Economic Observer reporter Li Huaqing "I once asked myself a question, did I choose the robot industry?" Not necessarily, it may be that the robotics industry chose me because we have always stuck to this industry. In early November 2021, in an interview with the Economic Observer, Chen Hongbo, one of the founders and vice presidents of Guangdong Jiateng Robot Automation Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiateng Robot"), said such a dialectical sentence.
Born in 1977, Chen Hongbo is a native of Hunan, graduated from Hunan Normal University, majored in Chinese language and literature, and was a Chinese teacher for a year when he first graduated. He used "serendipity" and "accidental collision" to introduce the reasons why he entered the robot industry. It is no coincidence that since entering the field of robotics in 2005, Jiateng Robot has grown into a backbone robot enterprise in Guangdong Province and one of the top ten industrial robot brands in China, and in November 2020, Jiateng Robot was selected into the second batch of specialized new "little giant" enterprises list of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
On the road to entrepreneurship, Chen Hongbo is not alone, the founding team of Jiateng Robot has 4 people, but they are all self-made, and some people are also from the countryside. Similar to the experience of many entrepreneurs, Chen Hongbo also experienced the suffering of the early stage of entrepreneurship, once losing almost all his wealth, fortunately, Jiateng Robot survived. Speaking of the overstretched funds in the early stage of entrepreneurship, Chen Hongbo said that he and other founders thought very clearly, but where there is still a little resource to support, they will not give up, because the choice of the road is correct, the future is bright, if it really can not be supported, become the pioneer of the "heroic sacrifice" of the robot industry, the stepping stone of the latecomers, is also happy.
"What kind of battle are you afraid of dying, what kind of industry are you afraid of going bankrupt?" Chen Hongbo asked rhetorically. In the interview, Chen Hongbo mentioned entrepreneurship many times, in his view, one of the essence of entrepreneurship is that an industry must be brave to stick to it, and can fight for its own business. He believes that there is no shortage of such people in China who are desperate for a certain industry or a certain cause, and these people have become "symbolic" figures in the minds of the public, such as Yuan Longping and Zhong Nanshan.
In Chen Hongbo's office, there is a writing hanging on the wall by the door, which is the word that his friend asked the calligrapher to write down and give him, he likes it, hanging the word in the place where the visitor can look up when he sits down to chat with him, and the word is 8 brush characters: "National complex, common progress and win-win situation."
Chen Hongbo also summed up the culture of Jiateng robots into 8 words: "mutual loyalty, mutual achievement". Chen Hongbo explained that this "loyalty" is loyalty to the country, loyalty to oneself, loyalty to the cause, loyalty to customers, and the reason why we can insist on "loyalty" is inseparable from love. "Loyalty" and "love" are invisible and untouchable things, but Chen Hongbo believes that it is precisely because of the love of the robot industry and loyalty to the robot industry that Jiateng Robot can survive so many years of ups and downs and challenges, grow into a private enterprise with annual revenue of more than hundreds of millions of yuan, and even want to grow from a "small giant" to a "big giant" and impact the throne of the global mobile robot boss.
From a teacher to an entrepreneur
Before founding Jiateng Robot, Chen Hongbo and his friends had two entrepreneurial experiences.
In 2000, Chen Hongbo, who quit his teaching profession, took a green-skinned train and squeezed all the way from Hunan to Guangzhou, and then changed to a bus from Guangzhou to Foshan Shunde. On the national highway, Chen Hongbo saw a road sign and was surprised, is there still a place in Foshan named "London"? Looking at it, it turned out to be "Lunjiao". The reason why Chen Hongbo left his hometown and came to Shunde, where he was not familiar with life, was because of the solicitation of Chen You, the chairman of Jiateng Robot and one of the founders of Jiateng Robot. And Chen You is also a high school classmate of Chen Hongbo's brother, Chen You and Chen Hongbo are brothers who have played from childhood to adulthood, Chen You came to Shunde in the 1990s, he wanted to start a business, called Chen Hongbo together.
Chen Hongbo and Chen You began to do trade, and the electronics factories in the Pearl River Delta gathered, and the two bought and sold the supplies needed by the electronics factory, such as components, fixtures, fixtures, etc. Low buy high selling business risk is low, the threshold is low, the profit is also small, after saving some money, Chen Hongbo and Chen You opened a small factory to manufacture fixtures. Fixture is equivalent to a model tool, need to be both thin and light and high temperature resistance, anti-static, high requirements for materials, at that time the material of the fixture - synthetic stone, almost monopolized by European and American enterprises, domestic enterprises produce fixtures, most of the cost is the cost of materials.
Until now, Chen Hongbo still remembers the hardships of buying synthetic stones with European and American companies. European and American enterprises do not charge RMB, Chen Hongbo needs to exchange RMB for Hong Kong dollars, that is the first time he saw Hong Kong dollars; European and American enterprises are not willing to cut the materials small and then sell them to Chinese enterprises, Chinese enterprises get goods, usually as large as the door panel of a piece of material, Chen Hongbo with these bulky materials, in the Humen Bridge and other friends' hitchhiking, even the toilet does not dare to go, afraid of losing, a piece of material will cost tens of thousands of yuan. Back to Haizhu Bridge, but also to change buses, most bus drivers do not welcome passengers with "door panels", occasionally wait for a bus willing to let Chen Hongbo with "door panels" on the bus, Chen Hongbo thanked the driver in his heart.
In order to change the situation of being subject to people, Chen Hongbo and others cooperated with universities to launch independently developed synthetic stone materials in 2003, obtained invention patents, and won the asian synthetic stone materials market in one fell swoop.
When doing synthetic stone materials business, in terms of pricing, Chen Hongbo and Chen You crossed the river by feeling the stones and almost made two mistakes. At the beginning, Chen Hongbo and Chen You wanted to price the material at 200 yuan per kilogram, because their cost was 100 yuan per kilogram, and Chen Hongbo felt that even if it was priced at 200 yuan, the profit was 100%, which was already a huge profit. But the consultant told them that the pricing was based on the market situation, when the price of synthetic stone materials on the market was 400 yuan per kilogram, and it was suggested that they set the price of 350 yuan per kilogram, and then slowly reduce the price, there will always be a time to return to 200 yuan per kilogram.
Chen Hongbo and others adopted the opinions of the consultants, and the materials sold well, avoiding the mistake of "right leaning", but finally making the mistake of "left leaning". When Chen Hongbo reviewed the synthetic stone material business, he felt that he was overconfident in his price in the later stage, leaving room for the cottage factory to survive. "If we cut prices faster, the cottage will not get up, we can earn more, the first bucket of gold is enough, and the robot industry will rise up a little faster." Chen Hongbo said.
After making synthetic stone materials, Chen Hongbo and others had a very moist life, but before long, they realized the crisis and must change careers. First, the market space for synthetic stone materials is small, and the core competitiveness of synthetic stone materials is the formula, even if others can't develop a better formula, it is not difficult to imitate the existing formula, and the industry is easy to change from the blue ocean market to the Red Sea market.
"No one can beat the world with one product, and entrepreneurs who don't continue to innovate quickly face the question, what do you sell in five years, what value can you provide?" Chen Hongbo sighed.
By chance, Chen Hongbo and others decided to make mobile robots. This idea stems from a factory owner telling Chen Hongbo and others that your fixtures are doing very well, but can you let your fixtures come back by themselves in the designated place? Carrying fixtures hundreds of times a day is tiring.
Chen Hongbo has suffered from porting, feels that this is a business opportunity, and the market space is large, just ask which factory in the world does not need to carry things? Moreover, the high threshold of mobile robot technology can also be updated and upgraded from generation to generation, and the upward space is large, and this track can be compared to the synthetic stone material.
When all is said and done, Chen Hongbo and others stopped the original production of fixtures, and invested all their energy and tens of millions of yuan of funds accumulated in fixtures into the mobile robot industry, and in 2005, Jiateng set up a project to develop unmanned trucks.
The five flavors on the road to entrepreneurship
After switching to the mobile robot industry, Chen Hongbo and others were quickly hit by the reality of the "beating" - the first five years were in the loss, the tens of millions of yuan accumulated before the loss of money to repay the loan, can not pull new investment, the most difficult time, as the boss, after paying the salary pocket only a few dozen yuan, want to go home for the New Year but finally did not make the trip, in the factory with their own robots for the New Year.
Chen Hongbo in 2021 and the Economic Observer reporter recalled the difficulties in the early stage of entrepreneurship, and saw the reasons behind the dilemma very thoroughly, one is that their products really can't be taken out, they can't talk about intelligence and automation, there are only two buttons, press the left button, the robot goes to the left, press the right button, the robot goes to the right, and walks shakily, when customers or leaders come to visit, the embarrassing scene of the robot "strike" has also occurred; the second is that the target customer has not yet realized the "machine substitution" The importance and necessity, intelligent manufacturing, industry 4.0 these concepts have not yet been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, it is difficult to educate the market, let alone open up the market. "In the past, everyone would have a concept, whose factory is big, who recruits more people, whose boss is big, people are not so difficult to recruit, labor costs are not so high, who will listen to what you say about robots." 」 Chen Hongbo recalled that in the first three years of entrepreneurship, the number of mobile robots sold by Jiateng Robot every year was a single digit, and for a long time, even his wife did not understand Chen Hongbo's career very well, and asked Chen Hongbo, Why do you want to bury the original hard-won good days?
Chen Hongbo and Chen You are very firm about the mobile robot industry. "Doing business is like this, it is all a process of accumulation, no product or technology will fall from the sky, and no seed can become a towering tree, you know very well that it is necessary to adhere to it." Chen Hongbo analyzed: "And we feel that it (referring to mobile robots) is promising and valuable, and we can also see how those mechanical arm companies have come to be, and we know how to adhere to it." ”
The above is the reason for sticking to it at the rational level, and from an emotional point of view, it is difficult for Chen Hongbo and others to give up mobile robots halfway. Chen Hongbo has experienced his own mobile robot from a simple state slowly getting better, the heart is happy, he feels that this is the same as raising pets, raising children, raising feelings, others see is, Jiateng's robot looks like this, what he sees is that Jiateng's robot has to go through what can look like this.
To this day, the second floor display hall of Jiateng Robot Headquarters is still lined with Jiateng's early start-up robots, although they look clumsy and old, but Chen Hongbo welcomes visitors to visit his "kindergarten" products.
After 2010, the life of Jiateng Robot has improved, thanks to the popularity of the wave of manufacturing transformation and upgrading, and also to the improvement of its products. After Jiateng Robot stepped on the right track, Chen Hongbo began to face a problem that often caused entrepreneurs headaches - talent recruitment.
In the founding team of Jiateng Robot, Chen You is from a technical background, managing research and development, and one person is from automotive engineering, managing production and manufacturing, Chen Hongbo is responsible for sales and communication externally, and is responsible for organizational construction internally.
Jiateng robots need high-level talents, such as doctors and masters, but these people are not easy to recruit. Jiateng is not a well-known large enterprise, Chen Hongbo knows that high-salary recruitment is not The killer of Jiateng, Jiateng can afford the salary, large enterprises can also afford it, not to mention that after the robot industry is optimistic, some cross-border people carry a lot of capital into the industry. In terms of recruitment, Jiateng needs to find another way.
Chen Hongbo listed several key points, such as respecting and treating talents well, knowing people well, leaving enough space for talents to play a role, letting them feel the sense of accomplishment of their work, so as to stay in Jiateng or stay in the mobile robot industry. Chen Hongbo felt that this could be done, "I accidentally hit and bumped into this line, I can stick to it, why can't he stay?" "And in fact, it's not easy to do that.
For talents, Jiateng's posture is very low. Chen Hongbo still remembers that in the early days of entrepreneurship, Jiateng wanted to recruit an expert in Guangzhou, and the expert told Chen Hongbo that I did not want to go to your Shunde headquarters to work, I wanted to work in Guangzhou near the subway entrance, Chen Hongbo really rented an office near the subway mouth for this expert in Guangzhou.
Although "Guangzhou-Foshan is the same city", but to this day, Jiateng still rented an office in Guangzhou's CBD Zhujiang New Town, Chen Hongbo knows that some people need Guangzhou's social security, provident fund or family in Guangzhou, do not want to commute between Guangzhou and Foshan, there is no need to save a little rent and set obstacles for people who want to join Jiateng.
In terms of recruitment, the story of successfully recruiting a Tsinghua graduate and this person has been working in Jiateng for a long time. This Tsinghua graduate was once a college entrance examination winner in Foshan Nanhai. At first, he hesitated to join Jiateng Robot and asked Chen Hongbo: "I can only do math problems, oh, what can I do for robots?" Chen Hongbo was relieved and said, "It doesn't matter, you come to Jiateng and do math problems." Later, one of the graduate's algorithms doubled the speed of Jiateng's robot without changing the hardware.
Of course, not all recruitment is satisfactory, and Jiateng has also hit a wall. When giving a recruitment lecture at Tsinghua, Chen Hongbo was once asked by a student: "Where is Shunde?" When Chen Hongbo heard this, his heart was cold for the most part, people didn't even know where Shunde was, how could they be willing to come to Shunde to settle, live and work? After Chen Hongbo informed the local government of this situation, the local government moved Shunde's food and concerts to the Tsinghua campus.
On the way to entrepreneurship, Chen Hongbo knocked on many doors that were not originally open to Jiateng Robot. Chen Hongbo still remembers that in 2015, he went to Hanover, Germany to participate in the industry fair, which can be regarded as a global industrial event, he went with the mentality of learning and increasing insight, and as a result, he walked around and found that not many Chinese companies participated in the exhibition, let alone Chinese industrial robot companies. In 2016, Jiateng Robots decided to participate in the Hannover Fair, but could not get a booth.
Chen Hongbo went out to communicate with the organizers of the industry fair, and he asked the other party: "You have industrial robots in the exhibition, but do you have industrial robots that can move?" You have mechanical hands, but do you have mechanical feet? Have you ever heard of Foshan's 'shadowless feet'? Our mechanical feet here do a great job. This communication experience was summarized by Chen Hongbo with "what should be said, what can be said, what can be wanted, and all said", and finally Jiateng Robot got the booth and became the first Chinese robot enterprise to enter the Hannover Industrial Fair.
Recalling the experience of communicating with the organizers of the Hannover Fair, Chen Hongbo felt that he was still not lucky enough, and if he was lucky enough, he would not have to work so hard to get the Red Dot Award a few months earlier. In 2016, the Bumblebee and Small White Dolphin Robots owned by Jiateng Robot both won the German Red Dot Award, which is known as the "Oscar of Industrial Design".
Shock "Big Giant"
After 16 years of development, At present, Jiateng Robot has launched 6 generations of AGVs (automatic guided vehicles), serving more than 60 fortune-500 companies, with two production bases in Foshan and Chongqing, with an annual revenue scale of 200 million to 300 million yuan and an annual sales of thousands of mobile robots.
When visiting the production line of The Foshan headquarters of Jiateng Robot, the staff of Jiateng Robot told the Economic Observer that the design capacity of the Jiateng Foshan base is an annual output of 10,000 robots, and Chen Hongbo introduced that with the optimization of the production line and more application of automation equipment, the production capacity of the Foshan base is expected to expand to an annual output of 20,000 robots. Different from the reporter's impression of the production line, The production line of Jiateng Robot has fewer personnel, and the current staff size of Jiateng Robot is only more than 500 people.
This has a certain relationship with the production model of Jiateng robots. Chen Hongbo introduced that the core competitiveness of Jiateng Robot is to develop and design robots, after the drawings come out, purchase sensors, steel and other components upstream to assemble into the mobile robot body and then import the system, and after debugging, the robot goes offline.
At this stage, Jiateng is not keen on manufacturing robots from scratch, Chen Hongbo believes that although software and hardware are very important for mobile robots, but "the art industry has a specialty", Foshan and even the strong manufacturing base in the Pearl River Delta region, can allow Jiateng to purchase inexpensive components, Jiateng hopes to gather the best enterprises in the industrial chain around themselves, forming a mobile robot ecology.
Chen Hongbo made a judgment: "The future competition is not the competition between enterprises, but the competition between industrial chains and even between ecology." ”
Focusing on the present, Chen Hongbo believes that one of the obstacles that mobile robot companies, including Jiateng, need to overcome is to find standards in non-standard services, and provide replicable and generalizable solutions to industry customers as much as possible, only in this way can they quickly expand their scale.
Chen Hongbo believes that he is not selling robots, but turnkey projects - solving the handling needs of customers. The factory layout and production process of different industries have their own characteristics, and Jiateng needs to be familiar with the customer's production process and plant settings before it can come up with better solutions. Up to now, the product range of Jiateng Robot has reached more than 300 kinds, and in the foreseeable future, the product range will continue to increase.
At present, it can be regarded as the best development period since the establishment of Jiateng Robot. Since being selected into the list of specialized new "little giant" enterprises, Jiateng Robot has received financial rewards and attention, which has given Chen Hongbo and others great confidence and encouragement. "(Jiateng was selected into the list of new 'little giants' of the specialization), indicating that the country not only pays attention to the robot industry, but also pays attention to Jiateng, which is of great significance." Chen Hongbo said that he hopes that Jiateng Robot can increase the scale of revenue year by year and occupy a more important position in the industry. "Now that the government has given Jiateng money and policy support to Jiateng, mobile robots have not yet grown up in the world, what reason does Jiateng have not to compete for this boss and grow into a 'big giant' enterprise?" Chen Hongbo said.
![Chen Hongbo: The origin of winemaking, wine vessels and agriculture in the prehistoric period of Lingnan region[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)