a ton of questions, so go ahead and ask, but unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of answers. So I’ll tell you what I know and you can be patient for me to fill in the answers as we go along.

Xiangtan is 2 Provinces east of Chengdu (and slightly south) in the Hunan Province. Population around 500,000 which, as you recall from earlier ramblings, means it’s similar to a US city of about 50,000. Small town. Probably limited attractions. It’s an industrialized area of Textiles, Steel, Iron, Cement, Machine Tools, etc.
The idea is that I guess I did a good job here in Chengdu and now I need to do the same in Xiangtan. I am being transferred to our company’s Quality Advancement Growth Group.
The product is a Wind Mill Bearing. By my standards and experiences, this is a big sucker; Six Feet in diameter and 4,000 pounds … each.
The Project Manager is a friend whose daughter plays soccer with my daughter.
The project is in its infancy, though it sounds like a fair amount of work has already begun. The plant should start up in 2010 or somewhere in that time frame. Right now, the plan (and I use that term loosely) is the travel schedule should remain less than it has been here in Chengdu, but as the plant starts up, all bets are off.

So my time in Chengdu will begin to wind down and then sometime after that, this project picks up. In between I have been asked to return my plant in North Carolina and help install a system for inspecting balls and cages for their aerospace product.
Timing on all of this is a little loose and I do have agreements to return to Chengdu in late fall and possibly early winter to help close out some of the final customer approval items. My part of this Chengdu plant has run pretty smooth. We gained our aerospace certification, gained our company certification, submitted our first production for customer certification (which we’ll achieve formally late fall), and all that remains is gaining our non destructive testing international certification (a geeky thing, but must happen).

So what now?
Complete transfer of my activities to the local team here in Chengdu.
Help start up this inspection process at my home plant.
Jump in on Xiangtan as they pull me in.
Manage 3 projects at once. Piece of cake.
That’s all I know until I actually start meeting with these groups and figure out exactly what is going on.

So I’ll become Don Quixote-ish and tilt at wind mills – but 21st century style!