Fortune Chinese Edition: Sany Heavy Industry: Forcing the Road to Innovation

Source: Fortune Chinese edition

Drops of sweat ran down my forehead.

I stood in the middle of a group of workers in uniform and helmets. In Changsha, Hunan Province in July, there was already a feeling of unbearable heat.

A worker came up to me and greeted me. Looking back, a material truck was parked behind us. This is the concrete pump truck assembly line, there are a total of 12 stations, and each station is designed to have a production cycle of 60 minutes. The LCD screen above the production line shows the production status and person in charge of each station, and a red dot means that someone is in trouble. Further on, palm trees, greenery and fountains come into view. When you look up, you can see white clouds floating in the sky. If it weren't for the noise coming from the assembly line, you'd be hard-pressed to find a "heavy-worked" feel here. Yes, this is Sany Heavy Industry's No. 18 factory in Changsha Industrial Park, which is also the digital factory of Asia*5655. Its production model is modeled after Toyota's lean manufacturing model.

Compared with the No. 18 plant, the office of Xiang Wenbo, president of Sany Heavy Industry, can be described as quiet. In order to be interviewed by reporters, he took an early flight from Shanghai to Changsha, and there were many documents waiting for him to work on the table. He wore a plain white short-sleeved shirt, a far cry from his worth of $1 billion.

"In the past 18 years, Sany has started from scratch to China's *5656 and the world's sixth, and the fundamental reason is innovation and comprehensive competitiveness." Fortunately, Xiang Wenbo is at ease on the topic of innovation.

"From the source, our innovation genes are related to the quality of entrepreneurs, and everyone feels that only by doing things that others can't do can they have market opportunities and high profits. This philosophy has been passed down to become the basic business philosophy of Sany. "What Xiang Wenbo said that others can't do is to replace imported products. At that time, the Chinese market was dominated by German and Japanese products, whose equipment displacement and export pressure were relatively small, and could not meet the needs of China's large-scale buildings and skyscrapers. "The characteristics of the industry and the needs of customers have forced Sany to a road where we must rely on innovation to seek development opportunities." Xiang Wenbo said.

Many years ago, on a project of the Hunan Provincial Public Security Department, the construction party wanted to beat the concrete to a height of more than 100 meters. Xiang Wenbo said: "Our people don't dare to go to the construction site. Because the user is angry. "The concrete can't be hit, and the construction site is basically paralyzed." Hundreds of people have nothing to do."

For construction companies, every day of late delivery means high fines. This incident finally forced Sany to develop a higher pressure concrete trailer pump. "Technological innovation is above all else, at least in our industry." Xiang Wenbo said: "You can't come up with competitive products, it's not a matter of more and less, it's a matter of life and death." ”

In the 80s of the 20th century, there were many people who occupied the market by imitating or even copying imported products, but Sany Heavy Industry's approach was completely different. Sany Heavy Industry's *5656 generation product, which is also the core product of the current concrete trailer pump, is a good example.

The core element of the concrete trailer pump is the manifold manifold. In 1995, Liang Wengen, chairman of Sany Heavy Industry, invited Yi Xiaogang, a hydraulic user, to carry out technical research on a computer in Sany at that time. When studying the manifold manifold of Ishikawajima Co., Ltd. in Japan, Yi Xiaogang found that all the hydraulic components were special products, and only Ishikawajima could produce them himself. Yi Xiaogang said resolutely: "We must abandon it, forget it, and design this collector valve group from scratch." Yi Xiaogang is now the CEO of Sany Heavy Industry.

A month later, a manifold was designed with a completely different operating principle than Ishikawajima's product. At the end of 1995, the Sany concrete trailer pump with model 60A was commissioned and rolled off the production line. At that time, the price of a 60A was about 500,000 yuan, and Sany could get 50% of the gross profit from it. In 1998, Sany Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. relied on the annual revenue of trailer pump products to exceed 200 million yuan, breaking the dominant situation of Putzmeister in Germany. In April this year, Sany Heavy Industry completed the acquisition of Putzmeister for 324 million euros.

Rotary drilling rigs are specialized in soil layeringPiling machineryEven the world's most advanced rotary drilling rigs dare not set foot in hard rock formations, because the drill pipe cannot withstand the impact force brought by hard rock formations. However, the R&D personnel of Sany Heavy Industry Beijing Pile Driver realized that in China, where the geology is complex and the mountainous area is widely distributed, if the rotary drilling rig cannot drive rock, the pile foundation construction will be greatly restricted. In more than two years, Sany adopted a unique technical scheme to gradually expand the construction scope of the rotary drilling rig from soil and sand layers to mudstone layers, granite layers, sandstone layers and limestone layers with hard geology, and finally drove the drill pipe into the hard rock layer. "If you want to do better than others, you have to have your own selling point, and there is no other way than to innovate. There is simply no other opportunity than innovation. Xiang Wenbo said.

In the Chinese market, there has been a phenomenon that all boom pump trucks above 30 meters are foreign brands. "The boom is one meter long, which is even more difficult than Liu Xiang running from 13 seconds to 12 seconds." Sany Heavy Industry bought imported steel and imported welding rods, and after repeated design, calculation and testing, the 37-meter pump truck was launched, which is China's first long-boom pump truck with independent intellectual property rights. At that time, the price of a set of imported booms was 1.3 million yuan, while the cost of each set of Sany was only 300,000 yuan. "Innovation is risky, but in our industry, I personally think the bigger is the benefit." While reaping profits, Sany Heavy Industry continued to extend the length of the boom to the sky, 48 meters, 66 meters, and now 86 meters.

"Innovation is hard to measure in terms of profit." Xiang Wenbo said: "It is difficult to calculate how much money it costs, and there is no template to calculate what kind of process it has to go through, but management innovation, organizational innovation, and technological innovation, they all add up to your overall competitiveness and profitability." "Sany Heavy Industry's R&D investment accounts for about 5% ~ 7% of sales, and the world's first-class construction machinery enterprises are less than 4% of the level.

Sany has a complete product line for each category of products, whether it is crawler cranes, concrete machinery or piling machinery. After the acquisition of Germany's Putzmeister, Chairman Liang Wengen also proposed to "lengthen the product line of elephants". "It's like opening a convenience store, if you only have money-making stuff in your store, customers are likely not to come to you. The same is true for the construction machinery industry. Xiang Wenbo said: "If you have everything that customers want, then relatively speaking, you have more ways to retain customers." It's also good for yourself. ”

Hospitals and construction machinery are not at all touched, but Sany Heavy Industry thought of introducing the hospital's care mechanism for patients into the field of construction machinery. Construction machinery and equipment "are either digging mud or breaking stones", and the working conditions are very bad. "Even the best products in the world often go wrong." For customers, once there is a problem, it not only means huge economic losses, but also affects the quality of the project. For example, the steel structure of the highway needs to be concreted, and if there is a pause, the entire steel structure will have to be scrapped. Sany Heavy Industry's approach is to carry out graded service standards such as first, second and special according to the customer's situation, which is equivalent to the first, second and special care of patients. In the words of Chairman Liang Wengen: "We must use a paranoid attitude and exhaust all means to achieve the service to the point of no return." ”

In addition to taking care of customers like patients, Sany also introduced the service standards of the automotive industry into the field of construction machinery, in 2006, Sany set up *5656 6S stores to provide customers with regular inspection, maintenance and maintenance. "It is impossible for customers to come to our factory from far away Xinjiang, and you should also go for check-ups as often as a human being, and you can't wait for your body to fail." At present, Sany has established 14 provincial-level "6S centers" across the country.

In the employee assessment standards of Sany Heavy Industry, employees get a pennant or a letter of commendation, and there is a corresponding reward amount. "Our after-sales service personnel, how much bonus to give him is not our final say, it is the customer who has the final say." Xiang Wenbo said.

Last year, Sany Group's sales reached 80.2 billion yuan, of which the annual operating income of Sany Heavy Industry, a listed company, was 50.7 billion yuan. In general, it is difficult for a business of this size to maintain the enthusiasm and attention to customers at the startup stage. In Sany, it has always adhered to a system called "high-level supervision". Every week, Chairman Liang Wengen hosted a global video conference to evaluate the service of the previous week, and the general managers of all business units and branches of Sany Group, as well as the heads of functional departments such as quality, service, and personnel should participate. Xiang Wenbo is in charge of supervising the Shenyang area, "I have to go there once a month. ”

Customers will be directly involved in Sany's product innovation. "They're on the front lines, using this thing every day,* they know our strengths and weaknesses, and they know what is needed." Every time a product development plan is formulated, Sany will form a team of operators, agents and engineering and technical personnel to evaluate the products and technologies, and then jointly formulate a rectification plan. After the rectification is completed, the acceptance participating is not Sany's own engineers, but agents and customers. "In our industry, there are very few people like Sany."

Customers have all kinds of ideas, but not all of them are achievable and executable, so "they must be screened". All of Sany's products have a rectification plan every year, and they are constantly circulating. After this plan is completed, a new plan will be proposed the following year. In addition to the rectification plan, Sany also has a milestone R&D plan. The so-called milestone R&D plan is "a very advanced R&D plan, not a small fight, and has relative advantages." "Each division has its own milestone product plan. More than 7,000 R&D personnel among the more than 57,000 employees of Sany Group,

"Innovation means cost and risk." Xiang Wenbo said: "The state should encourage more innovation. Innovations should be respected and protected. If the results of innovation are not protected, others can use your R&D results for free, then it is fatal to innovation. ”

Link:Fortune Chinese Edition 2012 * Innovative Chinese Company

This year marks the third time that this journal and the Pan Pacific Management Research Center have launched the list of "Most Innovative Chinese Companies". In the downturn of the economic environment, these 25 companies on the list are particularly dazzling.

Like last year, this year's selection is divided into two phases. In the primary selection stage, the research team of the Pan Pacific Management Research Center divided China's top 500 companies into 25 industries, and pre-selected them based on the innovation evaluation model and financial indicators for the past three years. In the re-selection stage, the user team evaluated from five dimensions: innovation atmosphere, technological innovation, management innovation, product and marketing innovation, and enterprise competitiveness innovation, and finally determined the 25 most innovative Chinese companies this year.

Of the 25 companies on the list, there are 16 new entrants. In other words, only 9 of last year's 25 companies remained on the list. Such drastic changes show that innovation requires continuous investment and attention, and the slightest slack may lead to being surpassed by competitors.

Tencent won the first place in this selection, Sany Heavy Industry jumped from 13th last year to third place, and China National Building Materials was *5656 on the list.

Different industries have different ways of innovating, but they all have a similar spirit of innovation. The 25 companies on this year's list have all successfully turned their ideas into business value, helping them win the initiative in the volatile economic environment and fierce competition. And this is the charm of innovation.