Internshipreportboschchina

Internship Report Summer 2010 | 1
Te Xiao

Internship Report
Bosch Automotive Products (Changsha)
Co. Ltd.

Summer 2010
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Te Xiao
D0359288
MITIM
August 10, 2010
Te Xiao

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1. Contact Information ........................................................................................................ 3
2. Duration of the Internship .............................................................................................. 4
3. Company and Industry .................................................................................................... 4
3.1 Bosch in China ..................................................................................................... 4
3.2 Bosch in Changsha ................................................................................................ 5
4. Internship ........................................................................................................................ 5
4.1 CLP ! Logistics Department (RBCC/CLP) ................................................................... 6
4.1.1 CLP Overview ..................................................................................................... 6
4.1.2 CLP6 ! Warehouse/Internal Transport/Packaging ............................................ 7
4.1.3 CLP Objectives .................................................................................................... 7
4.2 Supervisors and Mentors .......................................................................................... 8
4.3 Purpose of my Internship .......................................................................................... 8
4.3.1 Task and Responsibilities ................................................................................... 8
4.3.2 Challenges .......................................................................................................... 9
4.4 Experiences ............................................................................................................... 9
4.4.1 Business Experiences ......................................................................................... 9
4.4.2 Other experiences ............................................................................................ 10
4.5 New concepts, ideas, approaches etc..................................................................... 10
5. Connection with my studies ......................................................................................... 11
5.1 Application of Knowledge ....................................................................................... 11
5.2 Connection with my Thesis ............................................................................... 11
6. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 11
Te Xiao

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Ms. Te Xiao (Student‐No. d0359288)
Linnunrata 10F2
Lappeenranta, Finland
Tel.: +358 46 575 2561

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Mr. Chen Taohua (CLP6 manager)
Tel.: +86 731 8292 9272
Email: Taohua.Chen@cn.Bosch.com

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Ms. Zhou Fang (CLP)

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Bosch Automotive Products (Changsha) Co., Ltd.
博世汽车部件（长沙）有限公司
No. 26, Lixiang Road (M.), Xingsha
Changsha 410100, Hunan, P.R. China
Tel.: +86 731 292 9405
Fax: +86 731 292 9018
Te Xiao

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The internship took place from May 31, 2010 until August 13, 2010 (11 weeks) at Bosch
Automotive Products (Changsha) Co. Ltd (I will refer to it as RBCC throughout this
report).

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Robert Bosch Co. Ltd is a German multinational company with over 293 plants located in
36 countries worldwide (Figure
1). The company was started in
1886 in Stuttgart by Robert
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Precision Mechanics and
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those roots, Bosch is now a
company well established in the
following business sectors:
Automotive
technology
Industrial technology
Consumer goods and
building technology
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Bosch has been in China for over 100 years. The company first established a trading
office in 1909 in Shanghai. Now, the company is located in 14 cities all across China
(Figure 2). Not only have they established themselves in larger cities, such as Beijing,
Hong Kong, and Shanghai, but Bosch is now looking to expand itself further in smaller
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sales has motivated Bosch to further invest into this country. Furthermore, China has
also become one of the most important target markets for the company.

Te Xiao

Beijing（北京）
Jinan（济南）
Changzhou（常州）
Nanjing（南京）
Chuzhou（滁州）
Xi‘an（西安） Wuxi（无锡）
Changsha （长沙）
Suzhou （苏州）
Shunde（顺德）
Shanghai（上海）
Zhuhai（珠海）
Hangzhou（杭州）
Hongkong （香港）

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Bosch Automotive Products (Changsha) Co. Ltd, also known as Robert Bosch Changsha
China (RBCC), is located in Xingsha, Changsha, Hunan Province. The company occupies
160,000 m2 and employs a workforce of over 1,500 employees. The main products
manufactured at RBCC are ABS motors, engine cooling motors, window lift motors,
blower motors, wiper motors, wiper systems, starters, alternators and start/stop
systems which are applicable to the entire automotive market in China.

Departments are divided into manufacturing (three main product lines), product
engineering, commercial functions (including HR, purchasing, logistics, IT, and finance),
sales, quality control, product and project management, and special equipment.
However, since the plant is rather small and new, there have been a lot of changes to
accommodate all of the growth. In fact, in July, Bosch rented a second office building
nearby, where the entire purchasing department moved to.

B41' #.' 2&1' 3421+1$2345' 2&345$' (C#;2' D"??' 3$' 32$' )?&341$1‐41$$67' E.21+' (00:' ?&(45$&(' 3$'
%#4$3>1+1>'(')$9(006'?&341$1'%32F'G32&'('-#-;0(23#4'#.'(+#;4>'H' million people. Unlike
the first‐tier cities, such as Shanghai and Beijing, there are little Western companies
established here, and Westerners are even more of a rarity. In RBCC, only a small
fraction of the employees are Westerners, whereas the larger fraction are Chinese.
Therefore, the working experience is characterized by cultural differences and
challenges, and cultural sensitivity and understanding is needed from both sides.

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Te Xiao

An internship was required of all MITIM students before graduating from the program.
The minimum duration for the internship is 6 weeks and it can be done at any company,
and in any country. I was fortunate enough to be able to complete my internship in
Bosch, and what made it even more exciting was the fact that I was able to experience a
Western subsidiary in a developing country.
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CLP is the abbreviation for !"#$%&'() *%+,#$,-#) ./011,1+2 which is the logistics
department of RBCC, and it has the following functions:

Receiving customer orders and assuming planning
Raw material ordering from supplier
Logistics Controlling
Optimizing Supply Chain
Packaging Planning
Import/Export of raw materials and finished goods

The CLP Department is divided in 2 main -(+2$')-0(443456:'G&3%&'%#4$3$2$'#.'?IJ'K:'L'(4>'
M:' ($' G100' ($')N(21+3(0'O(4>03456:' G&3%&' %#4$3$2$' #.' ?IJ' P and 6. Altogether, there are
around 180 employees in CLP. The tasks of every group are illustrated as follows:
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Te Xiao

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CLP6, as mentioned previously, is responsible for material handling. As part of that, the
department looks after the warehouse, the packages used for materials, and internal
transportation (external warehouse, inter‐warehouse transportation, )milkruns6). It also
operates the supermarket, which, along with the milkrun, is the JIT system used to
replenish the production lines every 30 minutes.

Warehouse: RBCC has several warehouses that have to be managed. Different
types of materials, such as raw materials, semi‐finished, and finished goods are
stored in different types of warehouses. CLP6 has to manage these different
warehouses to make sure that the materials can be used when needed, and that
the condition of the warehouse is right so that the materials will not be damaged.
Packaging: CLP6 has to coordinate with different suppliers and customers about
the packaging specifications.
Internal transport: CLP6 coordinates the milkruns, to make sure that the right
materials arrive at the right production lines when needed. If this coordination
goes awry, that means that production lines could stop, which would cost the
company money.

At the present, because of massive system upgrades and such, CLP6 is trying to
integrate RFID technology into the warehouse. This

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Low stocks
High flexibility
Supply guarantee
Economic batch size

Furthermore, the vision of the company is as following:

Te Xiao

Logistic-
vision
Logistictargets (KPI): Profitability,

Customer, Employee, Organisation/Environment
Cross-functional
Standard Processes
Logistic: Cooperation with: Supply Chain
- Source ! Development Integration with
- Make ! Purchasing Customers and
- Deliver ! Production Suppliers
! Sales
Systems/IT, Digitalization Performance Creating commodity

supply Chain Management flow, Bundling
Logistic Organisation
Employee Development / Competence Management

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tasks he gave me involved helping CLP6 out in translating documents from German into
English so that they could be used in the warehouse. Furthermore, he arranged for
another coworker to show me around the whole plant, and to teach me about the state
of logistics at RBCC. Through this tour and the translations, I was able to pick up how the
warehouse at Bosch functions. It also helped me enrich my knowledge from the Supply
Chain Management course we took at LUT.

Ms. Tan Wei, who was in charge of the scrapping process before me, was my mentor.
For a whole week, she patiently led me through this process and taught me everything I
needed to know in order to take over her job.
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My tasks and responsibilities can be divided into two periods during my 11 weeks at
RBCC.

My first month at Bosch was spent doing random tasks. At first, I helped translate CLP6
documents from German into English to help my Chinese coworkers understand the
processes and best‐practices from other Bosch companies. However, even as I received
other tasks, translating would always come back from time to time. Sometimes, a
coworker needed help understanding a document or needed help translating a
Te Xiao

document from Chinese to English, or, some managers needed more translating work to
be done.

My other tasks during the first month included supporting the packaging department in
readying their annual report. However, there was not that much work and I had to wait
for my coworkers to finish their parts before I could work on anything. Therefore, there
were a lot of buffer times, where I would sit idle.

Then an opportunity came when one of the CLP interns decided to leave. As there was
no follower for her, I took the initiative and asked Mr. Chen if I could fill that position. It
was an immediate yes, and soon, I was training to take over the scrapping, blocked parts,
and obsolete goods tasks. This new task would require me to communicate with people
from both within and outside CLP, prepare scrap requisitions, finding cost centers to use
for the scraps, and to collect signatures in order to process the scraps. For this task, it
really enabled me to utilize Chinese, English, and German in order to talk to the
different employees and managers. I had to always ask questions and convince the
managers that the costs were going to be put onto their cost centers, which is
something they always try to avoid.

Due to my task, I also had to attend several meetings every single week. However, I did
not have to speak and only had to listen to what the other people were talking about.
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The biggest challenge I had was with communicating with my Chinese colleagues. Even
though I am Chinese originally and am able to speak Chinese, when it came to technical
terms and explanations, I really struggled.

Furthermore, there were also quite a lot of cultural differences between myself and
local Chinese people. Since I grew up outside of China the whole entire time, I expected
things to run a bit more like what I was used to ! timeliness, organized, structured, and
polite.
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Of course, working in a new environment, in a different country has its ups and downs.
This internship has allowed me to gain an insight into the following areas:

Cultural differences
Hierarchy and organizational structure/rigidness
Communicating with others
Te Xiao

Patience

Even though I am Chinese and speak the language, the foreigner in me often found it
difficult to understand why my coworkers would do things a certain way. Perhaps
hierarchy and personal relationships had something to do with this matter. With people
who I had little contact with, they often seemed impatient with me and tried to send me
away as soon as possible. However, over the time, as I got to know them more, they
opened up and treated me on a totally different level. It was especially evident when
they found out that I was not really Chinese, so they were even more patient with me.

Nonetheless, it also dawned to me that maybe they only treated me with patience after
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One of the most memorable things I was fortunate enough to be part of is a trainee
personnel assessment. I was chosen to participate because HR believed that they had
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candidates. I was one of four candidates, however, unlike them, I was not actually
competing for the trainee position.

The personnel assessment happened in several stages. First, we had to do a short
introduction about ourselves. Then, the four candidates had to cooperate to do a 50
minute teamwork exercise and a presentation. Then, it was a spontaneous presentation,
where we had to present out values. Lastly, it was a basket case, where it tested our
ability to assess many things at once.

It was one of the most stressful situations I was ever in, even though for me it was just
practice. However, I really felt the pressure from the panel and I tried to do my best.
Unfortunately, I was not ready for the whole process.

Nonetheless, now that I have experienced something like that, I will make the best of it
and take it to my next interviews. I know I definitely want to do a traineeship after I
graduate, so having practiced it once, I believe I now know what to expect, and know
how to prepare for something like this.

Other experiences I will take away with me during my internship is the ability to travel
around. After all, there are so many places in China to see opportunities to
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I came into RBCC with a lot of best practices and theories that I have learned from
GSOM or LUT. However, in real life, things do not run like what they describe in the
Te Xiao

textbook. I believe this might be because RBCC is located in middle China, where it has
little influence from foreign countries. Therefore, one can really see that even though
things are running, they are not that efficient.

Therefore, I do not believe I have gained any new concepts, ideas, and approaches.

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I was able to apply knowledge I gained from several MITIM courses. Since I was situated
in the logistics department, most of the knowledge that I had prior to this were from
Supply Chain Management. It really helped to know the terminology. Furthermore, I
knew some concepts already and it was interesting to see it being applied to real life
situations, such as, inventory management, JIT systems, and warehouse management.

Another course I was able to apply during my time at RBCC was Knowledge
Management. RBCC is a really young company, where most employees seem to be born
in the 80s. Therefore I was really interested in how knowledge retention worked.
Fortunately, I had a good opportunity to talk with Ms. Zhou Fang, who is the head of CLP,
about this matter and see how knowledge retention really works.
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There was no connection between my internship and my thesis.
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As I said before, though I am born Chinese, working in China gave me a different
perspective of China. I was able to immerse myself in a Chinese working environment
and see how things are run. Furthermore, I communicated with not only Chinese
employees, but also foreign employees located in Changsha. This internship challenged
me in many different ways, from language, to culture, to communication, etc.

I am glad that I had the opportunity to learn more about logistics, and see that process
is way more complicated than just delivering the right things to the right people at the
right time to the right place. Especially with a company like Bosch, things like these have
even more layers and it seems as every small step had a different department
responsible for it.

Now that the internship is drawing to an end, and though there were frustrations during
work, which mainly had to do with communication difficulties, I would experience all
this again in a heartbeat.

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Internship Report Summer 2010 | 1

Logistictargets (KPI): Profitability,

Systems/IT, Digitalization Performance Creating commodity

Employee Development / Competence Management

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