Many manufacturers in Taiwan sell their machines to different countries in the world. One of the reason is that the market in Taiwan is not big enough to support the company running. The other reason could be the technology in Taiwan is advanced so the customers in other countries will need it if they could not find it in their own country or it is way to expensive to just purchase locally.
I get to travel to different countries from time to time since my job is about mechanical engineering. There are mainly 3 parts of my job that requires going abroad. Installation, repairment and exhibition. Installation is often required when the machine has arrived at customer’s site. Repairment is when something happened to the machine seriously which they can’t solve it on their own. Exhibitions is how we promote and introduce machines to other people. So I guess you can say that I am in some way an engineer and also a sales person.
Pros and Cons. By visiting the customer, you are able to go to different countries and try their local food. Experiencing the culture while you are there. On the contrary, it is sometimes tiring to just travel either on a flight, cars etc. Most importantly, if you are going on your own and some issues just come out that you couldn’t figure out is sometimes quite frustrating.
Time differences is another issue we are facing either in the company or during business trip. Some countries are on the other side of the earth. The working hours each day is fixed. It is not very convenient to commutate when people are in different time zones. Either I would like to talk to the customer while I’m still in Taiwan, or I would like to speak to my colleague when I am at customer’s site.