The past 40 years of reform and opening up have also witnessed the growth of multinational companies in China. They have both benefited from and promoted reform and opening up.
The past 40 years of reform and opening up have also witnessed the growth of multinational companies in China. They have both benefited from and promoted reform and opening up.
From the 1990s to the present, in China's many energy and infrastructure-related projects, including the Three Gorges project, West-east gas transmission, South-north water diversion, Lingao Nuclear Power plant, and later the Beijing Olympic Games, Shanghai World Expo, there is a common figure: Schneider Electric.
From its initial focus on low - and medium-voltage power distribution and industrial automation to today's digital transformation leader in energy efficiency management and automation, Schneider Electric has also grown in China: starting with a joint venture in China in the 1980s, Schneider Electric has grown the country into its second largest market in the world.
"If you look at it from the dimension of 40 years, not only multinational companies, but the entire business environment in China has achieved a huge leap forward." Government policy support, market volume development, and innovation atmosphere have all been raised to a new height." Yin Zheng, global executive vice president of Schneider Electric and president of China, said that enterprises should not only be the beneficiaries of reform and opening up, but also actively participate in it and become contributors.
"Local" wins
In 1987, Schneider Electric entered China, and historically brought circuit breaker technology to Chinese families, so that people said goodbye to the "fuse" era; After the switch, the panel will be brought into thousands of households, ending the era of "pulling the lamp rope" to turn on and off the light.
Talking about how Schneider Electric maintains its leadership in the face of China's changing policies, industries and market environment, Yin Zheng summed up the continuous innovation, comprehensive and distinct localization strategy and model, and operated itself as a real Chinese company.
First of all, Schneider Electric takes technological innovation as its core competitiveness worldwide, and spends 5% of global revenue on research and development every year. In China, Schneider Electric has also established three R&D centers in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Xi 'an. In 2012, in response to Chinese demand, Schneider Electric launched the "original China" strategy, and now the products developed in China have gone global and are used by other countries.
Secondly, win-win cooperation with Chinese partners to jointly promote the development of the industry and the whole industrial chain. For example, in one solution, Schneider Electric will share the integration technology and solution with the cabinet factory and system integrator, and they will make complete sets, and Schneider Electric will provide some of the components. In the process of building the upstream and downstream partner system, Schneider Electric introduces international advanced technology and experience, and trains partners to embark on the road of standardized production, sales and management, helping to improve the level of China's manufacturing industry. Today, Schneider Electric has a network of more than 900 distributors and more than 1,600 local supplier partners.
In terms of suppliers, in order to find stable, high-quality, high-quality supplier partners, Schneider Electric has paid a lot of patience and energy, including from management, training, technology and other levels to give full support and trust, and develop with them.
Finally, pay attention to the localization of talents, train local talents, and fully authorize. The reason why Schneider Electric is able to grasp the policy trend and market demand, launch more targeted products and solutions, and adopt flexible business models and marketing methods, all come from having a high-quality localized management team.
Empower industry with "digitalization"
In recent years, with the advent of the Internet of everything era and the transformation of China's economy from high-speed growth to high-quality development, Schneider Electric has begun to explore "digital" innovation with industry expertise, empowering more industry enterprises in the real economy with digitalization, and jointly exploring the value of the Internet of Things.
In this regard, Schneider Electric is once again at the forefront of the industry. At the end of 2016, Schneider Electric launched EcoStruxure, a new IoT-based architecture and platform in China, consisting of a three-tier architecture of interconnected products, edge control and applications, analytics and services, providing solutions in buildings, data centers, industry and power grids.
Yin Zheng believes that Schneider Electric has its own characteristics and advantages in promoting digital transformation. Provide users with a platform and architecture as flexible, open, and scalable as EcoStruxure. Secondly, the integration of IT technology and OT technology, Schneider Electric has always had a profound insight into the application scenarios of industries including steel, cement industry, airport, electronics, etc. Third, build a "circle of friends" to explore overall solutions that meet the specific needs of users together with partners; Fourth, from the design, manufacturing, operation to maintenance stage, the data link is opened up into the whole industry chain, and then analyzed to achieve full life cycle management.
Based on this, Schneider Electric has started a series of practices, from traditional industries to new industries, from industry leaders to small and medium enterprises everywhere. Baosteel is one example. By applying Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure factory solution, Baosteel has significantly reduced the number of employees in shop operations, effectively guaranteed the personal safety of employees, and created the world's first unattended intelligent workshop. At the same time, the average daily output increased by 15%-30%.
There are also many cases from small and medium-sized enterprises. Among them, Hanwei Technology Group Co., Ltd. is the representative of domestic medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. In the past, the production automation level was low, the management was extensive, and the production efficiency was low. Based on the EcoStruxure solution, it helped to establish a comprehensive performance management system through the entire production link. The transparency and standardization of the production process have been achieved, the energy consumption has been greatly reduced, and the production performance has been greatly improved, including the per capita production capacity of the production line has been increased by 14%, the market failure rate has been reduced by 25%, the timely delivery rate has been increased by 35%, and the workshop area has been saved by 22%.
