Author/Zhou Ruihua
The pursuit of "first" seems to be his mission in this life.
12 years ago, in order to be the first, he did not hesitate to compete with the parent company. 12 years later, in pursuit of a bigger "first", he returned to restructure with the parent company.
1/ Run to the first to come
"In 3 years, it has become the first commercial vehicle in China. Otherwise, there would be no point in me coming to Sinotruk. On September 1, 2018, the first day of becoming the chairman of Sinotruk, Tan Xuguang made a cruel remark.
Most of the employees of Sinotruk are no strangers to this bold new leader.
Twelve years ago, Weichai Power, led by Tan Xuguang, was a subsidiary of Sinotruk. However, Tan Xuguang is bent on making Weichai bigger, and there have been huge differences in business strategies with Sinotruk, and conflicts have continued. Finally, in 2006, the "father and son" parted ways. Tan Xuguang took Weichai and Heavy Duty Truck to "split up" and set up their own portal. After the "separation", Weichai flourished, and took yangchai power, Yangzhou Yaxing bus, France Baudouin, Italy Ferretti, Germany Kaiao and other enterprises to earn revenue, and in 2009 led the establishment of Shandong Heavy Industry Group.
Through this series of resource integration, Weichai's engine supporting market has expanded from heavy trucks to multiple markets such as construction machinery, ship power, and passenger cars, and its products have also crossed from a single engine to multiple industrial chains such as commercial vehicles, marine electricity, and passenger cars, and from the domestic market to the international market. By 2012, Weichai Power has become a multinational enterprise with annual revenue of more than 100 billion.
12 years later, Tan Xuguang returned to Sinotruk, still running for the first one.
In the past 20 years, the mainland's "Automobile Industry Policy" has set a policy red line that "the shareholding ratio of foreign-funded enterprises shall not exceed 50%", but the policy will withdraw from the historical stage in 2022. From January 1, 2022, in the field of passenger car manufacturing, the mainland will remove two major restrictions: first, cancel the restriction on foreign ownership in passenger car manufacturing; second, remove the restriction on the establishment of two joint ventures in China and the production of similar vehicle products by the same foreign investor.
This means that Chinese passenger car companies will face more fierce market competition. In this special environment, Chinese passenger car companies must carry out strategic cooperation from various aspects such as market players, industrial chain needs and competitiveness improvement, and the combination of strong and powerful can resist the impact of foreign investment.
Before Tan Xuguang's return, the market share of trucks, engines, transmissions and axles of Shandong Heavy Industries and China National Heavy Duty Truck was the first in China, and the market share of buses was second in China.
According to his concept, the two sides will achieve the effect of 1+1>2 through the integration and complementarity of superior resources. This is the purpose of his return to Sinotruk: after the Chinese market is open to foreign investment, there will be a strong Chinese potential to compete with foreign capital. As he said: "Sinotruk and Shandong Heavy Industry have successfully cooperated, will have an important voice in the world, if we do not cooperate, no one can hope to fight alone." ”
2/400 million for listing
As early as when he took over Weichai, Tan Xuguang regarded "not to compete for the first is to mix" as Weichai's corporate culture.
Weichai was founded in 1946 as a small arsenal in Weifang, Shandong Province, to produce diesel engines. In 1983, under the leadership of the government, Weichai and nearly 20 other enterprises were included in the newly established China Heavy Duty Automobile Industry Associated Company. In 1989, the Heavy Duty Truck Industry Associates was reorganized into Sinotruk Group, and Weichai became a subsidiary of Sinotruk.
In 1998, the 37-year-old Tan Xuguang was appointed director of the Weifang Diesel Engine Factory, and the letter of appointment came from the parent company, China National Heavy Duty Truck.
It's not a good job. At the end of the 1990s, like many state-owned enterprises that had transitioned to a market economy, Weichai also encountered both internal and external pressures and faced the risk of bankruptcy. At that time, 13,600 employees in the factory did not receive wages for half a year, and every day when they opened their eyes, the factory's expenses were as high as 650,000, and the company only had 80,000 yuan left on the account, not to mention 300 million yuan of debt. Taking over such a company is a major matter concerning the rice bowl of more than 10,000 people, and no one in the whole family approves of him as the director of the factory.
Tan Xuguang entered Weichai Factory at the age of 16 after graduating from high school, and went all the way from product technician to general manager of the import and export company. As a "native of Weichai", he did not want to see Weichai collapse. After taking office in June 1998, Tan Xuguang began the road to self-help.
On June 27, 1998, Tan Xuguang delivered his inaugural speech
At that time, Weichai was one of the few companies with Austrian Steyr engine technology, but in order to maintain its technical advantages, Sinotruk explicitly limited its external sales, and its demand was only 5,000 units a year. Unwilling to stick to this advanced technology, Tan Xuguang watched Weichai lose money year after year, and he publicly sold Steyr engines to the entire industry in spite of Sinotruk's ban.
But in the late 1990s, China's heavy industry was still lagging behind, and the demand for engines was not high. Tan Xuguang decided to expand the construction machinery market.
At that time, the construction machinery company did not buy Weichai's account, in order to promote the product, Tan Xuguang was hit by a car accident and broke four ribs, and before he could recuperate, he ran to Xiamen and Liuzhou to visit local construction machinery companies. The leaders of these enterprises saw him fighting like this, and promised on the spot: Old Tan, we will definitely support your engine next year.
At the beginning, it was Tan Xuguang's desperate spirit that impressed them, but soon, it was the quality of Weichai's engine that impressed them: the construction machinery industry began to use Weichai's engine in 2000, less than 500 units in the first year, and soared to 5,000 units in the second year.
At that time, Weichai engine was famous, and some downstream OEMs even rented a house next to the Weichai factory area for a long time in order to grab the goods, and they could not grab the engine and did not go back.
At the end of 2000, Tan Xuguang announced to the whole factory that Weichai's internal and external debts were gone. Since then, Weichai's performance has doubled year after year, with sales of nearly 2 billion yuan in 2002 and exceeded 10 billion yuan in 2004, quickly ranking among the large enterprises.
Just when Weichai Chunfeng was proud, in 2002, Tan Xuguang ran to the headquarters in Jinan for a meeting, but received a notice that he was about to be bankrupt. The original parent company, Sinotruk, was already heavily indebted, with debts as high as 8.3 billion yuan that year. The State Council decided to restructure it in bankruptcy, and its companies either went bankrupt or sold.
Faced with "being bankrupt", 10,000 Weichai people disagreed. At that time, it was three years after the reform of state-owned enterprises, and some state-owned enterprises with successful reforms were listed, and Tan Xuguang decided to go public in Hong Kong to strive for more development space for Weichai. But this is destined to be a difficult "struggle": Sinotruk does not want to let this best-developed subsidiary "fly alone", and Tan Xuguang and Weichai have made up their minds to get rid of the shackles of the system and be the first in the industry. He even hung Weichai's corporate culture in the factory with slogans such as "don't argue for the first is to mix" and "use it for two and a half days a day" as Weichai's corporate culture.
On March 11, 2004, Weichai Power was listed in Hong Kong. It was the result of a compromise: In exchange for the parent company's consent, Weichai offered Sinotruk a 10,000 yuan reduction in engines each, while Sinotruk lost its majority shareholder position, diluting its shareholding to 24 percent after bringing in strategic investors. That is to say, Tan Xuguang used 400 million yuan in exchange for Weichai's independent development.
Ma Chunji
At the celebration banquet on the same day, Ma Chunji, chairman of Sinotruk, walked up to Tan Xuguang with mixed feelings: "Now Sinotruk is only a shareholder of Weichai, congratulations." ”
With that, he drank all the wine in his hand.
3/ Parting ways
In August 2005, Weichai's two teams took off from Qingdao and Jinan respectively, flew to the common destination - Zhuzhou, Hunan, and rushed to the same goal - to participate in the Xiang Torch Bidding.
After Weichai was listed in Hong Kong in 2004, its sales revenue reached 10 billion yuan, an increase of 9 times in 5 years, and it was the first enterprise in China's internal combustion engine industry with sales exceeding 10 billion yuan. In the field of heavy truck power with a load of more than 15 tons, a monopoly position has been formed, and the market share is about 70%.
But Tan Xuguang was not steadfast in his heart. When he was doing foreign trade in the 1990s, he encountered the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and saw first-hand how Weichai's foreign exchange income shrank in half in one day. This experience has given this person who has a spirit of adventure in his bones more cautious. While Weichai is getting bigger and stronger, he also sees that the domestic engine factories with a single main business have closed down one after another, which forced him to think about a question: how can Weichai get rid of the impact of single industry and single regional economic fluctuations?
He invited Roland Berger International Management Consulting, one of the world's four major strategic consulting companies, and mr. Roland Berger, 60, told him that the self-built engine plant of truck factories has become a global trend, and volvo, Mercedes-Benz and other heavy truck manufacturers have their own supporting engine production plants. If Weichai does not extend the industrial chain, "within five years, it will fall back into trouble".
This proposal, worth tens of millions, changed Weichai's fate.
In March 2005, Tan Xuguang inadvertently learned that the Delong department, which was about to collapse due to the rupture of funds, and Xiang Torch, one of its "troikas", had come to the brink of bankruptcy. Xiang Torch is a listed company originally belonging to the Hunan State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which owns Shaanxi Heavy Duty Truck, Zhuya Group, Fast and Hande Axle, etc., combined, this is not the vehicle industry chain that Tan Xuguang dreamed of!
But when he proposed the merger idea to Sinotruk, Ma Chunji said that it would be better to lend the money to Sinotruk and let Sinotruk buy it. The two broke up unhappily.
Ma Chunji has his own abacus. The "father-son" relationship between Sinotruk and Weichai is obviously weak and weak: after 2000, Weichai underwent drastic reforms, continued to grow year after year, and its revenue exceeded 10 billion. In 2002, the debt ratio was as high as 138%, with a cumulative loss of 8.3 billion yuan, and its only profitable company was Weichai. Moreover, once Weichai wins the Xiang Torch and creates its own heavy-duty truck industry chain, it will form an independent industrial cluster outside the China National Heavy Duty Truck Group.
As the big housekeeper of Sinotruk, how can Ma Chunji be willing to sit back and watch a subsidiary that "sleeps in the same bed and dreams" with himself sit up? He hopes to take down the Xiang Torch to make a strong heavy truck, and there is nothing wrong with it. But Tan Xuguang, a person who "competes for the first" every day, is not willing to only be a supporting role for others.
Since there is no way to talk about it, there is only competition on the same stage. Worried that the Shandong provincial government would not agree to compete with Heavy Duty Truck for the Xiang Torch, Tan Xuguang quietly prepared the bid until the day before the bid, and then ran to the office of the provincial government in charge of the vice governor to report the matter, and slapped the vice governor on the table in anger.
Tan Xuguang, who is bold and loves to do things out of the ordinary, is a "disobedient child" in the eyes of the leader, and the leader loves and hates him. But I have to admit that without his out-of-the-box things, there would be no Weichai today. The deputy governor's mood eased a little and said: You are not doing this right, but it is a good thing.
Tan Xuguang specially arranged for two groups of people to leave from Qingdao and Jinan to bid. For the Xiang Torch, he was bound to win, and he wanted to ensure that even if the plane was delayed, cancelled, or even the plane fell from the sky, Weichai must have someone to participate in the bidding the next day.
In the end, Weichai won the Xiang Torch with a bidding price of 1.02338 billion yuan - this figure also hides Tan Xuguang's ambition, "2338" is Weichai Power's H-share code, and he wants to declare to the world in this way: Xiang Torch is Weichai's.
Winning the Xiang Torch is a turning point in Weichai's development history and a turning point in its relationship with Sinotruk. In November 2005, Sinotruk, which could not control its "son", took back the Hangzhou engine factory, which had been managed by Weichai, from Weichai, and quietly built a factory in Zhangqiu, making Weichai's intention to become a competitor could not be more obvious.
The relationship between the two sides has finally come to a split. In 2006, under the mediation of Shandong State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, Sinotruk transferred its shares in Weichai to Shandong State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and the two sides officially separated.
4/ Recreate a "world-class"
Back at Sinotruk, the first thing Tan Xuguang did was to launch a "production front-line elimination sofa campaign", moving the sofa in the office and replacing the wooden door with a glass door.
This is the rule he made after taking over Weichai. After taking over Weichai that year, Tan Xuguang went home and said hello to his father, saying that he would implement reforms in the factory. The first knife of his reform was swung at personnel, drastically laying off employees and reducing salaries. The number of management departments was reduced from 53 to 35, the number of section-level cadres was reduced from 700 to 220, the entire factory was reduced by half at once, and the salaries of those who remained were reduced by 30%-40%. He also promoted four deputy factory directors under the age of 35 in one fell swoop to form a new leadership team.
The old cadres all ran to his father to complain, and his father pushed people back with a word: "What did you come to me for, he didn't even recognize his father." "There are also people who go to the factory to find Tan Xuguang, he picks up the knife and drops it, and he dismisses people in 5 minutes."
The second knife of Tan Xuguang's reform is aimed at product quality. After becoming the factory director, he often went to the market, and the most complained about by customers was the engine quality problem. In his third month in office, he took the lead in smashing 300 engine defects in front of all the factory employees. Along with the smashed, there is also the loose discipline of the Weichai people.
Since then, the sofas in the front-line workshop offices have disappeared, the wooden doors have disappeared, and the organs have become efficient market headquarters, and Weichai has since entered a new stage of development around market and quality.
After returning to Sinotruk, he copied this set of Weichai, introduced Weichai's passionate culture of "not arguing for the first is mixing" and "two and a half days a day", and reformed Sinotruk in the way of reforming Weichai.
The first knife is "streamlining". "Enterprises run society" is a common disease of old state-owned enterprises, and Sinotruk's real estate, hospitals, properties, kindergartens and other non-main businesses occupy a lot of resources of enterprises. Tan Xuguang's first knife to Sinotruk was to cut off the real estate business: "I heard that Sinotruk's real estate is a brand, and I immediately considered selling it. ”
"Keeping the main business" is a bottom line of Tan Xuguang. When the property market was hot, some people also suggested that Weichai get involved in the real estate industry, and he refused: Weichai wanted to make the engine more profitable than real estate.
Along with the real estate business, there are also kindergartens, hospitals and other businesses. Thousands of people were diverted out, and some threatened to make trouble in the headquarters office building. In the face of all kinds of doubts and objections, Tan Xuguang said at the workers' congress: "I am not afraid of death, and I will put the urn in Weifang rather than on the Hero Mountain in Jinan." ”
The second knife swung at the personnel. In 2019, Sinotruk laid off 11,000 employees. With one knife, the number of cadres is 24% less, the number of employees is reduced by 11%, and at the same time, the proportion of young cadres after the 80s has risen to 62%. Truly do what Tan Xuguang said: cadres can go up and down, employees can go in and out, and employee income can be high and low.
After the problem of the big pot of rice was solved, the enthusiasm of the employees came up and the efficiency increased. It turned out that there was sales feedback, the Russian market demand for chassis lightweight transport vehicles was high, the R & D department was slow to respond, and this market was quickly seized. Now, with sales feedback in the market demand, the technical department can transform new products in 3 months.
Considering that heavy trucks are a highly cyclical industry, in order to resist cyclical influences, Tan Xuguang proposed that Sinotruk must develop into a world-class full-range commercial vehicle group.
Since 2019, Sinotruk has successively launched a new generation of "Yellow River", medium-sized pickup trucks, Shandeka four-wheel drive off-road caravans and a series of models, with the continuous expansion of products, competitiveness is also continuing to improve: from July to September 2021, with the full implementation of the National VI emission standards, heavy-duty truck sales continued to decline, with a growth rate of -45%, -61% and 61% respectively. In this case, Sinotruk became a contrarian growth enterprise in July and September, an increase of 4% and 15% year-on-year; in August, Sinotruk was also the top five, with the lowest sales decline.
From 2018 to 2020, Sinotruk's revenue grew from 62.7 billion yuan in 2018 to 98.2 billion yuan in 2020, an increase of 56%. By 2021, Sinotruk's full market share will reach 20.5%, an increase of nearly 3 percentage points year-on-year, ranking second only to FAW Group among domestic heavy truck companies.
Sinotruk is getting closer and closer to "world-class". What is "world class"? According to Tan Xuguang: The products are sold to Europe and can be on a par with Scania, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, which is considered to be world-class.
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