Today, under the drastic changes in China's manufacturing, there are probably only two ways out in the future, one is the general manufacturing industry, and the other is the high-end manufacturing industry.
In the general manufacturing industry, we have seen and known too much, high energy consumption, low added value, excessive marketing, not to mention it.
The high-end manufacturing industry, on the other hand, is high in technology, high in capital investment, high in information added value, high in information intensity, and can also bring high returns. In the foreseeable future, high-end manufacturing is likely to take 90% of market profits. From the American road to learning from Germany, China's manufacturing industry is transforming. And we need to pay more attention than ever to the best in high-end manufacturing and seize the opportunity to share in the benefits of their growth.
At the same time, there are two types of future technology enterprises, one is ordinary science and technology enterprises, and the other is hardcore technology enterprises.
Hard technology has a high technical threshold and clear application scenarios, and the representative fields of current hard technology are: chips, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, information technology, new materials, new energy and intelligent manufacturing.
At this stage, China may surpass the United States, but it needs a lot of investment at the bottom. Hard science and technology can represent the most advanced level of scientific and technological development in the world, and lead a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change. It can promote China's economic growth from factor-driven and investment-driven to innovation-driven. It is a new source of dividends under the "14th Five-Year Plan" blueprint.
As for hardcore technology companies, everyone often thinks of Huawei at the first thought, which is indeed a very good Chinese technology company. However, every industry needs hard technology, and all industry applications are supported by hard technology. The significance of the underlying technology is that the added value is higher, and the social and economic value it creates will exceed the products and technologies that simply create economic value.
In other fields, there are companies like Huawei that are immersed in hard work and research and development, for example, it is not easy to be noticed - home intelligent cleaning robots also have hard-core technology, and the leader of which Stone Technology has a lot of achievements in this regard.
Stone Technology is an asset-light intelligent hardware manufacturer focusing on the research and development, design and sales of household intelligent cleaning robots and other cleaning appliances, and the core team comes from microsoft, Huawei, Baidu and Foxconn and other top companies in the industry.
Stone Technology (688169.sh) released its third quarter report for 2021 after hours on October 29. In the first three quarters of 2021, the company achieved operating income of 3.827 billion yuan, an increase of 28.43% year-on-year, and a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 1.016 billion yuan.
According to statistics from Zheshang Securities, the demand for clean electrical appliances still maintains a high boom, and the online growth rate remains high: the overall scale of the scrubbing machine 21h1 industry is 13.6 billion, continuing the high growth rate of 20 years, an increase of 40.2% year-on-year. From the perspective of channels, 21h1 clean electrical appliances are still dominated by online sales channels, with online channels accounting for 86.3%, continuing to rise over 20 years; online/offline sales growth rates are 44%/20%, online maintains high growth, offline recovery recovery, clean electrical appliances industry as a whole shows high prosperity.
The national policy provides a core boost for the unification of standards: smart home, as a sunrise industry in the field of Internet of Things, has been written into the national five-year plan since 2012, and policy support has been consistent.
In recent years, with the development of the industry, the policy level has placed more and more emphasis on the standardization and unification. In February 2018, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and the National Standards Commission officially issued three national standards such as "Internet of Things Smart Home Data and Device Coding"; in December 2020, the relevant departments issued two national standards such as "Internet of Things Smart Home Design Content and Requirements".
With the continuous release of national standards related to smart homes, standards such as smart home-related hardware and communications will be gradually unified. The development of AI, edge computing, and 5G will provide basic guarantees for human-computer interaction: the key to achieving intelligent human-computer interaction lies in algorithms, computing power and communication capabilities. AI, edge computing, and 5G technology will be in the development period in the next few years, which will promote the progress of algorithms, computing power and communication capabilities respectively, and provide a basic guarantee for more intelligent human-computer interaction.
On the whole, the arrival of whole house intelligence is a long-term deterministic trend.
Stone Technology production hardware is outstanding, its self-cleaning new sweeper g10 launched in August this year to achieve vibration wiping, water tank automatic water replenishment base station self-cleaning, new washing machine u10 using double brush cleaning more efficient, solve water marks, have created an industry precedent, and widely praised. Thanks to its own range of hardcore technologies. Its core technology mainly includes slam algorithm, path planning algorithm, motion control algorithm and other technologies, and all come from independent research and development.
Its products use the LDS lidar + SLAM algorithm with good effect but high cost, that is, synchronous positioning and map construction technology, and then explore the development of AI two-line structured light obstacle avoidance technology.
At present, its self-cleaning sweeping robot g10 has added the world's first leading technology such as sonic vibration floor wiping, intelligent control lifting, automatic backwashing of the mop, automatic replenishment and so on.
How groundbreaking are these technologies? They solve the practical problems faced by tens of millions of families every day - the stubborn stains on the ground are difficult to remove, the mop is getting dirtier and dirtier, the need to manually clean the mop, the need to manually replenish the machine water tank and other floor cleaning problems, so as to protect the cleanliness of the family and protect the health of the family. Let people free their hands, "cleaner", more worry-free", easy and simple to enjoy a better life. This is heard a lot in advertising, but there are not too many companies that can really invest in research and development to achieve results for the benefit of the public.
Dr. Edward Tse, a senior strategic management consulting expert, once proposed that Chinese enterprises must fundamentally change, because becoming bigger is not necessarily stronger, and if enterprises want to be strong, they must find new core competitiveness, continue to innovate in the value chain, better create new blue oceans, create new value chains, become leaders in the value chain, and create their own platforms.
In the future, if the enterprise wants to operate well, if it wants to develop sustainably and have continuous competitiveness, it must become a technology company, which is either a scientific and technological application, a scientific and technological innovation company, or a company operated by scientific and technological concepts, but no matter which one, it is still necessary to respect the law of development. Because technology is changing and breaking through every day, when it is a breakthrough, enterprises must first understand what technology itself is suitable for, is it to invest a lot of resources in the short term, let it produce results quickly, or invest the right resources in the long term and conform to the development trend to achieve results? Obviously, the latter is more in line with the law of scientific and technological development. In this regard, the attempt of Stone Technology gives a good answer.
Observation can be seen that one of the highlights of Stone Technology is to insist on creating value and not to make pseudo-demand products. The concept of Stone Technology is "simplifying life with innovation", here are two keywords, innovation, simplification. Innovation, refers to the must create value, rather than already have something, they "copy" one, that means little, their innovation, must create new value to come, hope that through their technological innovation, let everyone's life more convenient, with machines instead of repetitive labor.
The second is to truly continue to invest in research and development. Intelligent sweeping robot is a product that requires continuous iteration and innovation, and requires enterprises to maintain the determination of long-term investment. Stone Technology focuses on the research of interdisciplinary technologies, especially the research and development investment in core technologies such as artificial intelligence, AI navigation algorithms, and new sensors, and continues to attract and cultivate R&D talents to continuously develop and strengthen technical advantages.
The financial report disclosed that in the first three quarters of 2021, the cumulative investment in research and development of Stone Technology was 311 million yuan, accounting for 8.13% of the operating income, an increase of 80.07% over the same period last year. In the third quarter, R&D investment reached 112 million yuan, an increase of 65.10% year-on-year, and the main reason for the sharp increase year-on-year was its increase in new product research and development investment, as well as the corresponding increase in R&D personnel costs.
As of 21h1, the number of R&D personnel in the company reached 464, accounting for 58.64%. At the same time, the company has high-end R&D bases such as product research and development centers, optoelectronic research institutes, ai artificial intelligence research institutes, mechanical and electrical research institutes in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places, creating a good R&D atmosphere for scientific researchers.
The famous Bill Gates famously said, "People always overestimate the changes in the next one or two years and underestimate the changes in the next decade." In fact, in addition to Huawei, the number of hard-core technology companies in private enterprises is limited, and the fact that Stone Technology can have such scientific and technological investment is the company's advantage, which is the embodiment of its long-term adherence in the uncertain times, and the confidence of shareholders."
The working environment of the intelligent sweeping robot is diverse, and the differences between different home environments make the sample size play an important role in verifying the robustness, stability and promotion of related technology progress of the relevant algorithms. Stone Technology's intelligent sweeping robot based on lidar and SLAM algorithm has a large sales volume. It is based on a large number of user feedback in the core technology areas of continuous optimization and improvement, through the way of software upgrades to push to users and further feedback.
The essence of technological growth is a positive feedback process. The better the existing conditions of a company, the more advanced these existing technologies are, the more it can stand on the shoulders of giants, the more it can use better knowledge to produce new knowledge, and the easier it is to do the next step of research and development, so under normal circumstances, technological progress must be faster and faster, and the barriers are getting higher and higher. In this regard, Stone Technology has done a very good job.
The third is to maintain a good innovation mechanism and continue to introduce talents. Chang Jing, chairman and CEO of Stone Technology, is very concerned about the company's internals, that is, in the company's products and organizations, how the enthusiasm of employees, whether the echelon is reasonable, and the health of the organizational structure are more important. For example, after the development of sweeping robots to a certain stage, old employees want to do some new business development and can exert new vitality, and the establishment and research and development promotion of our commercial robot products are examples. Therefore, Chang Jing pays more attention to the inner nature of the enterprise, which he believes is a kind of pushing logic from the inside out.
Stone Technology attaches great importance to talents, and the most time spent in Changjing is also spent on talents. He summed it up: "I interview almost everyone in the company, because I think people are actually the most core part." Get your people right and have a good organizational atmosphere for them to go to good jobs. In fact, the rest of the matter is simpler. ”
High-end manufacturing is inseparable from high-tech, but high-tech is not exactly equal to high-end manufacturing. To be honest, there are now too many use of high-tech concepts to "cut leeks". The resulting public opinion backlash has put the Internet giants under tremendous pressure. In contrast, the powerful weapon of high technology can be better used in the hands of companies like Stone Technology.
Technology is people-oriented, that is, its attention to "people". Externally, they take care of the customer's experience and feelings, and internally, they value talent and know that it is suitable for people, such as its product sales manager, from the real estate sales industry, he is very good at understanding users and communicating with users.
It has always been a more restrained company, more grayscale and elasticity in the face of feedback and suggestions. For example, Stone Technology uses the feedback and suggestions generated by users when using robots to accurately locate new features that need to be introduced in future products. Its commercial robot products have completed small batch trial production, and have been tested at multiple cooperative customer sites and have been recognized by customers. In October 2021, Stone Technology's commercial cleaning robot was officially "put on duty" in the "Water Cube" to provide intelligent cleaning services for the Winter Olympic venues.
Science and technology is the nervous system of the times, and technology changes history. In the future, hard technology is king. To win the future and lead to victory, we must follow the trend and grasp hard-core technology to go further.
The future of technology is here, and users will not fail to live up to innovation. Scientific and technological innovation is the driving force for the development of enterprises, and it is also the key to the survival and market competition of enterprises.
"To become a company that continues to create the world's best products", put products in a high position, and make innovative, high-quality, and well-crafted products to impress users.
In this era, we will not miss such a company with personality, connotation and growth as Stone Technology.