Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, July 2nd, Question: Under heavy challenges, why does this manufacturing company go against the trend?
Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Xinxin
The automated production line runs at high speed, and realizes "unattended" from material entry, patch welding to packaging and transportation. In the factory of Lenovo Hefei's manufacturing base, Lianbao Technology, an average laptop can be offline in less than 1 second, and the cumulative shipments from January to May increased by 32% year-on-year.
The Wuhan plant resumed production in time, and the output of manufacturing bases such as Hefei and Shenzhen increased significantly... The international market is booming. Why is Lenovo going against the trend?
Risk control, the "basic skills" of manufacturing companies
The global epidemic continues to spread, and downward pressure on the economy has increased. Controlling risks has become an equally important keyword as stable production.
"After this epidemic, risk control will be valued by more and more companies. The characteristic of Lenovo's supply chain is the focus on risk early warning and the construction of control systems." said Guan Wei, senior vice president of Lenovo Group and head of global supply chain.
Discovering risk is the first step in controlling risk. Guan Wei told reporters that the Lenovo Wuhan factory promptly started early warning and established corresponding processes such as anti-epidemic material reserves. With the increase of risk level, the long-term inventory allocation has been further opened.
"All the components are pulled as far as possible, as well as renting multiple warehouses for emergency storage." Guan Wei said that Lenovo's annual inventory turnover cycle is about 21 days on average. From the second day of New Year's Day, this figure was adjusted to 70 days. Sufficient stocks laid the foundation for the return to production.
Risk warning can be "triggered", digitalization is the key.
At the Lenovo headquarters, the staff showed the intelligent supply chain platform system to the reporter. On this system, not only can you see the real-time situation of orders and production lines of multiple factories, but also you can clearly understand the production status of suppliers, and achieve automatic matching and production coordination.
"Manufacturing is not a simple cooperation, it is a long-term win-win situation." Guan Wei said that Lenovo has been digitally upgraded from 2017, and its focus is to extend risk management to the entire industrial chain to achieve stable and efficient production.
Keywords for supply chain management, cost reduction and efficiency increase
Manufacturing is successful in the supply chain, but difficult in the supply chain.
It manages more than 30 factories around the world, more than 2,000 core suppliers, and more than 100 million smart devices are shipped each year. Lenovo's supply chain management is both representative and meaningful.
Guan Wei told reporters that Lenovo has been building and managing supply chains for more than 30 years, from building its own factories, acquiring international manufacturing bases, to laying out industrial ecology, and implementing digital upgrades. At first, it was to reduce costs, but now more safety considerations.
"From 2006 to 2016, we made a lot of overseas acquisitions. One of the important meanings is the integration of overseas production bases." Guan Wei believes that through acquisitions to achieve IT system migration, manufacturing standards integration, etc., supply chain control has been greatly improved.
In the digital age, the management of the supply chain should also be more intelligent, the algorithm should be stronger, the data should be more accurate, and the scope should be wider.
"In short, we are digitizing, and we have to digitize our suppliers," said Bai Peng, CEO of Lianbao Technology.
The Wuhan factory is testing a 5G network to optimize product line design through high-speed data transmission; the Hefei factory introduces an intelligent system to automatically match orders, materials, and production status; building a cloud platform to visualize the industrial chain... digital upgrades are underway.
"Today's supply chain is not only a factory or a production link, but also includes individual data." Guan Wei said that in the past three years, Lenovo has invested more than $100 million in the digital transformation of the supply chain. The next step is to continue to deepen the digital upgrade of the supply chain and achieve intelligent linkage with partners.
"Friends circle" remodeled, manufacturing mode upgraded
The development of large enterprises is inseparable from the support of small and medium-sized enterprises, and the development of small and medium-sized enterprises also requires the promotion of large enterprises. Under the new environment, what kind of relationship should be formed between large and small enterprises is a new issue faced by China manufacturing.
At the same time investing in building factories and introducing partners; arranging a "4-hour" industrial circle near the manufacturing base; building an information system for small and medium-sized enterprises... Many of Lenovo's practices seem to be beyond the scope of ordinary "doing business".
"Large enterprises driving small and medium-sized enterprises conform to the laws of the market and make the industrial system healthier." Guan Wei said that every factory around Lenovo has many basic parts and small and medium enterprises. Almost every important investment will be discussed with industrial partners . Change "do business" to "make friends", the manufacturing network will become more and more dense.
"Large enterprises can create many opportunities, and SMEs will invest better when they have the opportunity." According to Guan Wei, in the future, large enterprises will play more basic roles, including industrial foundation, digital foundation and software service foundation. Expanding value in the process of "empowerment" and achieving win-win situation