The Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) was our primary destination for today, the home of II-VI, a company based just outside of Pittsburgh that specializes in optics components, such as lasers. We began with a talk on VSIP, which was my company of focus for the trip. In a country where government managed companies typically perform terribly and weigh the economy down, I was impressed by VSIP's success despite its close operation with the governments of Vietnam and Singapore. From what I gathered this was because it was mostly privately managed, but was heavily supported by the governments. Because of this relationship, VSIP is able to provide special services like private customs offices to attract tenants to the park. The presentation was fairly interesting but also brief. I was very disappointed by the Q&A session because the VSIP representative only allowed for a few questions. This will make writing my post trip paper on VSIP fairly difficult but I still enjoyed the visit.
As mentioned before, one of VSIP's tenants is II-VI, who gave us a much more extensive presentation and a tour of their production facilities in VSIP. The tour was a valuable experience for me because I was able to see first hand the processes of manufacturing complicated devices. Most of the tour consisted of following the production line of TEMs, from raw materials to finished product. I was fascinating by this process because I actually understood some of the steps from what I had learned in my freshman year. It was a nice reassurance to understand how the electrolysis station plates the semi-conductors with gold or nickle or how to adjust an anti-reflective coating to meet your specifications. I am excited to understand more about applied technologies such as these as I advance my education.
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