Expert joins vw’s operations

Doreen Fiedler talks to her colleague.

“Chinese people are very kind，always smiling to me

and patiently explaining

Chinese language.”

DOREEN Fiedler，a visitor from Germany，is on her second tour of China and has been working in Shanghai since May 10，picking up the job after deciding to check out the city in March and arriving in April.

Fiedler comes from a small city near Wolfsburg，the headquarters of Volkswagen，and as a reSult had close contact with the automotive industry.

She did an apprenticeShip in 2004 as a technical draftswoman at Volkswagen Bordnetze GmbH（a joint venture of VW and Siemens）.The company was sold to the Sumitomo Group and was called Sumitomo Electric Bordnetze GmbH in 2006.

A year later She finiShed her training and became an engineer，working on an electri-cal harness design for the Volkswagen Golf and then the New Polo harness.She also worked on the Porsche Cayenne，Golf A6and MQB.

Headquartered in Wolfsburg，Sumitomo Electric Bordnetze GmbH is a leading auto-motive harness supplier in the international automobile industry.

Nowadays the company has more than20，000 employees and 21 branches in 15countries，including two joint ventures in China—SuZhou Bordnetze Electri-cal SyStems Ltd in Jiangsu Province，and Changchun SE Bordnetze Company Ltd in Jilin Province.

Both founded in 2004，the two joint ventures produce harnesses mainly for the Ch inese automotive market.

In 2006，Sumitomo Electric Bordnetze launched a development center in Changchun for the New Bora.

“With another new development center in Anting Town，Shanghai，we now can better follow our strategy to have development centers close to our customers，”Fiedler said.

Together with the global development network of Sumitomo Electric Bordnetze GmbH，the new deSign center allows both companies to focus on the needs of the ever-growing Chinese car market.

In the Shanghai development center，Fiedler is responSible for the VOBES-Pro-cess and also the deSign of harnesses for the Tiguan and Lavida.In this process they get 3-D details of the body parts of the car from VW to check compatibility.

A program called Catia V5 is used for the 3-D data and the electrical stuff is done with LCable.

After this data is finished，they use a program called ELENA to put all the infor-mation together to get a 2-D drawing that can be used to create a specific harness for the specific car.

About two weekS ago，Fiedler got her apartment in the center of Shanghai close to Metro Line 2 and 11.

She can easily take Metro Line 11 to work in Anting and use Metro Line 2 for shop-ping and city sightSeeing.Located close to Zhongshan Park，the area She lives in has beautiful scenery.

“Chinese people are very kind，”Fiedler said.“They're always smiling to me and are ready to help me buy stuff and patiently explain Chinese language.”

Fiedler is also welcomed by her friendly new colleagues in Shanghai.One of them presented her with a cross-stitched picture gift.She was deeply touched because it took the colleague three months to complete.“My first week in China was very impres-sive，too，”Fiedler recalled.

“I visited a lot of restaurantS and bars，trying many things which are not served in Germany and I will get to try more in the future.”Fiedler likeS the local dumplings but what makes her even happier iS that there is such a big choice of food in Shanghai.

At weekends，she goes sightseeing tofind more about her new hometown.

She has already visited the Jin Mao Tower and Yuyuan Garden.With friends last week She took an amaz-ing boat tour along the Huangpu River.

“Of course I will visit the Expo，too，”Fiedler added.

“I hope I will have many more beautiful days in China and look forward to showing it to my fam-ily and friends to show them how nice it is.”