Once arrived in the factory, a woman worker of Shanghai Volkswagen welcomed us. She pleased us to come with her and watch a short advertising-video about the brand. This video described a few aspects such as the history, the cooperation between the 2 brands (Volkswagen and Skoda), key figures, the different types of cars that are produced there, but also the technology, the social climate in the company and the actions that it has been taking part into.

To develop a little more about the video's meaning, Shanghai Volkswagen (officially Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd., informally SVW, is a joint venture company between Volkswagen Group and SAIC Motor established in 1984. The company is headquartered in Anting International Auto City, northwest of Shanghai city, in the People's Republic of China.The joint venture is made up from a cooperation between Volkswagen AG (40%), Volkswagen (China) Invest (10%), SAIC (50%), with a fixed-term venture for 45 years. SVW produces Volkswagen and Skoda cars. SVW's current products include: Volkswagen Polo Mk5 hatchback, Volkswagen Lavida, Volkswagen Santana B2, Volkswagen Santana Vista, Volkswagen Passat Lingyu, Volkswagen Passat NMS, Volkwagen Touran Phase III, Volkswagen Tiguan, Skoda Octavia Mk2, Skoda Fabia Mk2, and Skoda Superb B6.

Actually, technology and independent development are very important. Besides, the company has been caring a lot about their employees' well-being and also involving in their staff training, in order to make them more motivated and more productive by the way.

Then, immediately after watching the video, our host invited us to sit in a little car in order to visit the factory. While we were visiting, she had been commenting. I found it was like a guiding tour like in any special places, I enjoyed it very much. It had never visited any car company but thanks to Tokkie's competences and Shanghai Volkswagen good cooperation, I could visit one.

It was very interesting to see and understand the different steps of cars construction; it is so complicated that it requires both human workers and robots. In this kind of factory, it is obvious that human beings and robots have to learn to work together.

Besides, I was surprised to realize how clean the factory was, how concentrated the employees were and how complicated the whole car-constructing system was. Indeed, sat in the car, we have been able to go through several big rooms and get aware of car-construction complexity: a lot of big machines, a lot of male workers, and an efficient organization within each big part of the production center.

As a conclusion, in my opinion, this little seminar in Shanghai Volkswagen has been a very good experience, entering and trying to understand for a couple of minutes into the core of a car industry. However, I would have appreciated to learn even more things about such a big car industry, to get more deeply in some issues that SVW has probably been facing at the moment.