Zhang Gongyun, a leading entrepreneur in Shandong Province: Innovation is like playing poker and chess, and it will become addictive over time

Public network poster news reporter Man Qianqian Lu Le Weifang reported

Unlike other entrepreneurs, when learning that he was awarded the title of "Shandong Industry Leading Entrepreneur", Zhang Gongyun, secretary of the party committee and chairman of Shandong Haomai Machinery Technology Co., Ltd., reacted first, not surprise and excitement, but accident.

"Because we're just a small manufacturing factory at the county level, although we are hidden champions, we are very small compared to those big companies." Zhang Gongyun, dressed in dark blue overalls, replied seriously and sincerely, "We still have a bit of a non-stop positioning, that is, to do some 'big factories are too lazy to do, small factories can't do it', after all, it is easier to survive in this intermediate field of innovation." ”

Such a frank answer surprised the reporter.

From the maintenance workshop of bankrupt township enterprises to the frontrunner of the machinery manufacturing industry

Many years ago, Zhang Gongyun, as an alumni representative, made a live speech when he returned to his alma mater, Shandong University, to attend the 2015 college graduation ceremony.

When introducing himself, he said, "Today in 1983, I have a dream, accompanied by the song of 'young friends come to meet', bid farewell to the university campus, and embarked on the journey of starting a business as an official. At that time, in response to the call of the state, I went to work in Xinjiang Bearing Factory, working in Xinjiang for 5 years, successively serving as a technician and deputy director of the workshop. In 1988, he was transferred to the high-density forging machine tool factory for 7 years, successively serving as an engineer, process section chief, production plant director and deputy general manager. In 1995, he resigned from the "iron rice bowl" of state-owned enterprises and founded Homag Company. At the beginning of the establishment of the company, it is a maintenance workshop of a bankruptcy township enterprise with only 34 employees and a 500 square meters of factory building, and in the past 20 years, it has created an average annual growth of 50% of the performance, and has now developed into a leader in the world tire mold industry. ”

Today, HOMAG has 20,000 employees, with 1 listed company, 5 high-tech enterprises, 7 overseas subsidiaries, the formation of high-end tire molds, high-end machinery manufacturing, oil and gas equipment, chemical equipment four major industrial systems, the annual output value of 10 billion yuan, involved in machinery, chemical, energy and other fields, with the United States General Electric, Germany Siemens, France Michelin and Italy Pirelli and other nearly 30 of the world's top 500 companies long-term stable cooperation, has become a global tire mold research and development and manufacturing base, The world's most influential manufacturer of high-end mechanical components and the world's largest valve core production base.

The reason why HOMAG has been able to achieve such achievements today is inseparable from the innovative concept proposed by Zhang Gongyun.

Different innovative ideas have made today's hero

Everyone shouts about innovation, but Zhang Gongyun's understanding of innovation is different.

"For Heroic, innovation is for survival, competition, and development, and it is difficult to win by relying on diligence alone." In Zhang Gongyun's view, there has never been a shortage of hard-working people in China, and under the premise of hard work and diligence, we must rely on innovative development. Therefore, HOMAG launched all employees to innovate and accelerate the development of enterprises through the power of collective innovation.

Zhang Gongyun half-jokingly gave an example of the company's water delivery uncle innovation. "Trucks pull iron products in and out of the factory every day, so there are often cases where nails that fall from the car break the tires of the car. In order to avoid puncturing the tires, the water delivery uncle hung a piece of wood in front of his electric car, and then tied the magnet to the wood, and when he rode by, the magnet sucked all the nails up. With such a move, Zhang Gongyun asked the company to reward the water delivery uncle with 100 yuan.

This is What Zhang Gongyun proposed: "Improvement is innovation, and everyone can innovate." He believes that the era of "one trick to eat all over the sky" has become farther and farther away, innovation is no longer tall, even if it is "to make the unreasonable reasonable, to turn the unsightly into beautiful", it is considered innovation. And to "innovate all staff, continue to surpass", as long as innovation is encouraged, failure is tolerated, and accumulation occurs over time, quantitative change will lead to qualitative change.

"To put it bluntly, innovation is like playing poker and chess, and over time it will be addictive." The rapid development of Heroic has indeed verified Zhang Gongyun's words. At the beginning of the establishment of the company, HOMAG only had more than a dozen old equipment for turning, milling, planing and grinding, and now, the company has thousands of sets of various types of equipment, more than half of which are independently developed by HOMAG. The use of self-made equipment and the initiative to master the upgrading of equipment make the company not have to be subject to people, and it also has the competitiveness that is difficult for competitors to copy and imitate. Zhang Gongyun always believes that "the cost of innovation failure can be controlled in stages, but the benefits of successful innovation are difficult to estimate." ”

At heroic, no one should sneer at innovators at any time, and no idea and no innovation is a manifestation of laziness and incompetence. In the atmosphere of "encouraging innovation and tolerating failure", in 2021, the company collected 553,800 innovative improvement proposals, with 18,896 participants, 8,058 technological innovations, and 160 management innovations, creating a total of 180 million yuan in benefits and 9,228,900 yuan in bonuses. In 2021, the Group achieved an output value of 11 billion yuan, an increase of 20%, profits and taxes of 2.6 billion yuan, an increase of 17%, taxes paid of 1.02 billion yuan, an increase of 20%, export earnings of 640 million US dollars, an increase of 36%, and R & D investment of 410 million yuan, an increase of 31%.

At the end of the interview, Zhang Gongyun told the public network poster news reporter, "In 2022, for Homag, it is still on the road of transformation and upgrading, and strive to climb to a new level this year and next year, and make heroic contributions to the transformation and upgrading of China's equipment manufacturing industry." ”