Day 4 in Turkey

We woke up early as usuall  today it wasn’t as cold as yesterday so we can say the day startes out good. We went to get breakfast from a shop nearby the school. We had freshly squeezed apple juice and chese filled Börek.

We went to the technical school today just to meet up with two teacher’s. They have planned a tour in different factories somewhere near Tekirdag. We drove by car for 20ish minute’s and reached the first factory.

It was the Ac electronics factory. They produced elctrical appliance cases and attaching wires to the lamps after producing and assembling their outer cases, they producethe outer cases of circuit breakers as well in which quiet a few women work. They follow english standarts and have their merchandise ordered from around the world such as America, Pakistan, Ireland etc. They produce almost everything themself except the lamps and circuits of the circuit breaker. The tour was interesting even though no one spoke english, Ertugul my fellow exchange student tried to translate as much as possible since his Turkey is limited as well. I got the gist of what was happening due to him and some simple deduction while lookin at the contraptions (machines).

Afterwards we went to a Muratli Carto aCartbox and paper factory. We drank some chai (Turkish tee) while we waited for the foreman Ozğüre to show us around. Ozğüre migrated back from Germany when he was littel and lived in Turkey ever since. We were glad to hear that he spoke German. The tour was very exciting and informative since we understood everything. The factory only works with used paper, recycling it and not letting anything go to waste. They divide regular paper trash (wrapping, candy, packiging paper) with white paper trash ( block, phone pages etc). The white paper is served as the outer part where as the regular paper trash is the inside of the new paper. They have a new controll and monitoring system since 2007, which allows them see irregularities easier and monitor even the most miniscule thing ( Quality of paper to the density of the paint). The recycled paper is wet when its further processed and send to the giant squeezers, afterwards its 23% dry  and ready to be sent to the heating rooms where afterwards its 50% dry and easier to proses them further. The next step is the paint which is radio active and changed every 10 years. The paint is applied 3 times on the paper making it 93% dry and ready  to be shipped of after some last quality checks. Electricians and IT experts are ready to spring in action when the situation arises. We had lunch in their Cafeteria. We had some mushroom soup, Spaghetti, and some peas with meat. It was  all very delicious, afterwards we said our goodbye’s and left for the next factory which was nearby.

The third  factory was Sezginler Zekstil, a clothing paint factory. There as well no one was speaking english, so it was on Ertugul to translate to the best of his ability’s. The factory was rather huge and divided in several  departments fabrik colouring, form designing, form applying. There were several workers in each department. The graphical designing team only consisted of women where as the working class was mixed. Most of it was as the name suggested. Some machines were exportet from Italy.

My intake was that the factories were efficent just like German factories, but not as modernized as ours. They had some rather outdated machinery and still many thinks were done by people where as in Germany many thinks are done by machines to reduce errors and costs but all in all it wasnt bad, I am happy to have seen all those factories.

After viewing all 3 factories we were driven home, to some well deserved rest.