Is fast speed, good quality, and low energy consumption the "impossible triangle" of economic development? Shanghai enterprises crack factors | quality | economic development in this way

Speed and quality are an interesting relationship in economic development.

In the early stages of development, without a certain speed, it is difficult to achieve quantity accumulation and scale expansion. But relying solely on speed and quantity, it is difficult to shake off the label of being big but not strong. Therefore, entering the stage of high-quality development and building a modern economic system, we must adhere to the principle of quality first and efficiency first. More and more companies in Shanghai are starting to let go of their speed anxiety and shift their focus from speed scale to seeking a qualitative leap.

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China issued a call to accelerate the construction of a strong manufacturing country, calling for the promotion of high-end, intelligent, and green development in the manufacturing industry. This points the way for the development of the enterprise.

one

A little over a month ago, the head of the French shipping group Daffy arrived in China and signed 16 ultra large container ships in one go, with an order amount exceeding 21 billion yuan, setting a new historical record.

China Shipbuilding Group, headquartered in Shanghai, has secured this batch of orders. Among them, four liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered dual fuel container ships were built by China Shipbuilding Corporation Shanghai East China Shipbuilding Co., Ltd.

Three years ago, Shanghai East China defeated a foreign shipping company and won a super large order for LNG ships from Qatar Oil Company, with a value exceeding 20 billion yuan, setting a record for China's shipbuilding industry exports.

This shipyard, born on the banks of the Huangpu River, has repeatedly set records. Little known is that the high-end ship models that are currently selling well caused a lot of opposition when they were launched more than 20 years ago.

At the end of the last century, there were many shipyards, large and small, on the mudflat along the rivers and coasts of China, and the capacity of bulk carriers was seriously overcapacity. Chen Jun, General Manager of Hudong Zhonghua, recalled that considering the disorderly competition and low threshold of bulk carriers, the management had conducted in-depth research and decided to proactively abandon low-end ship types and move towards LNG ships. LNG ships are known as "super refrigerated vehicles at sea" and are one of the three "crown jewels" of the shipbuilding industry. They have high technological content and added value, and are also in line with the world's trend of clean energy development.

However, some teachers and masters in the factory do not understand: "Put the money in front of you and don't make a profit, go and engage in those irrelevant things!" Especially around 2006, the industry ushered in a bull market, and building a bulk carrier could earn $10 million. In contrast, the road to entering LNG ships is bumpy, with Yinwa steel storing LNG being as thin as cicada wings, making welding extremely difficult. The training fee for one welder alone is 300000 yuan.

Are you going back on the old path or breaking a new one?

In the midst of agony, the management remained steadfast: eliminating the weak is the key to nurturing strength, and transformation is the key to a future.

The general direction of technological progress and the trend of industrial revolution are laws that no enterprise can escape. Traditional industries do not represent low-end, constantly moving towards high-end is a strategic choice for manufacturing enterprises to enhance value.

In April 2008, after ten years of hard work, the first LNG ship "Dapeng Hao" from Shanghai East China was launched. The media exclaimed that the price of one ship exceeds that of two Boeing 737 planes!

The "Dapeng Hao" ship, as its name suggests, "Dapeng rises with the wind in one day, soaring up 90000 miles." This is the lofty ideal and heroic sentiment of Shanghai manufacturing, and also a solid step towards the transformation of China's shipbuilding industry towards high-quality development.

As the only LNG shipyard in China, in recent years, Hudong Zhonghua has established the LNG Technology Research Institute, which has overcome technical difficulties one after another and achieved coverage of the full range of LNG products. In the past 10 years, the number of invention patents in Shanghai East China has increased by 3536% year-on-year. "We must have our own trump card," Chen Jun said.

International buyers have found that when Shanghai East China launched its fourth generation LNG ship, it was basically synchronized with the latest global ship types. To the fifth generation LNG ships, each has its own strengths compared to international peers. The sixth generation LNG ship planned to be launched this year will lead its peers.

Thanks to its core competitiveness, Hudong Zhonghua received 38 LNG ship orders last year. The price of each LNG ship has risen from $190 million to $250 million, with profits exceeding 4-5 large bulk carriers. At present, the proportion of high-end ship types in Shanghai East China exceeds 90%, effectively resisting the impact of demand contraction, supply shock, and weakened expectations, and driving hundreds of industrial chain supporting enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta to move towards the high-end value chain together.

Breaking through the dilemma of "low-end lock-in", bravely moving towards high-end development, and pursuing high-quality development is becoming an important choice for the development of Shanghai's manufacturing industry. The competition between countries is often reflected in a few high points related to the quality of the manufacturing industry. The aircraft carrier Fujian built by Jiangnan Shipbuilding was launched and named last year, and the first domestically produced large cruise ship built by Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding has been docked. Shanghai will become the only city in the world that gathers the three "crown jewels" of shipbuilding industry.

As the development stage changes, people's views on speed and quality are also changing. We used to prioritize speed and take pride in it. Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, the average annual growth rate of the Chinese economy has been close to 10%. Enterprises can accelerate their scale expansion and achieve catch-up development by increasing resource investment and even horizontal mergers and acquisitions.

But Chinese people always know that sharpening a knife does not hinder the chopping of firewood. Instead of simply pursuing speed, it is better to solidify quality and increase profits. Nowadays, more and more enterprises are paying attention to core competitiveness and quality of development. From the 2023 Global Unicorn List, Global Brand 500 List and other rankings, the number of Chinese companies on the list has doubled compared to 10 years ago.

Correspondingly, in recent years, an important concept has emerged in the business community: Longtermism, which means abandoning short-term behavior in pursuit of immediate profits and insisting on doing things that are conducive to long-term development, in order to achieve sustainable development of the enterprise. Long termists have made a choice between speed and quality.

two

The Shanghai Auto Show in April saw a surge of people. Observers have found that the most popular booths are no longer imported brands, but domestic brands. This is the first time in the history of the 20th Shanghai Auto Show. International automotive giants are amazed: in just three years, so many local brands have emerged in China, launching such stunning new energy vehicle products!

China has a huge market advantage, and the supply of various products has already entered the stage of "good or bad" from "not having". When the supply of quantity is very sufficient, the competition is about quality. The "quality" that consumers pay attention to is not only product quality, but also whether it can meet their needs, whether it is exciting, and whether they are planting grass in their hearts.

These factors have made many companies today no longer sacrifice quality in pursuit of speed. Intelligence and digitization provide important leverage for enterprises, enabling them to understand the thoughts of buyers, improve production efficiency, achieve good sales, and avoid products becoming inventory and losses.

Entering the SAIC passenger car factory in Lingang, 477 welding robots systematically pick up parts, assemble and weld vehicle bodies; More than 70 spraying robots can perform collinear painting in 14 colors... In this unmanned factory, an average of 1 complete vehicle is produced every 76 seconds, with 2 types of power and 12 types of models available for collinear production. At the same time, hundreds of different configurations of complete vehicles can be assembled.

Another automotive power system enterprise in Shanghai, driven by digital software, has skillfully calculated various production processes and produced more than 200 products in a flexible production line. The delivery cycle has been shortened from 108 hours to 20 hours.

People often believe that brand, product, and channel are the key to enterprise competition. In fact, efficiency is the decisive factor in competition.

Implementing intelligent transformation has greatly improved production efficiency by replacing machines with people. Among the 100 smart factories selected in Shanghai, there are 22 in the automotive industry. The density of robots in industrial enterprises in the automotive industry has reached 383 units per 10000 people and is continuously increasing.

The improvement of the quality of economic growth in a country requires continuous efficiency improvement, namely the improvement of labor efficiency and the increase in the contribution of total factor productivity. This means relying on the growth of total factor productivity and gradually getting rid of the growth brought about by factor input. Digitization, as the most revolutionary force, is an important lever for improving total factor productivity.

Some companies have found that the efficiency improvement brought about by automation transformation is immediate, while the effect of digital transformation is not obvious in the initial stage. Looking at it from a different perspective, digital transformation aims to integrate data-driven approaches into the entire production and operation chain. The process of integration, integration, and empowerment involves an exploration process. Whether efficient collaboration, cost reduction, and efficiency enhancement can be achieved not only tests the level of enterprise management in digital production, but also depends on the deep integration of the industrial chain.

In fact, the upgrade from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing is not only a digital and intelligent upgrade of production methods, but also a shift from a manufacturer led large-scale assembly line production model to a consumer led personalized customization production model in the "production technology paradigm".

People's demand for a better life is personalized. How to meet the different needs of Generation Z, the new middle class, and the silver haired? Cui Lili, a professor at the School of Information Management and Engineering at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said that enterprises must empower themselves with data to achieve innovation and polishing of consumer experiences, as well as to study and satisfy personalized needs.

Digitization helps to connect the "dual pulse of responsibility and supervision" of enterprises, achieve full chain collaboration from the industrial chain, supply chain to end customers, and gradually organize various elements on the value chain in an efficient manner, greatly improving the operational efficiency of enterprises, optimizing costs, and greatly improving the quality of decision-making.

Through the "Gongfu Shanghai" action, Shanghai is building an industrial Internet benchmark platform, cultivating "Gongfu chain owners" enterprises, accelerating the "digital butterfly change" of the manufacturing industry, and achieving high-quality development.

"When a company is small in scale, speed is efficiency. When the scale reaches a certain level, quality is efficiency. Because any low-quality decision, low-quality product, or low-quality management ability can cause the company to lose tens of billions." said Li Xiang, founder of Ideal Automobile.

Intelligent and digital new tools enable enterprises to be smart and avoid detours. In this sense, high quality does not necessarily equate to low speed. Because speed and quality are no longer a contradiction, but can be achieved simultaneously.

three

The attitude towards the environment is an important dimension for judging the maturity of development concepts and one of the standards for testing the quality of development.

At one point, we sacrificed our environment for the speed of economic development. In those turbulent years, thermal power plants emitted thick black smoke, becoming a major polluter. Today, Chinese people increasingly agree that we cannot sacrifice the environment for short-term high-speed growth. After China's carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals were clearly defined, our relationship with the environment underwent fundamental changes.

Coal is known as the dirtiest energy source on Earth. However, Shenneng, founded in Shanghai, has created the cleanest power plant in the world. Greenization is the direction of efforts for Shenneng and many industrial enterprises, and it is also an important reason for the increasing number of "crystal days" in Shanghai.

Standing on the skyscraper in Lujiazui, overlooking the Yangtze River estuary more than ten kilometers away, the chimney of Shenneng Waigaoqiao Third Power Generation Company is clearly visible. This place once broke the world record with a consumption of 276 grams of coal per kilowatt hour, and was praised by the International Energy Agency as the "cleanest thermal power plant in the world.".

Shenneng has not stopped. After several years of research and development, the technical team has completed the engineering application research of a high-low layout dual axis power generation technology.

The coal-fired power industry is known as the "10 gram coal consumption generation technology". In today's increasingly mature technology, a decrease of one or two grams of coal consumption is a significant progress. The second phase project of Anhui Pingshan Power Plant, designed based on "high low" technology, has a high-level turbine shaft system arranged at 82 meters, which can save 85% of steam pipelines, save more than 90 million yuan in pipeline costs, and significantly improve the thermal efficiency of the unit... A series of innovative designs have made the designed coal consumption of the unit only 251 grams per kilowatt hour, further reducing coal consumption by more than 15 grams compared to the most advanced two reheat million unit coal consumption during the same period.

In order to climb the "251" peak, Shenneng has mobilized professional backbone to solve the problems brought by the first application of technology on site, and carried out refined debugging.

The Sui River flows quietly in winter, and the second phase of the Shenneng Pingshan Power Plant project by the river erupts with cheers. After 3 years of construction, on December 13th last year, the performance test results of the unit were released: the coal consumption of the rated operating condition unit's power supply was only 249.31 grams/kilowatt hour, once again breaking the world record! Based on an annual power generation of 7 billion kilowatt hours, compared to the most advanced units in the same period, an additional 105000 tons of standard coal can be saved and 260000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced throughout the year.

China is a coal rich country, with coal accounting for over half of primary energy consumption and 80% of carbon emissions coming from coal. The clean and efficient coal-fired power technology explored by Shenneng is of great significance for the national low-carbon energy transformation.

At certain times, fast speed, good quality, and low energy consumption are an "impossible triangle", where only two of the three goals can be achieved simultaneously. But digitization and high-end can break the "impossible triangle", and more and more manufacturing enterprises are accelerating their green and low-carbon transformation.

Shanghai Electric Steam Turbine Factory, one of the "Four Great Kings" in Shanghai and in his 70s, has undergone renovation with the help of Shanghai Electric Digital Science and Technology. With the digital technology of the "Star Cloud Intelligent Energy Carbon Dual Control Platform", it has achieved joint promotion of production increase and energy conservation. It is expected to save 6 million yuan in electricity bills annually and recover investment costs within 5 years

The steel industry was once a major energy consumer. In recent years, China Baowu has vigorously developed low-carbon metallurgical technology, actively researched and developed high-end technologies, and put into operation the world's first hydrogen rich carbon cycle oxygen blast furnace. Solid fuel consumption has decreased by about 30%, and carbon emissions have exceeded 20%.

"Greenization, like digitization, is the most important variable factor in promoting high-quality development." Ma Haiqian, Vice President of Shanghai Development and Reform Research Institute, analyzed, "In the past, emissions had no cost, but now environmental costs continue to rise. The cost-benefit framework of enterprises has changed, and the value of greening has emerged."

In the past 10 years, Shanghai has eliminated 500 to 1000 outdated production capacity projects annually. At the beginning of this year, the first batch of zero carbon benchmark enterprises in Shanghai were announced. In the future, more enterprises will accelerate their transformation into "green".

The new development concept has reshaped the logical relationship between speed and quality. Many practices have shown that Shanghai enterprises continue to exert efforts in high-end, intelligent, and green development, shaping their own competitiveness and pursuing high-quality development. The change in corporate development philosophy will also inevitably drive another profound transformation of the Chinese economy.