Supply chain management is customer management

"To a certain extent, supply chain management is customer management, and it is also the management of people's thoughts." Shi Qing, chairman of Beijing Xia Jinyu Mould Technology Co., Ltd., explained the essence of supply chain management in one sentence. The mold industry is known as the mother of the industry, but in the entire supply chain, mold making companies cannot pursue economies of scale like downstream manufacturing companies, nor can they only pursue low cost like upstream suppliers. In order to take the initiative in the supply chain, the mold manufacturing enterprises in the middle link must not only occupy the market share by improving their own technological content, but also do a good job in customer relationship management to build a good supplier relationship.

In the mold industry with fierce competition and limited living space, Xia Jinyu Mold Technology Co., Ltd. follows this idea to find the win-win point between itself, customers and suppliers, and create a "win-win" chain through personal service.

What you sell is not the product, but the quality of the enterprise

"As an enterprise, what you sell on the surface is the product, but in fact it sells the quality of the enterprise. The quality of the enterprise is reflected in the quality of the products and services." Shi Qingyou Once revealed the essence of business management. Today, when quality has become the foundation, how to provide one-to-one personal service to customers has become the difference of enterprise competition. Different from other manufacturing enterprises, the products of mold manufacturing enterprises, molds, are not qualified. The key is to produce good quality molds to produce qualified products. Therefore, at this time, service is not only an extension of product quality, but also the key for mold companies to seek self-improvement and maintain a competitive advantage.

Xia Jinyu Mould, which was restructured from a mould workshop of the Nankou Locomotive and Rolling Stock Factory of the Ministry of Railways in 2002, also had the idea of "not providing services as much as possible", thinking that as long as the mould products produced have zero defects, it means no do you need help. However, since molds are usually customized non-standard products, there are likely to be some design flaws. As a trial-manufactured mold enterprise, it is difficult to achieve the so-called zero defect. Shi Qing once said: "Even if a product has 1% defects, it needs follow-up services." However, follow-up services can at most do remedial work. In order to reduce the defects to zero, Xia Jinyu Mould intervenes in the customer's research and development stage to provide customers with advanced solutions to help them turn their ideas into reality and create greater value - and this is the "nanny" proposed by Shi Qing. type" service.

Being the "nanny" of the customer's mold

Shi Qing wrote in his blog: "In terms of customer management, we must know how to be the chairman of the customer." Xia Jinyu mold insists on changing positions in customer service. Think, consider the customer's needs from the perspective of the customer's chairman, take the customer's future development direction as the goal of its own development and design, and prepare in advance. Such advanced services have won the recognition and dependence of customers.

Beijing Nankou SKF Railway Bearing Co., Ltd. is a major customer of Xia Jinyu Mould. This is a joint venture company established by SKF Group and the Chinese Ministry of Railways in 1996, and has now become a world-class railway rolling bearing manufacturer. Entering the list of A-level suppliers of such a Fortune 500 company, Xia Jinyu Mould relies on "nanny-style" service.

They often work with clients' R&D departments to track improvements to clients' existing products and development of future products. In order to provide advanced and accurate molds that reflect the customer's design needs, they often go to various departments of the customer to communicate. When customers have problems in any part of the application mold, they will redesign and produce at all costs until the customer is satisfied.

Of course, at all costs is not at all costs. Shi Qing emphasized that in supply chain management, we must seek common interests and give full play to the advantages of ourselves and our customers. In the process of industry cooperation and competition, Shiqing has always adhered to the "competition and cooperation" relationship between enterprises. "In the process of cooperation, we are not afraid to suffer losses, but we can't suffer losses all the time. On an equal stage, everyone suffers a little bit in the early stage, and if they get their approval, they can not suffer in the future." The premise of three-party or multi-party cooperation is that each All must be humble. In the mold industry, manufacturers generally pay in advance, and mold companies produce trial molds. If the test is successful, further cooperation will be carried out.

In the initial run-in stage, Xia Jinyu Mould advocated that it "suffer first", customers can make trial moulds without investing any money. Xia Jinyu Mould takes the early risks, first gives customers a sense of trust, and then further provides satisfactory mould products. Therefore, companies that cooperate with Xia Jinyu Mould are usually familiar with each other, and gradually become partners who trust and rely on each other.

During this process, Xia Jinyu Mould also gained his own interests. For example, a close relationship with customer trust helps to gain a more proactive price negotiation advantage, while also avoiding the threat of competition from peers. Shi Qing said that through the "nanny-style" personal service, customers will not only not default on payment, but will also take the initiative to place orders for Xia Jinyu's molds, and they will not "care about" in terms of price. Isn't this "earned"! At the same time, through this process, Xia Jinyu Mould has improved the ability to develop customized products.

In the process of cooperating with SKF Nankou, Shi Qing felt that their initial processing was a bottleneck, so he took the initiative to help them solve problems and undertake the task of initial processing. Later, they wanted to outsource their parts production work, and Xia Jinyu Mould also took the initiative to undertake this work. In this way, on the one hand, it has served customers well, and on the other hand, it has also won some downstream processing projects for itself. Although the profit margin of outsourcing itself is relatively low, the total sales revenue in mass production is still considerable. Xia Jinyu Mould is a kind of missing and repairing service, which allows customers to throw out the shortcomings and concentrate on mass production; at the same time, customers will also give them a higher level of service because of Xia Jinyu Mould's good service. price concessions.

Through the service, Xia Jinyu Mould has changed from a supplier of molds to a supplier of preliminary processing of parts and a manufacturer of equipment repair and prototype parts. Shi Qing said that the relationship between mold companies and customers is not a profit squeeze relationship, but a relationship of mutual dependence and symbiosis. When customers cannot leave you, their own value can be more reflected.

Build partnership with suppliers

For downstream customers, Xia Jinyu Mould is a caring nanny, and for upstream suppliers, they are partners. Therefore, for suppliers upstream in the supply chain, Shiqing also advocates seeking "win-win", seeking common ground, and strives to integrate its concept with the mold company, making it a department of the company. Forgings are the main suppliers of mold manufacturing enterprises. If there is a problem with the supplier's products, Xia Jinyu Mould does not simply return the product, but actively communicates with them to help them analyze and find the root cause of the problem, and provide technical support to reduce their losses.

Shi Qing said that when dealing with suppliers, we should build a long-term cooperative partnership, "one prosperous, one loss and one loss". When there is a problem with the other party, you have to bear the loss yourself. For example, sometimes the hardness of the forgings provided by the supplier is high, and the company can return it according to the rules, but in this way, the cost of its own transportation and construction period will also increase. Therefore, in addition to helping suppliers analyze problems, Xia Jinyu Mould will use its own resource advantages to digest the products that have been produced, and work with suppliers to make things better. In the words of Shi Qing: "Society is a big organism, it cannot be small and complete, but large and complete. It is necessary to organically integrate the social division of labor, give full play to their respective advantages, and use their own advantages to take the initiative in the supply chain and earn money from you. The money should be earned."

Interactive Questions:

1. In the supply chain, there are disputes over profits between enterprises, how to find a balance between "win-win" and maximizing profits?

2. When the market increment shrinks, should supply chain integration be considered?