Recently, Fergo Media "MM Modern Manufacturing" published an exclusive interview with Wu Yuhui, general manager of STEP. General Wu said, strengthen the business layout, continue to force in the subdivided areas, more fully tap the further growth potential of each product line is the focus of the next stage of development. It is reproduced and the full text is as follows
In 2021, the global economy has gradually recovered, and China's industrial market has shown unprecedented resilience and robustness. This year, relying on the favorable environment of China's industrial market, STEP actively adjusted its organizational structure to adapt to the industrial development situation and achieved unprecedented progress and performance. Undoubtedly, this is inseparable from the excellent management ability of Mr. Wu Yuhui, the new head of the company, the accumulation of years of deep research in the industry and the background experience of serving as a senior executive of a leading enterprise in the industry. In the interview with Mr. Wu, when talking about the excellent achievements of STEP in this year, he said that, on the one hand, STEP has a very profound technical background and the original intention of research and development and innovation has never changed. On the other hand, STEP team has the excellent quality of facing difficulties head on and perseverance, which is destined to make the company become a habit of "winning battles". Next, how to deepen the business layout, make continuous efforts in the subdivided areas, and how to more fully tap the further growth potential of STEP's product lines is an important development direction.
Mr. Wu Yuhui, Director and General Manager of Shanghai STEP Electric Co., LTD
Choose the track, rebuild competitiveness
"In 2021, for the first time, the total sales volume of STEP exceeded STEP's development history. One of the important reasons is that we chose the right track to accelerate STEP's high-quality development." "China has stepped up efforts to promote intelligent manufacturing. With the help of national policy dividends, STEP has made impressive achievements in robotics, motion control, variable frequency drive and elevator applications," Wu said in an interview.
Undeniably, the promotion of elevator cloud has changed the pattern of electric control supply in the elevator industry. According to reports, STEP elevator cloud business has completed the national layout of 4000 points, highly recognized by the industry, and has achieved multi-customer delivery; The core driving products and solutions have broken through the TOP 10 customers in the industry, and constantly improve the brand awareness; Integrated development of motion control products, the formation of efficient solutions, industry applications continue to expand, steady progress of agent business; The field of industrial robots focuses on the development of scene application, breaking the industry application, and the shipments of 2021 increased significantly.
The shortage of raw materials, lack of human resources, tight logistics and prolonged delivery time are all real difficulties facing us after the epidemic, which also limited the development of many enterprises. At this time, STEP made a decisive choice on another track -- to achieve 90% localization chip replacement. "From users to suppliers to chip manufacturers, the market forced us to complete mutual run-in and trust in a short period of time, and the facts proved that it was a wise choice, which also gave rise to more opportunities and strengthened the voice of the enterprise," Wu said.
Any company wants to have a sustainable development, in addition to the underlying strategic foundation, but also have a strong product and technology force. To this end, STEP has defined the new development direction and goals. With motion control technology as the core, STEP focuses on servo drive, frequency control, robot and industrial controller and other products, develops digitalization and intelligence, and provides customers with high-quality integrated intelligent manufacturing solutions.
Business focus is customer-centric
Under the epidemic, the relatively stable state of the original global industrial chain has been broken, and at the same time, the acceleration button has been pressed for the process of industrial automation. The answer given by STEP is how to keep pace with the rhythm of The Times and how to work with customers in the tide of the booming digital economy: to focus on customer-centered profitable growth.
"Whether it is the integration of various departments, organizational structure adjustment or workflow optimization, the ultimate goal is to be closer to the needs of users and be able to respond positively to the rapidly changing market. Relying on a comprehensive product line and strong technical support, to create greater value for customers is our driving force and direction." General Manager Wu firmly said, "To do subtraction to business development, research and development will move forward, the technical force into product force, focus on application scenarios, focus on quality and customer experience is one of the core work of current STEP. The product quality and customer experience are equally important. Meeting user needs and understanding market trends is one of the key factors for STEP to be recognized by the industry in the future. In the long run, the demand for automation, intelligence and digitalization in China's manufacturing industry will continue to be strong, and STEP's product lines will continue to innovate, accelerate the research and development cycle, deepen the application of technology, and lay a solid foundation for the coming of a new market cycle."
Based on today, focus on the future. China's new economic development model and the promotion of a number of policies have created new opportunities in many industries such as new energy, 5G, consumer electronics and logistics. How to grasp the future market growth opportunities, can not be separated from the market as a leader of Wu's keen insight and forward-looking decisions. "Developing products or solutions that suit customers' needs and have sufficient market value is a key factor for sustainable development of enterprises," said Wu. One of the important reasons for the success of STEP is to actively expand the sunrise industry and continue to work intensively in the fields where it has been experienced for many years. Smart logistics, food and beverage, automobiles, new energy and 3C electronics are key industries for our future efforts."
In 2022, under the guidance of the "customer-centric" development strategy, STEP will focus on the main track and top customers, dig deep market segments, integrate business units to form synergies, coordinate forward-looking product and technology planning, and deeply implement the global marketing layout.
Smart benchmarking stimulates new growth drivers
In 2020, Shanghai STEP Robot Gigafactory, as the only representative of Shanghai robot industry, will become one of the first 20 smart factories in Shanghai. In 2021, the Gigafactory was included in the list of 110 intelligent manufacturing Demonstration Units in 2021 as the exclusive honor of China's robot industry, and as the first "manufacturing robots with robots" intelligent factory completed and put into operation in Shanghai.
According to General Manager Wu, STEP robot Gigafactory has an annual capacity of 10,000 industrial robots. All intelligent manufacturing projects in the factory are developed and integrated by STEP itself. The project uses leading manufacturing technology on a large scale to realize the intelligent and digital manufacturing process. Since the start of production, the number of workers has been reduced by 80% through the mass use of robots, and the one-time pass rate of product testing has increased by 15%; Through the highly efficient and flexible automation technology, the design capacity of 10000 sets/year is realized. Compared with the previous manual operation, the output efficiency per unit area is increased by more than 30%. Through the use of the warehouse management system, the overall inventory level has been reduced by 10% from the original lean inventory.
Since China became the world's largest robot market in 2013, the robot industry has been in the stage of rapid growth for many years. Traditional manipulator used to occupy most of the market, but now the robot system solutions are replacing the new market, replacing the manual to complete the repetitive work is no longer the value of industrial robots, the cross-industry penetration, let the robot demand is rising. The use of intelligent perception, vision and more digital technologies is becoming the norm for robots. STEP's robotic Gigafactory employs a wide range of machine learning, digitization and collaboration solutions, making it a benchmark factory in the robotics industry. With the continuous updating of innovative products and technologies, STEP Gigafactory will continue to make investments to meet market demands, ensure the highest level of production efficiency and flexibility, and realize the transformation to intelligent manufacturing in China.
Closing Remarks
The Chinese market has become a particularly global and high-level competitive market. No matter multinational enterprises or Chinese enterprises, everyone plays the same game and improves together. "If a company is competitive in the Chinese market, it must be competitive in the global market," Mr Wu said. The Chinese market has evolved from a follower of the international market to a co-leader, and is still developing at a high speed. So in the next STEP, STEP's globalization strategy will be gradually implemented, and becoming the world's leading industrial brand is our unswerving goal."
With the profound changes in the industrial market, in the future, STEP anchors "business focus, customer first", not only to provide customers with core "fist" products, but also to promote industrial upgrading with agile innovation, and more in-depth cooperation with partners to create a win-win situation, enabling the upgrading of China's intelligent manufacturing.