Finding a win-win partner in China

A key strategy for the Solar Lamp project is to find a development and manufacturing partner in China, who would finish the design per my specification and do the manufacturing. My former job had me working with a Chinese company called Bojay located in Zhuhai, Guangdong, who built our test equipment hardware - lot's of physically large metal boxes filled with electronics that talked via precision mechanical interfaces. The bottom line is to be able to do that, a company has to have a wide range of capability. Over the last 5 years or so, I had them do millions of dollars worth of equipment for my last employer; and have built a good relationship with this hard working and honest company. Bojay is actually a congomerate of several different businesses.
Tonight a couple of their top managers were in the US so I had dinner with them. I presented to them some slides on the Evergreen Education Foundation's mission and history. A few weeks ago, Jeffrey (another Evergreen volunteer) had brought the Request-For-Proposal to them; and I was able to discuss it further with them. As it turns out, Bojay is starting a small development business and believes the solar lamp project would be good to get their new engineers some experience. After our discussion, The managers said they would propose this project to their new company.
This is exactly the type of win-win that I was hoping to achieve - in this case Evergreen will get the solar lamp project manufactured within a charity organization's low budget; and in return our Chinese partner will have a real work project to train their new engineers without the high pressure of the for-profit world.

Writing a one-pager for the teacher's (customer's) introduction

The end use of any project should always be the first concern. The Evergreen Education Foundation (EEF) Program Director asked for a summary (sometimes called a one-pager) to show the prospective school teachers. Then the teachers can decide whether they want to participate or not. This is basic marketing and sales. I have already written an engineering specification which described the project for engineering and manufacturing; but writing for the end-user is different in that they do not care some much about how it is designed or manufactured. The school teachers are more interested what the lesson objectives are and how they will administer the program. Being an engineer, I was a bit challenged at first to write from this prospective; I got some good feedback and advice from the EEF Program Director in China. Teamwork is always better than one person.

Welcome

This blog will take you with me on my journey as I set up and go through the development process and manufacturing infrastructure for the Solar Lamp Project.

Project Concept and Background

Thanks,
Rodney