Anne Fox :: Blog :: Factory visits

On Monday I start teaching an English course with SCA Denmark employees and today I and my colleagues, who will be leading different courses, had a workplace visit. It was nice to be guided by an enthusiast who has seen enormous change both in the factory we were visiting and in the industry of packaging in general and who has a vision for the future. I am sure that the four hours spent there today will be valuable in helping me to develop the necessary activities for the group starting Monday.

As part of my teaching in the last few years I have visited several factories here in Denmark and am always impressed by the cleanliness and orderliness. I recall being present when a delegation of foreign students were being shown round a printers here in Grenaa some years ago. This was the culmination of a course for the employees of the printers, to take charge of the guided tour of the group arranged by the local business polytechnic. One of the visiting students was british and at one point in the tour, he took me aside, as a fellow Brit, and asked me whether the company had cleaned and tidied up specially for the visit. The answer of course was no, it was always this tidy.

This is in stark contrast to for example the Jaguar factory in the Midlands in the UK which I took my students to visit about 15 years ago. There the windows were dirty and broken and the weather just whistled through. I remember being struck by the mismatch between the luxury image of the brand and the conditions in which the cars were made.

In Britain I remember being impressed as we walked over a river of molten metal in a cable factory. That feeling of awe is quite well reproduced in the Magna Adventure centre in Rotherham, an old steelworks. While here in Denmark I have visited aluminium extrusion, windturbine, aircraft electronic, yeast and alcohol factories.

Today I was impressed by the level of automation which is ongoing and astounded by some of the jobs which are still done by hand, such as sticking labels. The gender divide was also very apparent with the slightly more technical jobs being done by the men and the more mechanical jobs being done by the women.