Author: Huang Yuanhui, a reader, focuses on humanities and history, quality standards, and intellectual property.
Recommended Reading List:"Quality Management in an Age of Uncertainty: Huawei Through the Cycle", "Huawei Quality Management Handbook", "Huawei Biography", "Huawei Has No Success, Only Growth: Ren Zhengfei's Biography", "Striver-oriented: Huawei's Human Resource Management Outline", "Customer-centric: Huawei's Business Management Outline", and "Value-oriented: Huawei's Financial Management Outline" (the latter three books are known as "Huawei's Management Trilogy").
As a senior pollen, and now engaged in quality management, I have always had a great interest in Huawei's quality management. September 2023,Quality Management in an Age of Uncertainty: Huawei Through the CycleWhen the book was published, I read it as soon as it was published, and now I have a review of Huawei's quality management. In particular, the following is mainly from the book.
Ten.
1. Huawei's Quality Reflection: Entropy and Vitality Engine.
The concept of entropy has become increasingly popular since it was introduced in 1865. The concept of entropy is also used in various studies of information theory, political economy, and biological systems, not only in the fields of physics, biology, and chemistry. The concept of entropy was first proposed by physicist Rudolf Clausius for the second law of thermodynamics. Subsequently, Schrödinger proposed the concept of "negative entropy", Brilin proposed the theory of "negative entropy order", and Prigogine proposed "entropy flow".
In 1948, Shannon proposed the concept of "information entropy", which brought the development of "entropy" to a new peak. Prigogine developed the concept of dissipative structures for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1977. The so-called dissipative structure is an open system far from equilibrium, through the continuous exchange of matter and energy with the outside world, a negative entropy flow is generated in the process of dissipation, so that the system changes from disorder to order. Dissipative structure is a concept that describes the evolutionary process of living systems without violating the second law of thermodynamics. According to Prigogine, dissipative structures are equally applicable to all kinds of social organizations.
Ren Zhengfei was the first entrepreneur to introduce the concept of entropy into enterprise management and systematically elaborate it. Entropy increase is the natural tendency of the development of all things in the world, which refers to the process of things moving from order to chaos and disorder, and finally to extinction. When Ren Zhengfei considers enterprise management, he takes entropy increase as an important perspective. The natural law of enterprise development is also that the entropy from low to high gradually moves towards chaos and loses development momentum. Therefore, in the absence of external interference, the increase of enterprise entropy is an inevitable trend, and the increase of enterprise entropy is generally manifested in the phenomena of organizational slackness, process rigidity, brain drain, and lack of innovation. In order for an enterprise to survive, it is necessary to form a dissipative structure to achieve the purpose of entropy reduction.
In order to achieve entropy reduction, enterprises must first move from a closed system to an open system, absorbing advanced ideas, culture, management, processes, technologies, resources, etc. Then, through a series of work actions, the excess energy is dissipated, so that the system will stay away from equilibrium, maintain a low entropy state, and continue to survive. The enterprise organization is like a living system, which needs to output life vitality and create value for customers, which is the only reason for the existence of the enterprise. In order to maintain the momentum of development, enterprises need to rely on the vitality of human life and achieve the purpose of entropy reduction through dissipation.
From the perspective of the quality life cycle, quality also lives on negative entropy. How to prevent quality withering?Huawei maintains and improves quality by introducing entropy thinking. The quality ecosystem is a dynamic equilibrium system. The self-regulation mechanism of the quality ecosystem keeps the system in a state of dynamic equilibrium. When the quality environment changes beyond a certain range, or when the system itself changes significantly, the quality ecosystem loses stability and balance. There is a limit to the self-regulation and compensatory function of the quality ecosystem, beyond which the balance will be upset. The ecological threshold is the threshold at which this variation or fluctuation can be reached. The quality ecological threshold represents the capacity of the quality environment, or the ability of the quality ecosystem to survive the fittest and self-repair. The size of the quality ecological threshold depends on the maturity of the quality system, and the higher the maturity of the system, the higher the thresholdConversely, the simpler the structure and the lower the efficacy of the mass system, the lower the resistance to external disturbances, and the more likely it is to lose balance and produce quality collapse. Under natural conditions, the quality ecosystem always develops in the direction of demand personalization, quality diversification, structural complexity and functional perfection, until the quality system reaches the most stable and mature state. When the ecological environment is damaged, organisms at the top of the biological chain are often more likely to be affected. In the same way, when there is a crisis or great change in the quality and ecological environment, the larger the enterprise, the higher the risk. The economic crisis is a tester of the stability and self-regulation ability of the quality system, the crisis is the organic crisis, the economic crisis will eliminate the poor quality of enterprises, the best enterprises are easier to survive and develop after the economic crisis.
Although the grayscale philosophy is good, it is difficult for ordinary people to understand and apply. In order to provide a clear direction for all Huawei employees, Ren Zhengfei put entropy reduction, grayscale, "no man's land", and chaos theory together. He directly introduced the physical, biological, and philosophical concepts of entropy theory into enterprise management, forming Huawei's unique business philosophy, corporate culture, and organizational strategy.
Ren Zhengfei believes that "Huawei's highest goal is to be alive". The enterprise is also a kind of living organism, and the natural law of the enterprise is that the entropy is from low to high, from order to chaos, and only by feeding on negative entropy can the development momentum be maintained. Therefore, the source of Huawei's vitality comes from entropy reduction thinking, and the entropy increase problem has become an important perspective of Huawei's crisis awareness. Human nature likes leisure and comfort, and the quality concept of "striver-oriented, long-term hard work" is to ask people to release energy through dissipative workmanship to overcome the problem of entropy increase.
Entropy reduction does not occur automatically, but entropy increase does occur automatically over time. Huawei's values of "customer-centric, striver-oriented, and long-term hard work" reflect Huawei's organizational vitality and the vitality and creativity of Huawei's people.
I introduced the second law of thermodynamics from the natural sciences to the social sciences, that is, to widen the gap, and the 150,000-strong team of thousands of backbones will roll forward. We need to constantly activate our ranks to prevent "entropy death". We must not allow the emergence of an organizational "black hole", which is inertia, and cannot be allowed to swallow up our light and heat, and swallow up vitality. ——Use the spirit of the turtle to catch up with the dragon spaceship (Ren Zhengfei, 2013).
In order to better stimulate the vitality of the organization and ensure the quality level, Huawei creatively introduced the entropy reduction theory into quality management and built the Huawei vitality engine. The entropy reduction and Huawei vitality model are shown in the figure.
Entropy Reduction and Huawei's Vitality Model, from Quality Management in an Age of Uncertainty: Huawei Through the Cycle
No organization can escape the formula: vitality = resources (space and time). Organizational vitality is the sum of individual vitality. The vitality of people in an organization is the soul of an organization. Resources include capital resources, technical resources, human resources, market resources and management resources. The continuous transformation of resources and vitality through time and space is the general law of organizational operation. Time is the killer of any perfect product and organization. Therefore, if it is long enough, then the previous victories will be in smoke.
Huawei's Vitality Engine is built on an open dissipative structure. According to Prigogine, dissipative structures are open, and rigid systems are closed. Dissipative structures are systems that are far from equilibrium. In general, the dissipative structure of "entropy" has three basic characteristics: openness, distance from equilibrium, and nonlinearity. This actually reflects two laws of entropy reduction: open and non-equilibrium. Nonlinearity, from a certain point of view, can also be seen as a way away from equilibrium. The enterprise organization is not only a structure far from equilibrium, but also has the characteristics of open existence and non-linear development, which meets the definition of dissipative structure.
As a living organization and a customer-centric dissipative structure, Huawei has long been committed to entropy reduction from the perspective of the overall enterprise strategy to activate the vitality of the organization. Huawei's vitality engine can create value for customers, which is the standard and direction for judging order and disorder, entropy increase and entropy decrease. On the one hand, Huawei advocates the building of a new world order and the formation of new win-win rules through openness and cooperation. At the same time, we will continue to Xi learn from the advanced experience of industrialization and process management in Western countries, blow up the talent pyramid, form a new pattern of attracting outstanding talents from all over the world, and advocate a cup of coffee to absorb cosmic energy. On the other hand, Huawei has worked hard to build up new potential energy, dissipate excess energy, and maintain the health of the organization by focusing on mainway innovation, simplifying processes, saturation attacks, self-criticism, and forming a strategic reserve team.
Returning to the concept of quality, Huawei believes that quality is an ecosystem, and life depends on negative entropy for life, and quality also depends on negative entropy. The quality ecosystem is composed of different quality subjects, and the interaction and mutual influence between different subjects form the overall functional structure of the quality ecosystem, and there is competition, control, dependence, symbiosis and synergy between the quality subjects. Through open cooperation, Huawei is building a new international ecosystem of industrial chains, value chains, and quality chains. "We've made the main channel so wide that you can't imagine it, and it's filled with all kinds of boats. This is only possible if we are open and cooperative. ”
The growth of all things is a decrease in entropy, the circulation of strategic reserves is a decrease in entropy, the increase of practical knowledge in cadres is a decrease in entropy, the promotion of cadres in an exceptional way is a decrease in entropy, and retirement at a reasonable age is also a reduction in entropy ......We can't let slacking grow in the company. With only 40 hours a week to work, scientists and artists cannot be produced. ——Speech at the Huawei Market Work Conference (Ren Zhengfei, 2017).
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