These two of China's most influential entrepreneurs have never taken Japanese companies lightly—even though they have slipped from the world's peak, they have never intended to take the model and experience of Japanese companies into account, and Zhang Ruimin and Ren Zhengfei have become the most vivid examples, when we try to prove the unique origins between Chinese and Japanese companies. The former leads one of the Chinese companies with the strongest management color of Japanese companies, while the latter uses a "Northern Spring" to make Chinese companies reflect on whether they can achieve "nine deaths and one life" like Japanese companies.
Zhang Ruimin: Learn from Japanese companies and surpass Japanese companies
Zhang Ruimin once made no secret of the fact that since the day he started the business, he has begun to study Welch of general electric in the United States, Konosuke Matsushita and Akio Morita in Japan, and he has been deeply impressed by the innovative spirit of American enterprises and the team spirit of Japanese companies. If Zhang Ruimin's famous "smashing the refrigerator" behavior is inspired by the heavy product quality of Japanese companies, then Haier insists on "day by day, nissin day, and day end" in the management of production teams, which is obviously derived from Panasonic's "day of day, day of day".
The "5S operation" invented by Japanese quality management master M asaaki Im ai has also been adopted by Haier and some other domestic manufacturing companies. However, Haier added another "safety" to "6S", which is "sorting, rectification, cleaning, cleaning, literacy, and safety" in turn. This "6S" working mechanism, as Haier's "heirloom", was even copied by Haier to its American company.
In terms of sales system, Haier's first specialty store in the domestic home appliance industry is also very similar to Panasonic's specialty store. Compared with other Japanese companies such as Toshiba and Sony, Panasonic itself does not have a technical advantage, but relies on providing consumers with high-quality and inexpensive products to occupy the market, and one of the important system supports is its extensive franchise stores.
Haier's idea of internationalization has been questioned by many domestic public opinions, and it is obviously the same as the internationalization route of Japanese companies such as Sony, Panasonic, toyota and other Japanese companies in the last century, first difficult and then easy, first attack the markets of developed countries such as Europe and the United States, establish a brand image, and then expand to all parts of the world.
But regarding the imitation and following of these tricks, Zhang Ruimin believes that a considerable number of "Chinese companies have introduced Japanese management from the early 1980s, but they have not been successful, and the important point is that they only pay attention to the form and ignore the ideas and content." "Haier is not only close to Japanese companies in terms of management moves, but also in terms of business philosophy. Panasonic's insistence on "service first, sales second" and customer first business concept will have an impact on Haier becoming a home appliance company that emphasizes service quality and "sincerity to eternity". The traces of the idea of "emphasizing scale, emphasizing market share, not only profit and shareholder value first" in the japanese company management concept are objectively reflected in Haier's expansion philosophy.
However, after the mid-to-late 1990s, Zhang Ruimin repeatedly said that the external environment of japanese home appliance companies that enjoyed a large demand but little change has gone, and it is not feasible to take the old road of japanese home appliance enterprise development. "Many large enterprises in South Korea and Japan have suffered from the disease of large enterprises because of their huge enterprise scale, dysfunctional command and operation, lack of risk awareness and innovation awareness, and eventually drag themselves down." "Japanese companies are very good. To this day, we still have to learn a lot from Japanese companies. But on the other hand, the market has changed, but Japanese companies have become less and less aware of the market. ”
In an interview with China Entrepreneur magazine, Zhang Ruimin said that a Japanese person told him that some Japanese entrepreneurs do not read books, except for golf, they drink alcohol and engage in socializing. He quoted Nissan CEO Carlos Zhang Ruimin himself as summarizing several stages of world manufacturing management since the Taylor system was reduced by one hundred years, the first stage is ford to run assembly line production, "do fast", reduce costs through efficiency, speed, and quantity, and thus win; the second stage is the rise of Japanese manufacturing, "do well", and the comprehensive quality management system will push the manufacturing industry to a new climax; but informatization requires that the winning manufacturers in the next stage should be "done right", although in terms of "doing well", There is still no type of manufacturer in the global manufacturing industry that surpasses Japanese manufacturing, but the large-scale, high-quality production of Japanese companies can no longer win in the market, and total quality management restricts employees in a closed production system, and does not have a direct relationship with the market, and the ability to innovate is shrunk. Zhang believes that the manufacturing industry in this era should open the closed production system, push everyone to the forefront of the market, create personalized products, and change mass production to mass customization. This is the original intention of his vigorous implementation of the "market chain" within Haier since 1998, so that everyone can become an SBU (strategic business unit).
In the past two or three years, Zhang Ruimin has given several speeches to Japan, and what he exported to the Japanese business community is Haier's "SBU" management method. Japanese companies may not realize that this tall Shandong man who talks about "destruction" and "innovation" in the face of himself, a "student" who has been immersed in learning art from Japanese companies since the 1980s, is now "entering the room" and "mastering the door" to carry out "anti-export". Regarding Japanese companies, Zhang Ruimin's latest remarks were issued in response to the report of the president of Nikkei BP entitled "Victory over Made in China - Five Trump Cards for Japanese Companies": "If it is 'Made in China', it will definitely be defeated!" If it is 'created in China', it will not be defeated! ”
Ren Zhengfei: Seeing the "Spring of the Northern Kingdom"
From the perspective of industrial experience, telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei may not be as close to Japanese companies as Haier. However, taking the rise and fall of Japanese companies as a mirror to reflect on the growth of Chinese companies, Ren Zhengfei's "Spring of the Northern Kingdom" is a landmark article that must be mentioned. The article, written by Ren Zhengfei after returning from a visit to Japan in the spring of 2001, started with "how Japanese companies spend the winter" and ended up on the cotton jacket that examined whether Huawei was ready for the winter.
Wu Chunbo, a professor at Chinese Min University who accompanied Ren Zhengfei on his trip to Japan, recalled that Ren Zhengfei got up at 6 a.m. every morning during his stay in Japan, followed by two or three hours of walking, during which he talked to the advisers around him about Japanese companies and the Japanese government. "He doesn't stick to a Japanese company and shows a particular interest, but analyzes the experiences and lessons of Japanese companies as a whole."
Ren Zhengfei concluded that Japanese companies are trapped in the quagmire of three deficiencies and three excesses: insufficient innovation, insufficient competition, insufficient power, excess employment, excess equipment, and excess debt.
One detail not mentioned in "Northern Spring" is that Japanese national condition consultant Takeuchi Ryuki mentioned a "death curve" to Ren Zhengfei, which means that after any individual, enterprise or even a country rises to a certain level, it may be a decline, which is the life cycle of the enterprise itself rather than the cycle of the market, and whoever continues his past successful experience will face death. Ren Zhengfei is deeply impressed, pointing out that the decline of Japanese companies is due to the long-term adherence to a development system. After the 1980s, the environment shifted to a mixed innovation and knowledge productivity as the center, "the japanese firm system did not change with it, and soon slipped from the center of the world economy to the edge of the circle of interests; after the 1990s, in the context of the globalization of the market economy, the appreciation of knowledge value, and the great development of the information society, the system of Japanese companies still did not fundamentally change, and they were suddenly thrown out of this economic circle." Japanese companies have been very successful, but they cannot rely on a system to achieve long-term sustained growth. Is the model huawei once grew up so reliable? ”
Another strong revelation that Ren Zhengfei received from Japanese companies is that "like those companies in Japan, it is true that after nine deaths, you can live well." "Huawei has to suffer two consecutive winters, I don't know if Huawei people will be calm and calm", and "the vast majority of Japanese companies have not increased their wages in the past eight years, and social security is still better than that of Northern Europe", "Everyone is so peaceful, optimistic and dedicated", "It is really amazing", "Once Japan takes off again, such a foundation will definitely make it soar."