Siheyuan, Me and the Yu Sisters

After Zhang Renkang finished the call, he stood up, took his coat and left the office to inspect the production line in the workshop. Coming from the grassroots, Zhang Renkang did not like to just listen to reports. He preferred to go to the front line to understand the actual situation before making a judgment.

As soon as he arrived at the door of workshop number one, he heard a clanging sound inside. Zhang Renkang walked in and frowned instantly.

The workshop was in a mess. On the east side, a few workers were hammering an iron bar, which looked like the beam of a tricycle. On the other side, one meter away, there was a new small diesel engine that had not yet been installed on the vehicle.

The flying iron pins hit the engine in a scattered manner without any protective measures.

What was even more outrageous was that two welders were welding the frame of a tricycle bucket more than two meters away. Sparks were flying in the workshop without any protection, and the wires pulled over were shaking in the flames.

Zhang Renkang stood at the door of the workshop for four or five minutes without anyone noticing that a stranger had entered the workshop. A few people wearing work clothes, who were not sure whether they were apprentices or in other positions, stood not far away and chatted together. They looked at Zhang Renkang and saw that he was quite young, so they did not take him seriously.

Looking at the current situation of this poorly managed workshop, Zhang Renkang suddenly understood why the cowboys gave a poor evaluation after visiting the domestic factory ten years later, and he was completely relieved to transfer some basic industrial systems to China.

After all, judging from the current situation, I'm afraid no serious industrial country would be able to match this production standard and level, right?

Zhang Renkang walked into the workshop. When he was about to enter the production line, a middle-aged man covered in grease stopped him in surprise and asked:

"Hey young man, you are not from our workshop, right?"

Zhang Renkang nodded and said

"Where is your workshop director?"

The middle-aged man saw Zhang Renkang coming to find the workshop director, and seeing that he was wearing a brand new work uniform and did not look like a production line worker, he thought he was a clerk who came to pass on a message, so he turned around and shouted into the workshop.

"Lao Liu, someone is looking for you"

Then a greasy man in his forties looked up from the crowd and saw Zhang Renkang. His eyes widened. Some of the workers in the workshop didn't know who Zhang Renkang was, so how could he not know him?

Zhang Renkang hurriedly ran over from the workshop. Looking at the seven or eight meters of road, the workshop director must have kicked the wrench and screwdriver that he had thrown on the ground at least twice.

Director Liu ran to Zhang Renkang, stood at attention, and shouted

"Director Zhang, why are you in the workshop?"

"I, I want the workers to line up to welcome you."

Zhang Renkang waved his hand and said

"I didn't come here to watch you shout slogans at me"

"What are you doing?"

Director Liu was covered in grease, but Zhang Renkang saw him lying on a half-finished tricycle, busy with something.

Zhang Renkang didn't know that unlike the workshop director of the Red Star Steel Rolling Mill, the workshop director of the original machine repair factory was actually only treated as a second-level clerk, and some work still had to be done by hand.

Director Liu said with a smile

"Director Zhang, the axle size of one of the cars doesn't match, so I went over to fix it."

Zhang Renkang asked

"Aren't the parts standards used in our workshop unified now?"

"Why did you do it yourself?"

Director Liu smiled and said

"Director Zhang, there must be a certain error in the parts standards. We still need to make corrections ourselves during assembly. Otherwise, if they don't match, it will be a disaster."

"There are only a limited number of experienced and skilled workers in the workshop, and I am a level 6 maintenance worker, so I can only take the lead in doing some of the work."

Zhang Renkang smiled and took out a pack of Daqianmen from his pocket and said

"Let's go to the door"

He handed a cigarette to Director Liu Xiangqian, and then the two of them started smoking at the door of the workshop. Zhang Renkang asked

"If the production line in a workshop is fully operational now, what is the monthly production capacity?"

Liu Xiangqian thought for a while and said

"The daily production capacity is about 80 vehicles, and the monthly production capacity can reach 2000 vehicles."

"If we speed up the progress, the monthly production capacity can reach up to 2400 vehicles."

Zhang Renkang nodded and did a quick calculation in his mind. If the monthly production capacity is calculated at 8000, the current four production lines can produce about Red Star tricycles per month. The other two production lines will be used for the production of all-terrain vehicles and testing of new vehicle series.

For the entire factory, the profit point lies in these 8000 Red Star tricycles. The ex-factory price of each tricycle is 1250 yuan, the cost is 980 yuan, and the profit margin is 270 yuan, which means a monthly income of 216 million yuan.

It seems like a lot, but they have more than 3,000 people in the factory. According to the salary expenditure, more than 200,000 yuan is paid out every month. In addition to the expenses of the factory's maintenance and operation, 60% of the profit must be handed over to the superior. The estimated monthly net profit that can be left in the factory is only about 180,000 to 200,000 yuan.

You should know that the purchase of the new car series that the factory is testing is all borne by the factory itself, and it also needs to expand the factory and purchase machinery and equipment.

This amount of money is not even half of the funding in Zhang Renkang's plan.

Zhang Renkang stamped out the remaining cigarette butt under his feet, looked at Liu Xiangqian seriously and said

"Director Liu, if the factory wants the workshop to increase its production capacity to 3000 vehicles per month, do you think there is a way to do it?"

When Liu Xiangqian heard this, his face wrinkled up, his heart sank, he calculated for a moment, shook his head and said:

"Director, even if we increase our working hours, we still have to wait a month to complete this task. It's ok for us to find a way to overcome it, but if it continues like this, the workers' bodies won't be able to bear it."

Liu Xiangqian's solution is to work overtime, even overnight, and increase the working hours of the entire workshop by four hours. However, this can only be a short-term solution. You can't let the workers work themselves to death.

Zhang Renkang shook his head and said

"This won't work. We can't do this at the cost of overdrawing the workers' bodies."

"So, my idea is to carry out a thorough reform of the workshop. We now have standard regulations for the parts of a tricycle, for example, how big the bearing should be and what the error range should be."

"Another thing is that we can divide all the processes. For example, you are responsible for assembling the frame and I am responsible for welding. Then we will only be responsible for one process. After I finish it, I will hand it over to you directly according to the next process. Isn't this more efficient?"

……

Zhang Renkang talked to Liu Xiangqian for more than half an hour, using gestures and examples to finally make Liu Xiangqian understand what he meant.

In fact, it is not mysterious. This is nothing more than assembly line workshop production. It just relies on standardized parts and production standards. Everyone completes their own process according to the work procedures.

In the 20s, it appeared in Ford cars in the cowboy country and then spread to the industrial production of the entire cowboy country. This was the material guarantee for the cowboy country to win the Second World War. Later, the two weapons of assembly line and standardization began to spread to Europe and Japan with the assistance of cowboys, and became the basis for their industrial revival in the s and s.

In fact, the Qin people had already popularized the assembly line production method in China 2,000 years ago, but it was never inherited by later generations.

What Zhang Renkang wants to do is to popularize assembly line production and standardization, two powerful industrial production tools, in vehicle manufacturing plants.

Liu Xiangqian has worked in the front-line workshops for most of his life. After Zhang Renkang gave him a general explanation of the two workshop reform methods, he was able to quickly figure out the advantages. First of all, apprentices can take on basic and simple processes after a short period of training.

Experienced technicians can focus on the most complicated processes, and the entire workshop can work in an orderly manner without having to consider whether the delivered parts are defective or mismatched and require secondary processing.

The most important thing is to fully guarantee the yield rate and stability of the vehicles produced, and reduce the scrap rate. You should know that Liu Xiangqian said that the monthly production of 5 vehicles refers to the vehicles that can be delivered. This actually does not include the scrapped vehicles that do not meet the standards. The scrap rate of their workshop is as high as %.