New Era China Research Trip: Looking at the Regions · Northeast China｜See how the national automobile brand FAW Jiefang is rejuvenated
2024-08-17
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Xinhua News Agency, Changchun, August 17 Title: How the national automobile brand FAW Jiefang regains its youth
Xinhua News Agency reporters Zhang Jian and Hu Ge
AGVs (Automated Navigation Vehicles) shuttle back and forth, multifunctional robots wave their arms, and digital twin models monitor the entire process...In the FAW Jiefang J7 smart factory, there is a scene of bustling production. This factory is a "super factory" for intelligent manufacturing of commercial vehicles, integrating automation, flexibility, and digital intelligence, providing solid support for the continued popularity of Jiefang's high-end heavy-duty trucks.
Li Sheng, General Manager and Deputy Party Secretary of FAW Jiefang, said that as a national automobile brand with a glorious history, FAW Jiefang has profound accumulation and problems to be solved. For some time, challenges such as insufficient awareness of commercial success, poor departmental coordination, low efficiency, and insufficient product development investment thinking have existed to varying degrees. "For example, we used to focus more on the research and development of advanced technologies and ignored some of the most basic needs such as user experience; for example, we paid more attention to the medium and heavy truck product lines, and there were shortcomings in the development of light trucks, new energy, and overseas product lines." He said.
This is also the driving force for change.
After repeated discussions and demonstrations, FAW Jiefang established a reform committee and officially launched the process-based organizational construction. "Reform is like physical exercise, the key is perseverance," said Li Sheng. "In recent years, we have insisted on promoting reform with a holistic concept and systematic thinking, drawing a blueprint to the end and working one term after another."
From 2017 to 2024, after 7 years, and after the relay promotion of two terms of party committee leadership teams, FAW Jiefang has initially established a matrix organizational structure with nine industries and four systems as the main body, "product lines as the main battle, functional departments as the main construction".
In June 2022, the headquarters' medium and heavy-duty vehicle product line was established; in January 2023, Qingdao's medium and heavy-duty vehicle product line and light vehicle product line were established; in August 2023, the new energy vehicle product line and overseas product line were established... Several major product lines have been established successively for various market segments.
According to the introduction, within each product line, product development, production and sales are all connected, and they adopt an independent operation and "separate stoves" approach, shouldering the responsibility of customer satisfaction and commercial success. The so-called "separate stoves" means that each product line such as medium and heavy-duty vehicles and new energy vehicles focuses on its own field and is responsible for its own profits and losses, forming an internal competition mechanism to make all product lines strong.
From "eating from the same pot" to "eating from separate stoves", what has changed is the mindset and what has been improved is efficiency.
Nowadays, every product in each product line has integrated all-round in-depth collaboration in sales, service, etc. since the beginning of research and development, implemented "synchronous engineering", closely linked product development with the pulse of market demand, and helped products gain market opportunities.
On July 16, the 60 millionth car and the 9 millionth Jiefang truck of China FAW rolled off the production line. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Yan Linyun
Since the beginning of this year, FAW Jiefang has accurately grasped the market trend of natural gas heavy trucks and quickly launched new natural gas products such as the "high-horsepower" J7/J6V 16L. Sales have been booming, with a market share of over 30%, showing "explosive" growth. Data shows that from January to July this year, FAW Jiefang sold 168,269 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 16.8%. Among them, the sales of medium and heavy trucks reached 136,948 units, a year-on-year increase of 12.6%.
Li Sheng said that the growth in FAW Jiefang's production and sales volume is not just the growth of one market or one model, but growth has been achieved in all markets including medium and heavy-duty, light-duty, new energy and overseas.
It is reported that while continuing to reform, FAW Jiefang has also increased its efforts in independent innovation and worked hard to overcome key core technologies. In the past three years, FAW Jiefang has made breakthroughs in more than 200 key core technologies, and the application conversion rate of scientific and technological achievements has increased to 65%.
On July 13, 1956, the first domestically produced Jiefang brand car rolled off the assembly line in New China, ending the history of New China's inability to manufacture cars. Jiefang has gone through seven generations of cars and has produced 9 million cars. Today, with the blessing of reform and innovation, Jiefang, a national automobile brand, is rejuvenating and writing a new chapter of development.
