Quality comes with power

During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Monkey that just passed, a total of 6 million people from China left the country, spending RMB 90 billion! In addition to all kinds of tall luxuries, they also brought back small things such as razors and thermos cups.

The Chinese people's ability to "sweep" the world can be proved by the following two cases: In 2015, Japan created the annual buzzword "explosive purchase" to describe the Chinese people's crazy shopping in Japan The "Black Friday" originally reserved for North Americans has also been transformed into a shopping spree for Chinese people with the "help" of various overseas shopping websites.

The whole world is exclaiming: Made in China is becoming Made for China. However, if you cheered the Chinese's ferocious purchasing power as a result, you would be overly optimistic. On the reverse side of the coin, Made in China is embarrassed - we produce nearly one-fifth of the world's goods every year, and the profit is as thin as a blade; you have to go overseas to buy a rice cooker and a toilet seat.

The strong manufacturing power and the strong purchasing power brushed past each other and looked at each other coldly. In addition to the price factor, it is more for the consideration of quality and safety - Chinese people generally believe that overseas control of quality is stricter, and many products are simply synonymous with high quality and low price. Therefore, people will choose to buy from overseas, even if the price is similar to that of domestic products.

"The 20th century will be recorded as the century of productivity, and the 21st century will be the century of quality" - the prediction made by American quality management expert Dr. Juran in 1994, seems to be being enthusiastically. Confirmed by Chinese who buy and buy overseas.

Is it almost enough?

If you still think that going to Japan to buy explosively is because of the foreigner's foreigner's moon is rounder than China's psychology, we can't prevent to "worship" a set of data:

Chinese products The unqualified rate of quality supervision and random inspection has been as high as 10% for a long time. The manufacturing industry directly loses more than 200 billion yuan every year. For consumers, for every 10 products they buy, they may buy a defective product, which is shocking. !

In November 2015, the EU announced a total of 191 cases of recalled products, and a total of 108 cases of products originating in mainland China were notified - Made in China alone has captured the total number of recalls in the EU half of the country!

Is it because Made in China doesn't know how to improve the quality? The answer is of course No!

The research on quality management in the theoretical circle has already evolved from ISO9000 to Six Sigma, and the relevant managers in the enterprise are also very knowledgeable about the operation method. But if you've seen a short video that circulated online in 2014, you'll know how little we actually take quality.

In this paragraph titled "Shock! In the video "Understanding the Difference Between Made in China and Made in Germany in One Minute", the German bearing on the steel pipe can be rotated for half a minute after being gently moved with a finger, while the bearing made in China only rotates for a few seconds . On the device whose quality can be measured by the rotation time, the gap between the quality of industrial products between China and Germany is clearly visible.

Although the 2015 VW "exhaust valve" dusted German manufacturing, that doesn't take away from the country's efforts in terms of quality. The concept of some developed countries regarding product quality is that the error within the standard plus or minus 0.5 can be regarded as a qualified product; Germany recognizes that the error standard is zero, that is, the product quality is not allowed to have errors at all - this is A code that borders on religious belief.

When Welch launched Six Sigma at GE, he required every employee to be highly sensitive to quality, which he called "quality psychosis." Compared with the strict quality requirements of countries such as virtue and Germany, many Chinese believe in "almost enough".

A domestic company once purchased a high-tech company in the United States, but found that it would be very difficult to bring American technology into domestic production - the same drawings and the same equipment were produced in China and the United States There will be a small difference between the products. The company's managers later analyzed and found that domestic workers lacked a rigorous attitude and the spirit of excellence, the level of refined operation was low, and the requirements for quality standards were not precise enough. "The conditions will be relaxed intentionally or unintentionally during processing and production. As a result, each link is a little bit worse, and the finished product will be much worse."

In 1918, Mr. Hu Shi wrote an essay "The Biography of Mr. Almost ", depicts a gentleman who is neither caring nor serious. Everyone praises him for seeing through and making sense. He is really a virtuous person. After his death, he was given the magic name "Master Yuantong". This is of course a joke, however, almost 100 years have passed and Mr. almost has not disappeared from our lives. And many managers choose to close their eyes and pretend they can't see the crux of the problem.

Aside from grand propositions such as the smile curve, the international situation, and national policies, we can see a chasm-like gap from a conceptual point of view.

The hidden worries of makers

Some people once believed that, in addition to the old problem of low quality, Made in China has also encountered a new problem of less creativity in the era of consumption upgrading - "Made in China always For many years, the same face has remained unchanged, and it cannot meet people's increasingly diversified and personalized needs for manufactured products."

In fact, China's increasingly strong maker style has provided consumers with a variety of mind-blowing products, ranging from VR, smart wearables to smart homes, with almost no creativity. everywhere. Can these novel and cool products meet the needs of consumers?

A senior maker in Shenzhen said: "If you haven't iterated a product three times, you'd better not sell it to me!" "Last year, some people bought a lot of weird things, Watches, bracelets... 90% of them are no longer needed, either because of quality problems, or because they are very tasteless. After a long time, they feel that they are unnecessary."

As the pioneer of the era of open source manufacturing , the quality problems encountered by makers in the process of sharing their ideas with the market in a hurry, sometimes they cannot be solved by themselves. Maker's products often inadvertently create a new product category, and the formulation of related industry standards often lags behind this - after a few years of wearable products in the market, until May 2015, the first domestic smart wearable The industry standard was only grandly introduced. The lack of industry standards has led to a lack of clear guidelines for makers, and many makers have never done hardware production at all, making it easier to find directions.

In 2012, several makers gave birth to a smart bracelet in Shenzhen Chaihuo Space. This new thing at that time was crowdfunded successfully at the time of the roll call and entered mass production. When the first batch of products was sent to users, there were quality problems. "There is a problem with the material of the battery. The yield rate of production is only 50%, and half of them cannot leave the factory." A promoter later concluded.

Intellectual property is also a threshold that makers must cross in the process of reaching consumers. At the CES exhibition in January 2016, a manufacturer of electronic self-balancing scooters in Changzhou entered people's attention with a helpless attitude - because the exhibitor was suspected of cosplaying the products of a similar company in the United States, the exhibitor was not only inspected on the spot, but also on the spot. Defendant goes to court. Although the situation was quickly reversed and the farce ended with the withdrawal of the US complaint, this sap alerted the makers.

The company was caught on hold at CES because it took too long to apply for a patent, which led to the patent being preemptively registered in the United States. Like this exhibitor, many domestic start-ups are unfamiliar with patent application operations and do not have experienced experts in the field to help write application materials, resulting in a rather inefficient application process and even leakage of core secrets.

In addition, many makers do not know enough about the technical standards, laws and regulations of the importing country, and lack of response to overseas technical trade measures, which often makes the products do not meet the standards of the importing country.

The issue of intellectual property is not unique to makers. For many Chinese companies, their awareness of intellectual property is no more profound than that of quality. According to media reports, a few years ago, a company in Shandong invited a German scientist with an annual salary of nearly 10 million to conquer a certain key technology, and spent tens of millions on a new production line, but it was suddenly discovered when the product was exported that the international patent of this technology was It has long been held in the hands of a foreign company. This means that the investment of tens of millions was lost in an instant.

In recent years, with the advancement of industrial upgrading and internationalization, the patent disputes encountered by Chinese enterprises have become more and more severe. Data shows that China has been the country with the largest number of "337 investigations" in the United States for more than ten consecutive years. Now, makers seem to be cramming into this growing ranks.

You Jianxin, a well-known quality management expert and professor of Tongji University, believes that the quality management of enterprises should no longer be dominated by quality engineers, but should integrate strategic and management arrangements, involving laws, ethics and politics. field.

How long will it take us to cross the chasm?

The Japanese international economist Keitaro Hasegawa published an article entitled "China's future depends on Japan" in Japan's "Voice" magazine in 2010. The article said: China's economic development is constrained by Japan, Japanese companies can provide China with high-quality products that are indispensable for Chinese industries. Today, in the unprecedented construction boom in China, the average annual use time of construction machinery is as high as 3,000 hours. Only Japanese-made machinery can withstand such consumption. China's machine tools producing auto parts can also work an average of 3,500 hours a year, but only Japanese machine tools can guarantee the same performance for five consecutive years.

The article also uses steel as an example to illustrate China's dependence on Japan. The quality of steel sheets for automobiles produced in Japan is the highest in the world, and there is no market for cars without such steel sheets. The export price of H-steel for construction to China is 20% higher than that of Japan, but China has to buy it, "because without this steel, Chinese construction companies cannot guarantee the safety of high-rise building skeletons.

As a Chinese, of course, I can’t help but feel sorry for such an article. We can go to the black history of Japanese manufacturing to brush up our sense of existence-in the early days of the rise of Japanese manufacturing, Made in Japan was actually a low-quality product. Synonymous; even Germany has caused boycotts from other countries because of the "copycat" products from Britain, France, the United States and other countries, which hit the market at low prices.

However, why can Germany and Japan learn from the dark history? How did they get to where they are today? Because they realized that if they want to be in a leadership position in the world, it is most important to have a leadership position in the field of quality, and economic success depends on quality. In these countries, even the top Enterprises also continue to use quality solutions every day to continuously reduce their various costs in the manufacturing process and reduce various wastes caused by quality problems.

In China, poisoned milk powder, fake eggs, melamine... Various scandals endangering the lives of Chinese people continue one after another. However, in Germany, as early as more than 10 years ago, regulations required manufacturers not only to record the whereabouts of various foods, but also to prove the source of raw materials. For example, every egg in a German supermarket There is a code printed on it. Through the code, you can trace the origin, chicken house, and feeding method of the egg. Once there is a quality problem, you can trace the source of the quality problem.

Fortunately, many companies have realized that To: consumers generally do not trust Chinese products - even if the Japanese toilet seat is made in Xiasha, Hangzhou, and the price is cheaper, they are willing to travel thousands of miles to carry it back from overseas, just for reassurance. Responsible companies also do this I am deeply disturbed. An executive of a home appliance giant once told the media: As a manufacturer, we are ashamed for not being able to provide high-quality products to Chinese consumers, and we must strive to make Chinese products surpass Japanese products.

"Made in China 2025" has designed a roadmap to promote China's manufacturing to a higher level, and the quality element has also been fully reflected in the realization path - in addition to proposing the "quality first" policy, it is also making the strategic goal of building a strong country The "quality benefit" indicator has been added to the index.

An official from the State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine recently stated that improving quality is an effective hedge against economic slowdown. Compared with innovation in technology and management , quality innovation is a more common and effective form of innovation. It is not only the most effective path to achieve "mass entrepreneurship and innovation", but also expands consumer demand, optimizes economic structure, and improves market systems. "In this sense, quality Improvement is one of the most important 'reform dividends' in China in the future. ”

Perhaps just as the financial writer Wu Xiaobo said: instead of turning to outsiders and trying their luck on unfamiliar battlefields, manufacturers in trouble should seek breakthroughs on their own. Roots of broken teeth, striving for technological sharpness innovation, from quantitative expansion to qualitative breakthrough, is the last mile of made in China. And the future of made in China is not elsewhere, but whether it can make Chinese people stop buying one across the ocean. Toilet seat only.