Text|Qin Shuo. Industry leaders are not only the guardians of the bottom line of integrity, but also the leaders of innovation. It should use upward thinking to open up new space and find new paths for the industry.
Lying and rolling, how to choose?
According to my observation of the business world, there are not many people who can lie down well, most of them are rolled and boiled. The period of rapid growth is over, and there is a general overcapacity, so it has to be rolled and boiled.
I respect these rolls, boilers, because of their resilience. But the light boils in the volume, as the physicist Schrödinger said, when the entropy of a living organism increases and tends to the maximum, it will go to death.
The way out is in **? Schrödinger said that the only way to do this is to continuously draw negative entropy from the environment, and "life lives on negative entropy."
Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, also said that it is necessary to continuously activate the team, establish an open system, and have a mechanism to reduce entropy by spitting out the old and accepting the new. To spit out the past is to spit out the redundancy of old skills and old ideas. Accepting the new is to open up the new, bringing in active factors, "from the old ineffective to the new effective".
The thoughts from Schrödinger to Ren Zhengfei can also be summarized as: from volume to creation.
In the fall of 2023, some entrepreneurs and I went to Tomson Biohealth's transparent factory in Zhuhai to conduct research and discuss topics such as "how to break the involution", "what kind of enterprise is needed in the times", "how to build a century-old enterprise" and so on. The common experience is that China still has a group of highly adaptable entrepreneurs, and we need resilience, but also the vitality and vitality of innovation, so as to break through the volume and take on a new look.
This is not the first time I have been here, I also came here 5 years ago, and I experienced the "visualization of product quality" throughout the whole process. From selecting global raw materials to building a transparent factory, the philosophy of By-Health is "integrity is more important than smart", and it uses integrity management to win the trust of consumers.
Liang Yunchao, chairman of the company, said: "At all times, we must keep in mind the basic positioning of dietary nutritional supplements (VDS): made of vitamins, minerals, animal and plant extracts and other bioactive substances as the main raw materials, in order to achieve the purpose of balancing nutrition and improving the health level of the body, not for the purpose of ** disease, nor can it replace the normal diet, and does not produce any acute, subacute or chronic harm to the human body." This self-restraint sentence has been repeated by him every year and often, and I don't know how many times.
An industry always needs a guardian who must guard the bottom line and give confidence. "Products that your children, family and friends dare not eat cannot be produced and cannot leave the factory. "By-Health uses empathy for family and friends as the bottom line of the enterprise to produce high-quality nutritional products for consumers.
In this survey, my feeling is that as an industry leader, By-Health is not only the guardian of the bottom line of integrity, but also the leader of innovation. It should use upward thinking to open up new space for the industry and find a new path - a general path from volume to creation.
Volume is the norm, creation is the state, how to create?
At the moment when the demographic dividend or Internet dividend is gradually receding, various industries have entered the stock competition, and everyone is thinking about how to find their second growth curve, which can be at the product level, the industry level, and all aspects of enterprise development.
Taking the typical stock industry of beer as an example, China's beer production has not grown for many years since it hit an all-time high of 50.61 million kiloliters in 2012, and is in a de facto contraction, but Tsingtao Beer, which has a history of 120 years, has been rising in both market value and revenue.
At the root of it, Tsingtao Beer has mainly done two things: one is to focus on the layout of the middle and high-end, and has successively launched a series of special products such as white beer, Pilsner, Agutte, etc., to achieve 6-100 yuan ** band coverage to meet the needs of consumer groups; The second is flexible and flexible production, which used to start from 3,000 cases, but now the minimum is 45 cases and the fastest 7 days can deliver customized beer to consumers, which improves efficiency and service level.
Only by taking the route of product differentiation can we have the opportunity to create new increments, and the same is true at the industrial level.
TCL is a typical case: from the production of hands-free ** to the layout of color TVs, and then to the establishment of Huaxing Optoelectronics to make panels, it has continued to develop upstream, and then derived its business into technology-intensive and capital-intensive fields such as semiconductor materials and photovoltaics, and has mastered the possibility of creating new curves through the layout of the industrial chain.
Today, the Red Sea is no longer enough to summarize the intensity of the involution. Some time ago, I went to Ningbo for research, and Lin Wanjiong, the founder of SEF, said that there are five kinds of seas in the market: deep blue ocean, blue ocean, yellow sea, red sea, and poisonous sea. Only by continuous innovation can enterprises become more and more blue.
If a company is forward-looking, it has the opportunity to find a deep blue ocean, but it will not take long for it to become a blue ocean. At this time, if the company chooses to fight the first war, it will enter the Red Sea from the Yellow Sea, or even the sea of poison. What is the Poison Sea? Enterprises squeeze the best business in order to fight the first war, and the first business will cut corners for the sake of profits, and one day it will poison the enterprise itself.
Many people say that there is no time when it is not difficult to do business.
Liang Yunchao also found that in the past few years, every time the new year begins, there will be predictions in the circle of friends such as "this year will be a particularly difficult year" and "last year is the worst year in the past ten years, and it is also the best year in the next ten years". Correspondingly, many companies have chosen postures such as "squatting", "lying down" and "cat low".
In fact, it is difficult to say that it is as difficult every year, and it is the same key every year. Businesses that demand from themselves should not follow the crowd, but look to the future and identify opportunities for long-term growth. In China, there are not many such opportunities, such as health, 'dual carbon', specialization, refinement, special innovation, national tide, digital intelligence, etc. ”
In March 2023, in a 2022 letter to shareholders, Liang Yunchao put forward the view that "a new cycle of dietary nutritional supplements (VDS) has begun".
Liang Yunchao believes that the new cycle is a protracted battle, and there are three battles to be fought at the same time: one is the "Red Sea Battle" of basic nutrients, the second is the "Blue Ocean Hard Battle" of potential single products, and the third is the battle of the stars and the sea of VDS.
The Red Sea is a game of stock, a big market, and a basic market that cannot be missed. The blue ocean is incremental creation, and it is the research and development of new functions and new products to form a new category of large single products. But as more and more new people enter, the blue ocean will eventually become the red ocean as well.
In the final analysis, to explore the sea of stars, the key is to strengthen the enterprise with science and technology, improve the quality of science and technology, establish core competitiveness and create new curves in new raw materials, new functions and new technologies.
In the past few decades, Chinese companies have become accustomed to outward expansion. Everything stresses scale, the pursuit of space and scale as large, the final result of extension expansion is extensive development, without the creation and promotion of core competitiveness, it is difficult to continue in the economic environment when the recession.
TCL once pinned its hopes on rapid expansion of overseas markets through the acquisition of Thomson (color TV) and other European and American companies, but after the advent of the liquid crystal era, Thomson's CRT (cathode ray tube) technology became a worthless thing. In the face of such a dilemma, TCL sought technological breakthroughs inward, and finally relied on its own core technology products to gradually gain a firm foothold overseas.
Back to the protagonist of this article, from the perspective of the VDS industry, compared with the overall slowdown in the growth of beer, home appliances and other markets, the VDS industry still has a lot of space and has entered a new cycle.
Of course, the new cycle does not mean that companies can lie flat and grow with the industry. The volume of an industry can have many manifestations, such as the homogenization of products, such as on the e-commerce platform, to face the competition of global products.
In February 2022, By-Health formulated the "Core Goals and Action Outline for the Transformation of Strong Technology Enterprises 2030", determined to benchmark against global benchmark pharmaceutical companies, and strive to become one of the most powerful VDS companies in the world in terms of technology and innovation.
The core strategy here is "scientific nutrition", and strong technology is regarded as the key to the success of VDS under the aging trend. Strong technology has three specific goals:
The first is the national invention patent for raw materials and formulas, in order to establish differentiated quality advantages.
The second is the research and development of new functions and heavy function large single products, in order to create unique incremental value that no one else has.
The third is forward-looking basic research such as anti-aging and precision nutrition, in order to empower the scientific and technological strength and innovation of the global VDS industry.
Ning Gaoning, the former chairman of Sinochem Group, once put forward the concept of "science first", while Tomson Beijian summarized its strategy as "scientific nutrition", and the goal is to transform and upgrade the enterprise to scientific and technological innovation.
There are some mature formulas and raw materials in the industry, but imitation is destined to be homogeneous, and it will be innovative technology that will change the market. For example, Bloomage Biotech, which has mastered new raw materials, has developed rapidly in recent years, which is also the same reason.
Today's consumers will look at raw materials, look at ingredients, pay more attention to scientific evidence of product effectiveness, and have higher and higher demands for functional segmentation. The market expects innovation from 1 to 100 rather than innovation from 0 to 1.
If 5 years ago, the competitiveness of By-Health was more reflected in the factory and the market, now it is more reflected in the laboratory and scientific and technological innovation.
In 2022, By-Health and its partners released the world's first large-scale study on nad+ and aging in the Chinese population; Published clinical results of light loon for improving blood flow health in Chinese; It took 7 years to independently develop the local strain LPB27 and won two Chinese invention patents; Innovative development of new collagen peptides rich in glycosaminoglycans (GAGs); The research results of the natural anti-aging substance PCC1 were published in the international authoritative journal Nature and won the 2023 National Invention and Entrepreneurship Award, which was praised by the industry as a "new milestone in anti-aging" in the nutrition industry.
Self-development and joint development "two-legged" walking. By-Health and the Hangzhou Advanced Research Institute of UCAS established the Tomson By-Health Precision Nutrition Research Center of the Hangzhou Higher Institute of the National Academy of Sciences, and established the Scientific Nutrition Research and Transformation Center with the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, to enhance the competitiveness of scientific research in high-tech fields.
I said to many entrepreneurs in my industry that this is scientific research, this is dry goods, and this is the achievement of international standards. These all rely on high-level talents and firm investment, and fooling is absolutely impossible to fool.
Without innovation and differentiation, there would be no Tomson By-Health. Liang Yunchao said: "Back then, others made health care products, but we made VDS; Others do direct sales, we do pharmacy retail; Others use ordinary raw materials, we select high-quality raw materials around the world; Others do ordinary factories, we build transparent factories. Now, others are still in the state of product imitation and introduction, and we bet on strong technology and go to no man's land. ”
If an enterprise cannot completely open up the problem of its internal core competitiveness from the perspective of first principles, and break through itself with the strength of hardship, but hopes that the external market will get better, or hopes that accidental factors will bring success, it will not be sustainable.
Of course, innovation is far from only the product and technology level, but also related to production, operation, management and other aspects.
When I came to Tomson Beijian's transparent factory five years ago, it had just won the title of 4A-level tourist attraction. Since its opening to the public in 2012, more than 1 million people have visited the transparent factory. If the most impressive thing I was in the factory five years ago was transparency, then what impressed me the most this time is intelligence.
Intelligence is the trend of the times, which can solve the problem of efficiency and capacity, and can also better ensure quality. For example, the quality inspection link cannot keep up with the manual speed, and must be solved by digitalization.
At present, large factories are moving closer to intelligent production, but this is not just about burning money and changing equipment. Bosch, which has worked on many intelligent upgrade solutions, said that intelligent manufacturing is lean + industry 40。If you don't solve the internal standardization and lean first, you can directly go to intelligence, which may be a disaster for the company.
For example, a company did not sort out the wasteful and unreasonable links in advance, and directly improved 6 production lines, and finally some of the lines were operated under load, and some were only 30% of the material, resulting in the loss of efficiency and overproduction of unbalanced operations.
Wang Yongqing, the king of plastics, said that the operation is often "the pursuit of maximum rationalization bit by bit". This sentence is used in the era of intelligence, and I think it is still useful.
This point, Tomson Beijian thought very clearly.
Cai Liangping, COO of Tomson Beijian, said that intelligence and automation are more forms or means. The concept of intelligence must return to the core sectors such as production management and first-class chain, which must be reasonable, standard and effective, which can ensure the effectiveness, safety and uniformity of product quality, and must also be suitable for Tomson Beijian, rather than applying other people's solutions.
We have seen in the survey that Tomson Beijian has introduced lean management for many years, and is currently focusing on intelligent flexible production and first-class chain, controlling the cost side by improving efficiency, and continuously improving product quality.
The progress of the transparent factory is the result of "pursuing maximum rationalization bit by bit". This is also innovation, and it is the improvement and innovation of "Gou is new, new every day, and new every day".
Many aspects of nutraceutical and pharmaceutical production are discrete models, which affect the overall efficiency to a certain extent. Since 2013, Tomson Beijian Transparent Factory has been exploring intelligence, and has set the "ten modernizations" goals such as material IoT, process informatization, remote equipment, and electronic records, and has been exploring for 10 years and ushering in qualitative changes.
Cai Liangping said that the most difficult thing about the "ten modernizations" is continuous production and unmanned on-site. The team visited many excellent enterprises such as pharmaceutical, food, milk powder, etc., and it took 8 years to build a continuous solid preparation intelligent production line in the industry, which will be put into use in 2021.
Not only do we introduce state-of-the-art equipment around the world, but we also bring together the best of all worlds to innovate boldly based on practical needs. ”
In 2015, Tomson By-Health Transparent Factory pioneered the design of the pre-mixing process of applying the air mixer to the material; In 2019, the first continuous coating machine developed by the company was put into use, breaking the monopoly of foreign manufacturers in the industry; In 2021, the self-developed tablet airflow suspension delivery system was put into use ......Compared with 2013, the current 150-meter-long intelligent production line has increased the material weighing efficiency of each batch of products by 80%, the per capita output by 200%, the production cycle has been reduced from 5 to 7 days to the fastest 2 hours, and the plant utilization rate has increased by 57%. While improving production efficiency, each continuous production line can avoid about 200,000 times of material exposure risk per year, reduce more than 270,000 container turnover times and 950 tons of cleaning water, and better ensure product quality.
In Cai Liangping's narrative, there are many concepts of time, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 8 years ......Study day by day, year after year, towards the highest standards, without compromise, without giving up.
Hard work pays off. In the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "2022 Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Factory Unveiling Unit and Excellent Scene List", Tomson Beijian Transparent Factory is the only VDS intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory selected in the country.
If the construction of a transparent factory by By-Health is to win the trust of consumers by breaking the visible "wall" with the outside world and winning the trust of consumers with a transparent and visible production process, then over the past 10 years, the continuous evolution of the transparent factory to the intelligent upgrade characterized by production automation, continuity and unmanned production is that By-Health of Tomson dares to break the boundary, from breaking the boundary to no boundary, which is the reshaping of the production process of the entire industry, and it is also a higher-dimensional openness and innovation.
In the past five years, the domestic and foreign economic environment has undergone great changes, and the mentality of market players has also changed a lot.
Many companies are complaining that the market space is too narrow and the industry is too volatile. In my opinion, the market is fair to everyone, if a company can be particularly strict with itself, set a very narrow requirement for itself at the beginning, once it can be achieved, it will feel that the outside world is very wide.
Taking the real estate industry as an example, a few years ago, as soon as the regulation began, Longfor made extreme assumptions: what if the income was reduced by half? So they used a set of strict financial standards to push themselves into a very narrow place. Because of this, when the outside world changes, Longfor will be much calmer. According to the latest announcement, Longfor will repay the syndicated loans due in 2024 in 2023 in advance, and the asset-liability ratio has also dropped to the lowest level in five years.
In a sense, if you push yourself in a very narrow direction, you may seem to lose some opportunities in the short term, but in the long run, you will feel that the road is very wide.
In my opinion, Tomson By-Health is also such a company.
In his letter to shareholders in 2022, Chairman Liang Yunchao firmly proposed that the new cycle of VDS is coming, but he also stressed that the growth rate is lower than that of the industry and competing products, and the decline in operating quality indicators such as gross profit margin and cash flow is unacceptable. It is necessary to use a strict or even conservative financial model to correct and control deviations. "No matter how big the goal is, no matter how passionate it is, we must use the hand of the market to ensure that it will not deviate. ”
The narrow road chosen by By-Health is not only in terms of operation and finance, but also in terms of products and values.
In the final analysis, the quality problem is a problem of the "character" of the enterprise, not a problem of money and technology. People are watching the heavens, and they are always in awe of every life.
The red line of violation cannot be touched, cannot be thought, and cannot have a fluke mentality, and it is guilty to think about it. Those who do not violate laws and regulations, but know that there are health risks, they are also not allowed to do it.
Liang Yunchao constantly reminds himself and all employees that VDS is the industry on the tip of the tongue, and Tomson Beijian is an enterprise on the tip of the knife, and must always walk on thin ice, from raw materials to production, from R&D to quality control, from the best chain to consumer service, take every moment of every day seriously, and practice the concept and brand DNA of "producing the world's highest quality nutrition products not for customers but for family and friends". "Products that your children, family and friends dare not eat cannot be produced and cannot leave the factory.
In the past five years, Tomson's performance and core competence have improved a lot, and the road has become wider and wider. What remains unchanged is that the value of "integrity is more important than intelligence" is still deeply imprinted in the body of Tomson Bio-Health as yesterday, and is placed at a higher strategic level, running through all levels of operation, and throughout the whole process of product production in transparent factories.
In the past five years, the business world has been thundering, leaving too much misery and misery. "Integrity is more important than smartness" sounds like it sounds like it was five years ago, and it's true entrepreneurship.
Mentality determines posture, thinking determines the way out, and pattern determines layout. Innovation is the foundation of core competitiveness, and for this reason, enterprises need to have the courage to stick to it for a long time. Innovation is always risky, and for this it also requires a spirit of heroism that is not afraid of setbacks.
If the sky is not bright, then survive in the dark, and once you see the dawn, you will take off immediately. Now, it's time for a new take-off. Liang Yunchao said.
This is the resilience and strategic determination of Chinese entrepreneurs in the face of environmental changes, and from these entrepreneurs, we can see a general sample from volume to innovation.
For enterprises that pursue the right path and take the broad road, honesty is a choice, but also a kind of persistence; Excellence is a kind of ability, but also continuous transcendence.