One of my internships in Tunisia was at the Tunis-Carthage Marble Factory. These are a few pictures on the job.
One of the factory guards and one of my friends, Rajib. We read the Koran together a few times and he and some of the other guys took me to the local mosque once for the Friday afternoon prayer and sermon.
One of the factory workers who ran the machine that I analyzed during my internship.
The machine. Two huge spinning diamond-tipped disks slash through blocks of marble the size of VW Bugs. This machine parted out blocks of material for processing on other machines into tiles.
The stone yard. Enough material is always kept on hand to keep the factory running for six months in case of troubles in the supply chain. There is no such thing as Just-In-Time manufacturing in Tunisia.
A marble CNC machine.
Looks like it’s making drain covers.
Another marble CNC. It also seems to be making covers for drains.
This CNC also has a rotary table. A column top loaded up waiting to be finished.
A machine used to rough-cut columns. It follows a pattern visible in the upper left in front of the window made out of metal.
A huge marble cutting machine. This one has about 80 diamond-tipped saw blades of the same variety as hack-saws use. The machine goes very fast, makes lots of noise, and makes the whole building shake.
Almost through the marble block!
Looking down one of the crane tracks outside in the stone yard.
My friend Sami and me. He’s about 25 and hopes to one day move out of his parents house and get married. He drives the small pickup truck for the company. It’s a pretty good position with a fair amount of responsibility for his age and educational background.
Hamza, the IT director. The company actually has a fairly sophisticated IT infrastructure including a fiber optic backbone between two buildings and a large database of customer orders and drawings. Hamza was one of only two people that could speak more than 20 words of english at the company. The other was the director, Sofiene.
