A group of "Wind Power People" Dialogue: China's fan industry is up against the wind

Jiangyin City, a German beer bunker, three long tables in a row, dozens of people sitting next to each other, the atmosphere was a bit cramped - until the party's owner, Jiangsu Vision Energy Technology Co., Ltd. Chairman Zhang Lei pushed forward. He immediately asked the organiser of the event—Tsinghua, director of human resources of Jiangsu Vision. “I asked my staff to come here to communicate, so how can we communicate?”

The table is placed in a square matrix. An elite gathering of fans in the global field began.

Vision 2008 set up an R&D center in Denmark. There are 8 engineers who come to China headquarters for technical exchanges. Anders, the head of the R&D center, worked for Vestas, the world's No. 1 player, for 9 years. He has worked for the world's No. 2 Gemeji for 3 years and is responsible for the development of the most mainstream wind turbines. The aerodynamics expert Peter was global Leader of LM, R&D Director of Blades; among them are Mogens, the former mechanical engineer of Songmei, the chief engineer of design for 4.5MW wind turbine and Vestas' 3MW turbine, and Nielsen's direct drive motor technology. The main person in charge of   people.

"They are pioneers in the wind power industry and have designed the best fans in history." Zhang Lei told Global Entrepreneur. He was pulling engineers across the different tables all night. The Danish R&D center is working on the design of a 3.6 MW offshore wind turbine. He named the wind turbine “Game Changer” (rule breaker). "They want to conquer the entire dangerous sea area in the South China typhoon area." Zhang Lei said.

The people who communicated with Anders were also non-general. The person in charge of the vision, Chu Hwa, was previously the personnel manager of General Electric; the chief financial officer, Zhang Xuyu, was a senior vice president of Morgan Stanley and a senior player of a hedge fund; Zhu Wenying, director of manufacturing, came from General Motors and was an expert in Toyota's lean production; Supply chain director Shan Yucheng comes from McKinsey, and financial director Miao Zhuang comes from Ernst & Young.

The speaker - 35-year-old Zhang Lei himself, is almost a realistic prototype of the Wall Street elite hero Jack who is obsessed with new energy in "Wall Street 2." Prior to the establishment of Jiangsu Vision, he worked at Barclays Bank in the pricing of energy-related financial structure products, and later served as a strategic analyst for energy trading at Total Petroleum. Unlike Jack, who only financed new energy companies, Zhang Lei resigned in 2006 and returned to China to become a wind energy entrepreneur.

Zhang Lei's medium build, typical facial features of young people in southern China, and a slightly casual dress are all very personal. But once he speaks, if he talks about topics that he is interested in - generally only wind turbines, the fast pace of speech mixed with the unquestioning short phrases that constantly throw in the beginning of "I" will make you feel that A machine gun fired. If the words are not speculative, he will not be disguised.

At a wind power exhibition in Europe in 2006, Shi Pengfei, vice chairman of the China Wind Energy Association, met Zhang Lei. The latter told him about the idea of ​​a “fight”: to use global capital and gather the best talents in the industry to set up an R&D center. From the very beginning, it solved the technical problems and positioned itself at the highest end of the entire industry chain. "I think that's a story told by a financial elite." Shi Pengfei recalls.

However, by the end of 2008, when the first prototype of the vision was held in Qidong, Jiangsu, the fan and the control system simulated the power from the start to the launch of 1000kw. “General enterprises must complete the fan more than six months to complete this. "Shi Pengfei, who was at the scene, pointed out that this unusual move or hinted at the prospect of mastering the core technology of the wind turbine.

In 2010, China became the largest wind power market in the world, and two wind turbine manufacturers rank among the top 5 in the world. However, the phenomenon that is not commensurate with this grand occasion is that there are very few wind turbine plants that have mastered the core technology. Most of them use techniques of buying drawings and permits from foreign counterparts to circumvent the technical threshold. This has caused the huge body of the Chinese wind turbine industry to remain at a risk of lacking a foundation.

So far, the name of Vision has not been known to the public (its sales of RMB 2 billion is only one-sixth that of China Wind Power, the largest wind turbine manufacturer in China). However, in 2009, the longest power supplier in Asia, Longyuan Power's most demanding supplier rankings, the long-term pressure on many big companies ranked first. The highly international and independent R&D capabilities demonstrated by the vision differentiate them from most wind turbine manufacturers. At the same time, they are still "heterogeneous" to make heavy industry light assets and customization. There are many colleagues who know the vision but are confused about how they do it all.

"People are the root of everything." Zhang Lei said that he brought together a group of "paranoids" in different industries around the world. Among the more than 200 prospects, the proportion of R&D and technical personnel exceeds 60%, and international staff accounts for 20%. “Our position is a globalized, smart company, and our staffing must reflect this positioning.” Zhang Lei said.

Zhang Lei does not think that good people can be dug up. He actually plays the role of a dream seller. The Chinese government's ambition and endless market potential provide entrepreneurs with an opportunity to create great companies like GE and IBM. He pointed out this Misson (Mission, Zhang Lei's spoken word) and provided a platform. "Good people exist for Mission," he said.

Zhang Lei’s slogan for prospective 2011 campus recruitment is “look for paranoia with dreams”. In hiring, he interviewed everyone and asked everyone the same question: What is the value of your existence? Occasionally he will change the question - what is happiness?

In the universities with the most solid engineering foundations in China, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Zhejiang University, Zhang Lei has interviewed more than 1,000 students. The answers he got were varied. A top student of Shanghai Jiaotong University who just joined this year talked about his feelings about the future. He said that he retained his idealism in school. This may be the reason why Zhang Lei was able to recruit so many R&D talents. .

“The elites from different industries around the world” can also have more pragmatic explanations – because they are good enough, the “elite” is a group of people who are on the verge of a “ceiling” test for foreign companies. They know the best standards in the industry, but they are less and less room for display.

“I used to work for foreigners, but I myself prefer to be a painter, not a maintainer of famous paintings.” Zhu Wenying explained why he joined the vision. Zhu Zeng was responsible for lean production at Shanghai General Motors. When Zhang Lei found him and expressed his desire to help Zhu Yuan to "translate the Toyota model to the manufacture of wind turbines" for the vision, Zhu Wenying quickly agreed - although Zhang Lei's salary is not generous to his old owner.

The first fan In August 2006, Zhang Lei returned to Jiangsu from the United Kingdom. An angel investor and an overseas investment fund invested tens of millions of RMB in the vision. Zhang Lei began recruiting, researching, and producing prototypes in February of the next year. At the same time, Zhang Lei also established the basic strategy of the vision. "In the direction," he explained: "A global, a smart, to occupy the high end of the value chain."

Zhang Lei quickly recruited 10 of the top wind turbine engineers in the industry. They rented several houses to stay in Jiangyin - it looks more like Facebook, the world's largest social networking site, in business - leaving home without software. Thousands of simulation experiments with different wind conditions.

Far-reaching to achieve this is not like the purchase of foreign drawings or production licenses like peers, but at the outset of the use of elite strategies to overcome the problems that plague most of China's wind turbine manufacturers, began to independently design wind   aircraft.

One year later, the first prototype of the vision went offline. It is also surprising that even if the best foreign wind turbine manufacturers independently design a new model, it will often take 2 years. When asked how it can be done in such a short time, the engineer Wang Xiaoyu believes that they have been released unlimited productivity: "Do not think about how we came at that time, and work until after 12 o'clock every day, even to 2, 3 points. ”

At this time, Zhang Lei not only established the independent R&D technical path, but also ambitiously requested the vision to enter only the technical and talent barriers in the wind power value chain, from the core components such as inverter design, machine R&D, and core control. Development, development of intelligent diagnostic systems for wind power. In fact, this is what most of his colleagues in wind power equipment don't do.

However, the first wind turbine of Jiangsu Vision is unfortunately in sync with the curve of the shortage of Chinese wind turbine components. In 2007, the installed capacity of wind power in China has increased by more than 100% from the previous year. China is experiencing a period when the supply of fans is in short supply. It takes even one year before the purchase of bearings. For a new company that has just been established without any component manufacturing capabilities, the first solution is to survive.

However, Zhang Lei set the best parts standards at the beginning. The blades of the vision come from LM. The motors come from Siemens subsidiary Winergy and Yongji Electric. The gearboxes come from Winergy and Nanjing high-speed gearboxes. The bearings come from SKF and are all world-class suppliers. However, it is not easy for a baby to survive, let alone eat the best milk powder?

In 2008, the tightest supply of wind turbine pitch yaw bearings, the world's best quality Rothschild limited production capacity to more than a dozen new players. However, given the past experience of the R&D team, they promised to provide a set of bearings. However, when the parts involved in the yaw work of the wind turbines were transported to the distant landscape, Zhang Lei found that there was some looseness in the packaging, which made them extremely nervous. Upon inquiry, the vehicle was found to have bumped during transportation. After a series of rigorous monitoring, all results showed normal. However, there are still people who want to exchange goods - this is the beginning of their business, can not tolerate one-tenth of the mistakes. "We had a very heated discussion. Some people even cried. Finally we decided to retreat. We have waited another month for this vision," Zhu Wenying recalled.

Since then, the vision has demanded that the vehicles transporting the wind turbines must take high speeds and let the other party fax the toll ticket of the highway for inspection. During the specific project operation, Zhu Wenying called the transportation company of the wind turbine every day and asked the other party to report the average daily speed of one day, limiting the speed of the highway to no more than 60 km/h.

Vision began to implement "controllable" supply chain management on parts and components. Since the real industrialization of wind power in China has only been developed for five years, many important parts and components manufacturers do not want outsiders to know. The two will inevitably cause some friction.

Zhang Chaoqun, who was the head of Spain's Gamesa supplier quality, just started working with the second-largest gearbox manufacturer in the world, Nanjing High-speed gearbox (hereinafter referred to as “NGC”), to conduct process inspections. The high-definition account managers initially expressed their arrogance, saying that customers such as GE and Dongqi that had annual orders of more than 1,000 units did not have such a requirement.

Zhu Wenying found the quality director of NGC and communicated with him on the quality understanding of the vision – to provide the best products, we must be able to control every detail in the supply chain. “Our engineers have 20 years of experience in electrical engineering at international manufacturers and eventually NGC invited him to qualify for quality control,” said Zhu Wenying.

By means similar to the "no conditions to create conditions but also on the" way, the vision one by one to achieve the process of monitoring its top suppliers. The vision of less than 200 people is that more than 15 people are resident in the supplier. For example, in the Tianjin branch of Winergy, the visionary resident representative has an office.

These supply chain management and control engineers ensured that Zhang Lei has set high quality corresponding to the highest end of the industrial chain. For quality control. "Why we are so paranoid, from some of our original corporate culture, many of our team is from the world's top 500, there are quality standards in mind." Zhu Wenying said.

Most of Zhang Lei's startup startup funds are spent on the prototype manufacturing. This prototype, which cost more than 10 million yuan, finally went offline in April 2008. At that time, Yuanjing did not have its own factory. It was assembled in a mechanical factory of Zhang Lei's parents. In order to shake customers, Zhang Lei sent this expensive prototype to Asia’s largest wind power developer, Longyuan Power, to try it at Jiangsu Qidong Wind Farm. "To sell our fans to the most discerning customers in the Chinese market can establish our brand image," he explained.

In less than six months of trial, Longyuan signed an order for 33 1.5MW wind turbines with Vision in September 2008.

Lean and customization The first prototype that stood in Jiangsu Qidong witnessed the technological advancement of the vision. Longyuan had long wanted to buy this wind turbine but was rejected by the prospect. "If we sell it, we can't do experiments on it. We can continue to change different parts and carry out optimization experiments." Zhou Hongwen, executive director of Long Vision, said that they installed the main shaft, gear box and generator of this wind turbine. PCH sensors to monitor the vibration of various components. This makes it possible for them to solve remotely the quality problems that the fan may have.

When outsourcing the control cabinets to German companies, the vision can only grasp the software design of this link. Now, they can independently design the main control system, variable pitch system, inverter hardware and software systems. Zhang Lei’s next step is to use a generator—the entire electrical system accounts for 40% of the cost of the wind turbine. This is where the long-term technical advantage needs to be demonstrated. Furthermore, layouts for blades and gearboxes are also available. But these productions will all be outsourced. The value of the vision lies in the design drawings it controls and the continuous R&D behind it.

"I have no interest in manufacturing and I am not interested in labor. I want to ensure the culture of Smart. I use as little manufacturing workers as possible," said Zhang Lei. He even outsourced the stock management of the warehouse. If you make an analogy, he wants to be an Iphone in the wind power industry, not Foxconn.

Zhang Lei’s stage report card does not look bad: Vision independently designed the world’s first 1.5 MW fan for the 87-meter wind turbine in the low wind area, and the world’s first carbon fiber spindle replaced the tens of tons of forged spindle. , The world's first locally pitched modular blade, and a patent on low-velocity dynamic energy capture.

However, Zhang Lei's interest in subverting the fan industry is not limited to technology. In October 2008, Zhu Wenying came to the vision from Shanghai GM and became the manufacturing director. Zhang Lei hopes to introduce Toyota's lean production model into the manufacture of wind turbines. This idea eventually gave birth to the first production line in China's fan industry.

If you have visited giant mega-fan assembly workshops with tens of thousands of square meters, you will realize that the traditional industrial assembly line is incapable of acting on various giant components. Conventional assembly takes a fixed-station approach, and the entire assembly process takes place at one station. The various large parts assembled on site make the plant look overcrowded. The vision of the factory is very different - it covers an area of ​​6,000 square meters. The flatbed truck carrying the host moves between six stations. More than 50 workers can assemble the first few hundred parts into a host machine through the production line within 6 hours. Their annual production capacity can actually reach 500 units. Compared with traditional production methods, lean production plants are smaller (only 1/3 of the area of ​​the same production capacity), and the workers used are only the traditional ones.

For Zhang Lei, the biggest contribution of lean production is that they are becoming a light asset wind turbine manufacturer. Zhang Lei revealed that in the field of wind turbine manufacturing such a high financial threshold, the vision has no bank loans, and there is no new financing other than the initial tens of millions. This all benefits from the order production model, "is still Toyota philosophy, orders to pull the supply chain, capital turnover quickly." Zhang Lei said.

Zhu Wenying transplanted the entire vehicle order delivery system (OTD) in the automotive industry to the vision. OTD is an information system commonly used by leading auto manufacturers, covering all aspects of sales, order management, R&D, production, and parts procurement. This system greatly shortened the time from the order to the product delivery. For example, general procurement needs to be ordered one or two months in advance, but through the OTD system, the supplier will know the demand for the long-term order. This made Zhang Lei dare to minimize the inventory.

At Changzhou Vision's production base in Jiangsu, its storage area is only 2,000 square meters, and it always maintains no more than three main engine parts, and no more than 20 mainframes in a 4,000-square-meter reactor. Zhang Lei is highly sensitive to stocks. He will suddenly run over and ask Zhu Wenying: Why is there an additional library today?

The lean production system allowed Zhang Lei to start working on customized fans. In China's 9.6 million square kilometers of different regions, the wind resource conditions are quite different. Vision The design of the diameter of the wind turbine and the height of the tower is based on conditions such as cold, high altitude, or coastal areas. Since the source code of the fan control system is prepared by the vision itself, the engineer can also modify some parameters on the spot according to the wind conditions to adjust the fan to the best state. And their counterparts are usually shipped to the wind farm after they have been set up in the factory. "The final competitive advantage is reflected in the small differences." Zhou Hongwen said that the national standard fan utilization rate is 95%, and the availability of the prospective fans can reach 99.3%.

The most tangible effect of a custom wind farm solution is increased power generation. Longyuan provided Longyuan with a 1.5MW wind turbine in the second phase of the wind farm in Fujian, and the Longyuan Phase 1 project used a 2MW wind turbine from an internationally renowned wind turbine manufacturer. Although the aircraft models were different, they were all converted into equivalent hours, The long-term power generation is 10% higher than the other party.

With such intensive farming products, the prospects are about 15% higher than domestic counterparts. However, Zhang Lei does not want to make simple price comparisons, but should consider the comprehensive cost of 20 years of operation of wind farms - that is, according to the cost per kilowatt-hour for 20 years. Zhang Lei chose Longyuan as his first client, which is also related to this listed company. Compared with many developers who simply pursue the scale, Zhang Lei is more likely to accept the concept of “electricity” cost.

But in China, firms that believe in scale (cost leadership) and speed are more likely to have access to living space, at least for the development of the past five years. Last year, China's newly installed capacity of wind power was 13,800 MW, and the well-crafted vision for R&D, production, and distribution only accounted for more than 200 MW—all from a buyer at Longyuan.

"There are various customers in the market. I only serve for rational investors." Zhang Lei said. The global talent established at the outset and its matching strategy of “only entering the barriers of competition” make the vision one of the few companies that has independent research and development technology for wind turbines. However, the elitist line he believes in still needs further proof: How to replicate these successes and occupy more high-end markets is the threshold that Zhang Lei must turn over. What makes Zhang Lei a little gratified is that people who are willing to pay for the long-term model are gradually increasing. The vision has already signed an agreement with Datang.

Before the Beer Fortress gathering, Anders and Zhang Lei had dinner with Wuxi Party Secretary Yang Weize. Yang said that he wants to build the vision into the Suntech field of wind power. "Ray is a very ambitious person and I have more room for development here." Anders said the vision is now five times faster than Vestas.

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