Click III - The End?

It had been more than one week….One whole miserable week. I had not moved a single limb because I was totally immersed in my work where I could only go off at 9.30pm everyday. As you can see, my SAFRA Shears Bridge Run report was not even published to date although I had a really memorable run on this event. But then, nothing would beat the satisfaction that the project I was helping to handle, took off.

From the last posting, the mould modifications had been made but then, it did not solve our problems. The ejection of TPE from the core mould was so difficult that it is totally pointless to put this mould into mass production use. The material is too soft and we faced countless rejected parts. Not only that, for several times, our ideas for mould improvement seemed to be so distant from reality that they are impossible to be implemented on a large scale. Shit would be a good word to describe the situation we were in. So again, a flurry of emergency meetings was held between the designers and the manufacturers. We sat down and immediately thrashed all our concerns out. The designers were not willing to change the design although we have highlighted ‘gracefully’ that there was a ‘design error’ on their part. The term design error denotes that there had been certain portions of the part designed were not manufacturing friendly enough on a large scale. When this happens, high incidences of rejection will occur and material losses would be sky high.

Therefore in response to our concerns, they were willing to change the material composition to ease our burden on production. They had suggested adding Poly-Propylene (PP) into TPE to improve on its hardness characteristics and hoping that this would solve our production problems. It was really a breather for us because that was what we have been hoping for from the beginning. If adding PP into TPE had been decided from the mould drawing phase, then the project would have taken off on a much earlier date. After the decision, it was again time for traveling from South to North for material testing. Goddamn, I had traveled to Puchong 3 times for the past week and I was required to go back on the same day!!! The agony of driving for 8 hours can never be put into words. It was all pain….mental pain.

After adding the materials, the designers were still not satisfied with the results. The assembled parts did not felt ‘good’ enough as it could not lock itself into place. Shit…this is what happens when material composition was changed in the middle of mould development where material shrinkage had deviated from the previous calculations. You see, different materials had different percentage of shrinkage in plastic injection and for this ‘new’ material composition, it shrank less than it should be. In other words, the parts were ‘bigger’ in dimension. F#%&!!!! Again, a flurry of meetings was held and finally, they had suggested us to further improve on the core mould dimensions taking into account of the shrink percentage. Well, the mould makers had highlighted that this process is a ‘one way street’ where once it is done, it cannot be reversed. To minimize the risk, we did it on one cavity in case these designers decided to change their minds. However, all these can never be compared to the biggest challenge of all and that is, we have to complete this process and bring them new samples at 8am next day as they will be leaving Singapore for US. When I heard this, I was close to kicking them where it hurts the most….

Thus, my toughest day within this week began. Immediately my boss called the mould makers in KL and told them to proceed with improvement on the core mould. Next we made call to the mould tester’s place and asked him to premix and preheat the materials. My boss rushed down to KL at 5pm while I was scheduled to begin my journey at 7pm. After work, I rushed back to my home and grab my passport where the plan was, to get to KL by 11pm and shoot back to JB, hoping to reach the customs by 4.30am just to avoid the jams. Well, there would not be any jams in JB as it would be a public holiday (31 Aug) but to the Singaporeans, it is work as usual. It was a rainy day and I was blasting down the highway at 120kmh. Just before Machap town, I was nearly involved in a multiple car collision. It happened when suddenly I saw few cars in front of swerving dangerously to the left lane of the road traveling in excess of 120kmh. At the same time, the car in front of me stepped hard on the brakes and I knew shit is ahead. I stepped on my brakes too but then it was not enough to get my car out of the colliding path. So I swerved hard to the left lane and it was several meters after that, I manage to get my car in control. But then, I was not out of the danger. Just barely 5 seconds after my car was in control, I heard a loud screeching noise coming from behind and I knew shit is about to come. From the left lane, I quickly swerved to the emergency lane and it saved me from mishaps where just right after that, a Wira shot pass beside me with its tires still screeching. It would have been a bad collision as the Wira was traveling very fast from behind with 4 occupants within. As the vehicles slowed down, indeed there was a crash ahead involving 2 Iswara’s. Well, as I was passing by, I noticed that the front Iswara had no brake lights on! I could not help but pity the back Iswara as it was really difficult to notice any cars without any lights on especially as it was pitch dark during the night.

I continued with my journey putting this incident behind my head. I reached KL by 11.45pm and then rushed to the JB customs after collecting the samples, reaching at 4.45am. I was already feeling a little groggy as I was without sleep for the past 20hours or so. However, I pushed ahead, taking the earliest bus into Singapore and reaching the intended destination at around 6.30am. I gave him a wake up call at 7am and waited. It was only after 8am that the gwailo came down to see me. After seeing the samples, he said that we have got them right and tells us that there were no more request to change the dimensions with exception on the colour, where he had requested to get what he required. A sense of relief descended upon me. The gwailo appreciated the fact that we got these babies out within such impossible time limit and he is a firm believer that Asians are the hardest bunch of workers! Yea right…..

We bid farewell after that and it was already 8.45am. I was wandering around Newton area feeling a sense accomplishment where the team worked their asses off this project. Finally, we have managed to balance both ends of spectrum, the customer’s requirement on how their product should feel and our requirement on manufacturing friendly. Instead of feeling tired, I felt somewhat refreshed and to ‘celebrate’ this, I headed to Orchard Road for a breakfast in McD’s! While munching down the burger, I couldn’t help thinking would this be the end? By the time I reached home, I had not slept for the past 30hrs or so. I was totally pooped….