By Peter Xiong
Nowadays there are many different companies around the world some of them are very big and very famous, most exists for long time and are known by everyone. Other companies are small and obscure, regardless I believe whether they are big or small, famous or not they have the same goal be bigger be stronger be more successful.
Exact Medical Manufacturing as a member of them also fight for the goal every day. The changes of EMM Changzhou factory reflected how EMM fights for the goal.
Back in 2017, EMM consolidated into the new factory which is located in Changzhou. There only was an empty building, no controlled environment, no machines, no material but with two month’s preparation the factory started running. I still remembered at that time the factory only had around 100 people and most of them were direct production workers they were new they had little experience EMM had to face a big challenge that there was not enough support people to training them and help them to solve problems to ensure the factory can keep running. Everyone must master multiple skills and wear multiple hats to be a good trainer, a good mechanic, even a good fork truck driver. But with 4 years’ development the factory has changed a lot to satisfy the increase of orders and customers. EMM has focused on bringing in advanced technology, modern managerial expertise and qualified specialists. As the company grows now we have about 450 direct operators with good experienced and high efficiency, also we have around 100 support people who constitute the professional skill for production design, quality control, process improvement and lots of machines which we designed by ourselves and so on.
At the beginning of this year the corona viruses exploded in China and spread to the whole world. The situation got worse day after day and everyone got scared. The Government published series of policies, people had to stay at home, many companies cannot operate and faced the risk of bankruptcy and other hardships. However, EMM communicated with the government actively instead of just sitting and waiting for the virus to disappear. Within 7 days of the lockdowns beginning and with hard work we got the certification and reopened the factory, then another challenge was coming that we didn’t have people. Most of EMM members were not local and they went back their hometown during the Chinese New Year which was very far. They lived in many different places with hundreds even thousands of kilometers distance. The public transportation shut down during the period, so some of them could not come back and even if they can they had to get 14 days quarantine. But with no hesitation EMM decided to pick people back up and provide transportation. We thought the propose was not only for the customers’ orders but also, we want to do more to help the world so we made products for our customers at the same time we also donated the medical devices to the hospitals and government. In my opinion it means the company has more social responsibilities. Regardless of the company scale or the vision it shows EMM has changed a lot and is not such a small company any more.
But like Winston Churchill said “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” EMM will strive for growth and expansion.
Biography of Peter Xiong
Peter Xiong is the Production Manager at Exact Medical’s Changzhou, China manufacturing facility. He effectively manages over 500 employees, the production of several thousand different products and their delivery to Exact’s long list of customers.
