A Day In The Life – friends@240 Production Manager

In this edition of ‘A Day In The Life’ we are introduced to Sakun, production manager of friends@240.

My name is Sakun and I work as the Production Manager for the shop friends@240 in Phnom Penh. Every day I get up at around 7.30am; sometimes I eat breakfast with my family, but if I am in a rush I just grab something on my way to work. I get to the shop for 9am to help set it up the workshop for the day. During the day, I work closely with designers to develop new products and train new staff to make these. We now have a workshop at the Friends-International office as well as behindfriends@240, so I often spend much of my time going between the two places to supervise; I have to make sure that staff keep the workshops clean and safe and that orders are fulfilled on time. I also monitor the quality of the stitching and make sure that patterns are placed correctly so that fabric isn’t wasted. I often end up driving between the two workshops many times a day!  For lunch, I am often so busy that I just make instant noodles at work.

Three or four days a week I visit factories or markets to source materials. I also have administrative work to do, such as writing reports, coordinating scheduling for the shop and working with our Home Based producers to order the items we need. I find budgeting very difficult as I have never done it before, so I am glad that I have Technical Advisors from the Friends-International office to help me! We have a rolling schedule for evenings, so three days a week I stay at the shop until 7pm, otherwise I leave at around 5pm. In the evenings I like to relax, eating dinner with my family and playing with my daughter, who is 18 months old.