Xike can be upgraded to a full supply chain manager

Who supplies 45% of the processed citrus in the U.S. market? Xike, China's largest export processor of sour fruit. "Invisible Champion" Xike started in logistics in 1995, and now it has 19 branches, 8 factories and more than 10,000 employees around the world. But for Zhu Yanming, the founder and CEO of Xike, the more important thing is that Xike has become a SIMIS (Solution, Investment, Management, Innovation, Service) enterprise based on the integrated management of the whole supply chain, integrating global resources, through differentiation Services to create unique value for global strategic partners.

From logistics to whole supply chain management

"In the past 20 years, we have Continue to provide the market and customers with the services and products they need, and tirelessly make customers satisfied with Xike's services and products." Zhu Yanming emphasized at the beginning of the interview. In the process of constantly pursuing the living space, the market and customers drive Xike to constantly upgrade itself.

Originally, Xi Ke was a logistics company involved in food, footwear, medical and other fields. An accidental opportunity allowed Xi to obtain an order for citrus processing from Del Monte USA, the largest food processing company in the United States. However, the apprenticeship was not good. The first order of two containers of canned citrus did not meet Delmon's standards at all. In the end, all of them were thrown into the water.

Walking into water procurement, Zhu Yanming found that what customers need is the stability and safety of product quality. "In order to keep the quality of 100 million products consistent, the internal skills of production enterprises must be excellent." However, the backward production mode of China's food processing industry at that time could not allow enterprises to have such capabilities, and Xike could only help enterprises to change the production process and product quality.

"You always see weaknesses in the needs of customers, overcome them, and turn challenges into opportunities." In Zhu Yanming's view, this is the basis for the survival of enterprises. On the one hand, the challenge comes from the customer, on the other hand, it is also brought by Xi Ke. "If it is very easy to buy in the market, we have no interest in doing it, and the profit is very thin, which cannot allow us to survive. We have to process and manufacture products for customers that existing Chinese companies cannot process." Zhu Yanming valued the process of Zhongxi The value-added part that can be brought to the product. Three years after the first order failed, Cicco once again sent two containers of canned citrus to the United States, surpassing the traditionally best Spanish product.

The trade is getting smoother and smoother, and Xike is getting deeper and deeper in the fruit processing industry. "Customers want to buy from us for a long time, but they are worried about whether the product quality can be controlled 100%. If we don't control the factory, we can't control the quality 100%." This is not what Zhu Yanming is willing to do, but the customer needs it. Xike was forced to transform from a trader to a manufacturer, to invest in processing companies with technology and orders and become the controlling shareholder. Xike will use this model in the processing and manufacturing of yellow peaches, blueberries and other categories in the future.

Zhu Yanming's character is "Once you do it, you must do it well". So, Hike must be an excellent manufacturer. The biggest difficulty at that time came from the cultivation of food safety awareness among front-line employees. "In the countryside, food falls on the ground, pick it up, wipe it and continue eating. In the factory, anything that falls on the ground cannot be put back on the production line and must be thrown away." The front-line employees are also seasonal workers, and there is a fierce conflict between the two consciousnesses. , can only let Xi Ke do training endlessly, using both rewards and punishments. One month before the start of each quarter, employees do nothing but receive food safety training.

"In the production process, we found that it was not enough." In Zhu Yanming's view, it is not the customer's products that are sold in the market, but Xike's products. Therefore, another value-added service that Xike can provide for customers is Product innovation, mining customer needs in the process of research and development. Providing product research and development for customers is an innovation made by Xike in the field of food export processing.

Xike makes Innovation Table twice a year for customers, and will launch thirty or forty new products each time. Such service innovations are great for customers, but also fuel their "greed", hoping that this will not be a one-off, but become a regular service. "This has prompted us to enter the field of research and development, from waiting for customer research and development to take the initiative to do research and development acceptable to customers and the market." In the US market, the main consumer groups of canned fruit are middle-aged and elderly people, and young people tend to be healthier. , fresh and convenient products, so Xike proposed to customers to develop and produce plastic cups of fruit, which can keep the products fresh for 12 to 18 months without adding preservatives. At present, the export of this product has reached more than 8,000 containers per year.

Zhu Yanming's definition of R&D includes not only products, but also services and business models. "By bundling R&D at these three levels, it becomes innovation. This also gives companies a platform where they can use innovation as a competitive advantage." In the process of producing fruit in plastic cups, Xike also developed A revolutionary fruit processing technology has been developed, which has changed the original heating and sterilization process to an all-round hedging ultra-high pressure technology, so that the fruit can be sterilized without heating, thus not changing the shelf life of the plastic cup-shaped fruit, but also allowing the taste become better. This technology allowed Zhu Yanming to see another business model and set up a special company to produce food processing equipment with this technology.

For research and development, Xike built a research and development center in Shanghai that can be called the best food, fruit and vegetable research and development center in Asia, and spent two years to gather the research and development resources scattered in various production bases and around the world in this. At the same time, this R&D center is also open, which not only increases the interaction between R&D personnel within Xike and between R&D personnel in different countries, but also interacts with the R&D personnel of customers for joint research and development.

However, "Why are customers willing to work with you on research and development? Few customers are willing to have such strategic cooperation with suppliers, and it is not easy to convince them in the first place. Xike wants to convince customers that such cooperation does not bring competition, It is to bring him the value of market strategy." Also, "Is Xike qualified to develop with customers? He will only accept you if you add value to customers. Otherwise, why should he talk to you?" Going a step further , "The research and development itself is very difficult, and the management of the product life cycle is also very difficult."

Forcing himself into a research and development situation is not enough for Xike. Zhu Yanming found that it is impossible to get a high price in the market just by research and development. "The purpose of research and development is to give Xike the right to price the products. That's it, it doesn't mean that the business can become stronger and bigger. How can we achieve the highest price, maximize corporate profits, and be accepted by the market?"

Cecon should make the cost of the product the most reasonable, which means covering every segment cost structure. For agricultural processing, the roller coaster rise and fall of raw material prices is fatal. Zhu Yanming said with a bit of a joke: "To survive in such a nondescript market, the company must have vitality."

To control costs, the supply of raw materials should be continuous, and the quality and price should be guaranteed. , Xi Ke can only grow by himself. In order to find out the soil conditions in various parts of China and choose a suitable planting base, Xi spent 5 years and spent 100 million yuan, and finally selected 100,000 mu of land in Hunan. China's land system makes Xike have to cooperate with local farmers, but compared with the high yield of modern agriculture in the United States, Chinese traditional planting methods cannot be realized at all. Xike must demonstrate and show farmers the final yield. It is 2.5 times the yield of local general orchards.

Let the supply chain have an organic dialogue

From logistics to trade, production, research and development, to planting, Zhu Yanming said that every step that Xike takes is forced out. In order to survive, it has to take it one step at a time. The entire supply chain is woven, and every point in the supply chain is well controlled. Going further, Zhu Yanming wants Xike to be able to stand at the top of the supply chain, leading and linking the entire supply chain, so the whole supply chain management is an opportunity for Xike. “There is a huge opportunity in this. Every point in the supply chain is a different field, and there is a trade relationship between the points. Xike chain the entire supply chain and let them have an organic dialogue between them, and thus organic mobilization. The entire supply chain is manufacturing, producing, and researching and developing for the market."

Although the cost of Xike is relatively high at a certain point, that is, in a certain field, in terms of the comprehensive cost of the entire supply chain, Xike's cost is relatively high. The cost is cheap. Zhu Yanming calculated that, in the old supply chain, because there was no organic dialogue at all points, 30% to 40% of raw materials and manpower were wasted. Manufacturing production and delivering the resulting value to customers and consumers means lower costs and lower prices. "What Xike does is to link all the points and provide the required services at the same time." Different points have different requirements for talents, different management requirements, and their complexity is always testing Xike's management wisdom.

Cecon's whole supply chain management in the food field

“The whole supply chain management of Cecon The soul of operation is the foundation of Xike's entire business, and it is to create a platform for the service economy." This allows Xike to avoid the homogeneous competition of production, and also allows Xike to practice the products proposed by Zhu Yanming Interaction theory with services. "Xike not only promotes its products to customers and the market, but more importantly, the services attached to the products. If the products can be serviced, enterprises can avoid the limitations brought by the products in the competition. Productization of services, standardizing them into a product for promotion. In this way, products and services coexist." This model also enables Xike to actively select high-quality customers. Now its main customers in the food field include Heinz and Coca-Cola. , Yum, Del Monte USA and other companies.

At present, Zhu Yanming has basically completed the weaving of the whole supply chain in the field of agriculture and commerce. He wants to standardize this set of whole supply chain management into products and replicate them in medical, urban and rural planning and other fields. In 2012, Xike acquired a Swiss medical brand and will build a full supply chain model in the medical field together with Chinese medical companies.