Mr. Watanabe Yuo from Osaka traveled all the way to Tianyang, fell into the trap without knowing it, and became the director of a battery factory that almost went bankrupt.
Watanabe's management style is quite different from Zhou Qingfeng's. He has great patience, and on the first day he took office, he chatted with every employee in the factory and asked them questions.
Unfortunately, many workers in the factory have stayed in Tianyang all their lives and have never even left the province. If it had been said a few days ago that an old Japanese would come to chat, they would not have believed it.
Almost all the employees were so nervous that they couldn't beat them with a stick or say a few words.
But Watanabe has been in China for many years and speaks fluent Chinese. He changed his serious and old-fashioned appearance and became very cordial when chatting. He talked about everyday things, talked about difficulties, and could always find topics to touch people's hearts.
There were nearly five hundred people in the factory, and it was enough for Watanabe to chat for two months. But in fact, he only chatted for three days before he roughly figured out the details of the factory.
Watanabe dug up all the history of the factory, conflicts between employees, and anecdotes about cadres. Many of these things were only known to old employees like Lin Zhengyi, but now he knows them too.
On the fourth day after the survey, Watanabe began to exercise his management power. As soon as he took action, he overturned the factory's original production model.
Total quality management, full participation, every link of production is traceable. Emphasis on prevention, spend more time and cost in the early stage, and avoid post-processing.
Redesign products and production processes based on customer orientation. Strengthen system supervision and do not allow a disorganized work attitude. All processes are broken down and done step by step.
To put it bluntly, we must be strict and do not cut corners. For example, electrodes need to be polished after welding. The number of polishing times is specified, and front-line workers cannot mess around.
Establish a strict product sampling inspection system. If the sampling inspection fails, the problem must be traced. Whoever has the problem will be responsible, and the performance of the supervisor will also be deducted.
In short, we must strictly abide by the rules and regulations, and no one is allowed to make arbitrary opinions.
Don't think this is simple. For a long time, state-owned enterprises have had the problem of poor quality of cadres and workers and inadequate skills training. They are no better than Third Brother.
The workers in a large military factory have a bad temper. They dare to change the design drawings at will, violate process disciplines, do not operate according to process specifications, change the production process at will, and install fewer parts.
There is an anecdote that 3,299 J-6-6 aircraft produced out of 300 failed to meet standards.
That's right, I'm talking about that factory in the Northeast.
For Watanabe, employees with poor quality do not need to use their brains too much because their education level is too low. Japanese rigid management methods are more effective.
According to Watanabe's interviews for three consecutive days, it was found that once workers in the battery factory use their brains, they will not think about how to do better. Instead, it is not uncommon for them to be lazy and slippery.
In order to establish the concept of quality and discipline, Watanabe stood at the door of the battery factory early every morning. He went to work at eight o'clock, and he was late at 8:01.
All those who are late are caught and scolded. If a member of a work group is late, the team leader will be scolded along with him. If the team leader is late, the entire team will be scolded along with him.
For the first three days, Watanabe smiled as if he wanted to be friends with all the workers in the factory. After two days, he could scold him for an hour when he made a mistake, speaking Chinese and Japanese alternately.
If those who are scolded resist, they will be fired directly to establish the authority of the management. The remaining workers are often scolded with pale faces and trembling with fear.
When Zhou Qingfeng heard about this, not only did he not interfere, but he sent health care products to Watanabe to maintain his health, sent engineering director Zheng Ping to support him, and organized a group of employees from the machinery factory to visit the battery factory for study.
People who have returned from studying all call Watanabe a smiling tiger behind his back, but on the surface they are really afraid of that old devil who pays attention to details to the extreme.
After Watanabe scolded him for three days, the battery factory fired more than a dozen workers. Arriving late, leaving early, smoking, chatting, and wandering around were basically eliminated.
There's no way a 'nice gentleman' would be able to do this kind of thing, it would have to be someone who is ruthless and will not recognize his relatives.
Watanabe himself felt refreshed, drinking the "health tea" sent by Zhou Qingfeng, and feeling the awe and "greetings" from the entire factory staff from top to bottom.
With the superficial problems solved, the next step is the production details.
Lead-acid batteries, the technology is too old.
There are standards for lead strip rolling, lead paste making, grid making, lead paste filling, curing and drying, Jiqun casting and welding, etc., all according to the process manual.
The more stringent the requirements, the more problems are exposed - many workers have been working for more than ten years and cannot understand the process manual. Even the technical personnel in the factory are not familiar with it, but they find it troublesome and are unwilling to implement it.
When Zhou Qingfeng learned about this situation, he was very excited. He thought of the Mao Xiong family's "Uncle Steel", the ruthless man who turned an agricultural country into an industrial country with only two five-year plans.
When faced with similar problems, just use similar methods to solve them.
"There's nothing more to say. If you don't change your mind, just change the person. This one hundred thousand yuan a month seems quite worth it. Let Watanabe use his full strength."
Zhou Qingfeng always only looks at the actual results when employing people, regardless of their background. He will support whoever can do a good job.
This completely hands-off power gave Watanabe great confidence. He simply shut down the factory and spent a month on employee training. Only those who completed the training could take up the job.
After this combination of punches, the employees of the city's battery factory felt as if they were going to a grave every day, just crying and wearing sackcloth and mourning.
Within half a month, more than 50 people could not stand the strict discipline and resigned. In the second half of the month, more than 50 people had poor learning ability and were also fired.
The number of employees in the factory dropped to just over 300. The factory area seemed much empty. Some people were so angry that they went to the city government to file a complaint, saying that Zhou Qingfeng sent a communist to abuse them.
In the factory, factory regulations must be memorized every day and their study status must be checked randomly, even veteran workers in their 40s and 50s are no exception.
All employees must be dressed neatly every day, and all processes must be recorded in forms. Parts must not be placed randomly, operations must not be redundant, and all ineffective activities in the production process must be eliminated.
After hearing the complaint, the city expressed deep sympathy, but said it was helpless and notified the battery factory of the people who complained, and fired several more.
Zhou Qingfeng was very interested when he heard about this and went to the battery factory to learn from Watanabe himself. But he soon found that he could not learn this kind of management style due to his temperament.
This kind of management style that pays attention to details is not only tiring for employees, but also for managers. There must be a stage of habit formation before they can adapt.
but......
Zhou Qingfeng sent the management of other companies in his "Shengguang" and "Harmony" series to the battery factory and asked them to learn how to manage from Watanabe, and then promote this rigid model.
"This is probably the prototype of a sweatshop." Zhou Qingfeng visited the battery factory renovated by Watanabe. The latter is breaking down the process, spending a lot of money to build an assembly line, and using machines to improve efficiency.
This not only reduces labor demand, but also allows workers to quickly become proficient in the remaining few processes. If anyone is lazy, the entire assembly line will slow down and will be discovered soon.
Watanabe held a stopwatch to calculate the speed of the assembly line, making the workers extremely busy in a few simple actions. After working for a long time, they were so tired that they didn't even have the strength to speak.
The advantage is that product quality and production efficiency have improved linearly, and costs have dropped significantly. The disadvantage is that workers are under great mental pressure and the work is extremely boring and monotonous.
Zhou Qingfeng didn't have any good solution to this problem. The most he could do was to pay overtime pay.