Qoros: The third type of joint venture

In this year's Dragon Boat Festival at the company's internal audition, Volker Steinwascher and his companions easily won the first place. Until then, many opinionated internal employees knew that the company’s vice chairman was also It is the world champion of the three-time Formula 1 racing.

The German, who was nearly seventy years old, still exudes vitality, and has always been passionate about challenges. He himself will often drive his own Porsche 911 sports car at speeds exceeding 300 km/h on the German highway. Speeding.

Before coming to Guanzhi, Shi Qingren served as vice president of Volkswagen North America, and later entered the senior management level of Volkswagen's headquarters in Germany. During his tenure, he had been responsible for a magnesium alloy project of Volkswagen. He met with Idan Ofer, president of the Israeli group. Willing to enter the automotive industry, he first joined the Israel Group after retirement and was responsible for the planning of the automotive project. Later in the rounds of negotiations with Chery, the project was gradually materialized.

In 2007, Chery Automobile and the Israel Group formed a joint venture to form the current concept car. At the very beginning, the intentions of both parties were not completely unified and there were differences. However, after repeated preliminary investigation and demonstration, a bolder idea gradually surfaced.

The two sides redefined the core competitiveness of the new company. "What do you think of Apple's core competitiveness?" This is Shi Qingren's most asked question. An entire vehicle has a lot of features to consider, from driving parameters to NVH (quiet, vibration) including driving comfort, safety, and fuel consumption. All of these technology supplier partners already have, and it is not too hard to obtain. What is really difficult is to "integrate these technologies and their corresponding core teams." To this end, Kiosk decided to outsource non-core businesses such as engineering development to leading international partners, while focusing more on consumer research, product definition, system integration, and marketing.

At the same time, Chery and the Israeli group come from the automotive industry, and one is outside the automotive industry. This type of shareholder structure is not like an ordinary car joint venture company. It does not create conflict of interests because the shareholders share the same dreams and struggle against each other. Although Kuanzhi is a joint venture, brand ownership and technical intellectual property are all in China.

But this way, how to define Guanzhi Motor Company itself has become a problem. The existing automobile enterprise framework has been difficult to pretend to be under it. It is neither the usual concept of "inviting in" or "going out" in a joint venture, nor is it in the traditional sense of autonomy, but is detached between various traditional borders. It not only broke the model of Chinese joint ventures, but also subverted the model of traditional auto companies.

China has tried various paths in vigorously developing the automobile industry, and has also gone through some detours. The comprehensive competitiveness of domestically-produced cars still retreats in various market segments. Is it that Guanzhi is a new group of idealists? Test site? Can they make a good car?

Why start a new business?

Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery, and Idan Ofer, the number one person of Israel Group, are car lovers. Idan Ofer is a collector of super sports cars. After watching the car prototype, he even came to China to try a car. People will not have dreams and ambitions for making cars.

"If the two sides invested 15 billion yuan and only a few thousand employees for a pure ideal, then this ideal may be harmful to others and the outcome will be difficult to handle." An industry veteran has analyzed this, not to mention that Chery has shareholders. While the Israeli group is a listed company, all need to follow a strict regulatory regime.

In fact, at the same time that the Israeli group approached its partners in many ways, Chery also quietly contacted foreign companies such as Fiat and Chrysler, but both were negotiated and defeated due to the difference in the original strategic interests of both parties.

Views of the two sides of the joint venture's ideas, at the beginning there were some dislocations. The original idea of ​​the Israel Group was to take full advantage of China's low-cost manufacturing advantages, combined with European automotive core technology concepts and knowledge, and Chery had always wanted to be a car company that was different from the domestic mainstream joint venture model, hoping to eventually go out. Especially in the technical breakthrough.

“Unfortunately, the conclusion we evaluated at the time was that no matter what the car was made on the Chinese market, whether it was at that time or today, I am afraid that nothing could be really exported to the western market.” Shi Qingren once worked in a foreign joint venture company. The director, knowing that in the current joint venture model, it is impossible for the foreign party to “give people fishing”, which makes the domestically produced cars in a low-effect cycle for a long time, and many performance and safety indicators are difficult to meet with international standards.

In the common domestic joint venture model, because of the intentions of shareholders on both sides, although a lot of compromises and conflicts have been commercially successful, they have been developed in the past 20 years. China is still only a foundry of foreign-funded enterprises, in addition to the controlling stakes. In addition, the Chinese side has to bear a large amount of technical licensing fees, and the brand and technology ownership are still firmly controlled by foreign parties.

In the short-term and fast-paced mode developed in the 1990s, the competition among domestic cars, joint venture vehicles, and imported cars is like Tian Ji's race. Everyone plays their own comparative advantage and avoids their respective shortcomings. During the period, domestic cars survived under the cover of poor cost, but when the joint venture's products began to sink, Tian Ji’s horse race was likely to fail as a tactic.

For these, the shareholders of Quanta made repeated evaluations and finally decided to abandon the idea of ​​using Chery's platform to build products of the joint venture company, redevelop new platforms and develop new models. This means that management will face a Real entrepreneurship.

In order to create a brand-new platform, Qoros needs to carry out a brand-new transformation from the personnel reserve, management structure, product development, supply chain model, and even the entire enterprise operation mode, and synergy and integration from the system.

Shareholders negotiated to decide on additional investment. At the same time, the share ratio of Chery and Israeli group shareholders changed from 55:45 to 50:50. In 2011, the production base of Guanzhi Auto officially settled in Changshu, Jiangsu, and the first phase of annual production capacity was 150,000 vehicles. The first product is a mid-size car and is planned to be listed on the Chinese and Western European markets in 2013; three new products and one electric vehicle will be launched in the next two years; all product standards will meet European automotive quality, safety and emission standards.

Rely on what to build a car

In early 2000, a domestic joint venture once spent 400 million yuan to copy the production line of a bumper from foreign countries intact. At that time, the foreign standard was that there were less than 3 dust particles visible on a bumper. However, Although the production technology and layers of quality control measures were copied abroad, the number of dust particles finally detected on the produced bumper still reached 10 or more.

An industry insider who has worked for a joint venture for several years told reporters that this phenomenon is very common in joint ventures. “The exact same equipment, exactly the same drawings, and the biggest problems and the most It is energy-consuming how to do adaptive improvement and optimization."

Domestic oil products, road conditions, and even air quality are different. All of them require that car companies introduce foreign technologies while improving and localizing them. For example, domestic engines need to be more tolerant to China's oil products. These are just application-level improvements. At present, most of the localization work done by domestically produced cars is focused on the application level. This includes the extension of body length.

Even more difficult is to improve performance. However, this piece has so far had little involvement in the country. Domestic companies have never stopped trying various paths in the hope of introducing technology, digesting, and absorbing the road to self-development. However, they have not gone through. For example, acquisitions are the most direct way. They can be found later, even if they are Drawings and technology can also be used to produce first-generation products, and because of the lack of continuous improvement capabilities, second-generation products have become problems.

“Improve the import technology alone can not solve the problem, because the car is not a technology, in fact, build a car is a real inner knowledge of the crowd. If you only know how to create, do not know rely on the introduction of technology or do not know how to make a The only thing that can really be introduced into a car is talent and knowledge.” Shi Qingren said bluntly.

Can really be called a car builder, at least in the R & D field has accumulated a series of follow-up experience of several generations of cars, a generation of cars in research and development will take 5 to 6 years, to look at several generations of products, at least a dozen Twenty years of work experience. At present, domestic companies do not even know "how pigs run without knowing" in certain core technology areas. This is not a shortcut. The enterprises that will really make cars will not only have such requirements for individual talents, but also need a team to complete the difficult system coordination and cooperation in multiple fields.

The executives of Guanzhi Director are all through the directional search of headhunting. One third of them are foreigners, mostly concentrated in R&D, project management, and engineering manufacturing. Chinese executives mostly focus on supporting areas such as procurement, finance, and human resources. Shi Qingren has always been full of confidence in his team. “We have introduced every important management position and have rich experience in building cars. They have at least three complete vehicle manufacturing and development processes.”

Guanzhi's top management team really experienced the glory of each other. Guan Ge, the chief designer of Guanzhi Automobile, was originally the design director of BMW MINI. He was responsible for the tuning of the entire vehicle. It was originally a BMW vehicle performance and chassis. The chief engineer is Mao Jie from Swedish Saab's total vehicle integration chief engineer, Debide from GE China's electric engineering manager, and more senior executives from Opel, Jaguar Land Rover, Kearney, McKinsey, and Fiat.

All of these will be based on the analysis of the needs of the two major markets in China and Europe, will be the goal of refining the vehicle into the product definition and indicators in their respective areas, and continue to optimize the control, and other companies have gone through the detours, the accumulation of secrets And experience has been exchanged for at least 5-6 years. They have already been integrated into the brains and blood of these engineers.

Unlike ordinary Chinese-foreign joint ventures, Qoros Automotive is completely independent and will have its own technology and intellectual property rights. "We use technologies from around the world and take the best of them."

Radical innovation

Car has always been a relatively closed and conservative industry. The electronic products are presented in the car as a completely different life cycle than the consumer market. The process of their disappearance is so long: CD players that are hard to find on the market are still active on some models; they have already withdrawn. The cassette player of the historical stage can also obtain major archaeological discoveries if it is found in the car.

The automobile industry is a capital-intensive and talent-intensive industry. Since the amount of investment in the early stage is particularly large, companies will not let a car run for 6 to 10 years, do not dilute the cost, and make profits. It will not eliminate a generation of products. The threshold for the entry of foreign forces is even greater, so in fact the auto industry does not have sufficient competition, and it will not produce true incentive innovations.

From the outset, Qoros did not intend to do it again from the perspective of a century-long development of auto companies, but adopted a bolder, even somewhat radical approach. They adopted an olive-based architecture that has never been tried by the auto industry. The upper management is similar to the average car company, but it allows the backbone of the enterprise to be concentrated in the middle of the senior managers and managers who are responsible for decision-making. The overwhelming majority of the functions of the underlying business operations are outsourced.

Attempting to introduce external forces is the biggest difference between the traditional and the automotive companies. Shi Qingren believes that the true core competence of the auto industry is how to integrate so many parts together. This is the true core knowledge. These things are already inside the company, in the blood of those core personnel, Yes, this is where the true core competitiveness of Guanzhi is.

To this end, Qoros Automotive seeks top suppliers globally. At present, 95% are from top companies in the world, including Magna Steyr, TRW, Continental, Bosch and Valeo. Through collaboration with suppliers, Qoros has set up three design centers around the world, located in Munich, Germany, Graz, Austria, and Shanghai, China.

In the office building of Guanzhi’s most prosperous district in Pudong, Shanghai, the walls are covered with various task bars. Look closely to find out that in addition to the director-level executives are mostly foreigners, some key technical managers, even if it is a painting The director of the workshop is also an experienced person from abroad.

The cooperation between Qoros and suppliers is also different from domestic joint ventures. The same supplier, the joint venture, buys more parts and buys its production capacity, because the products are already owned by the foreign party and can be used for localization and matching. Guanzhi uses an in-depth cooperation method. It will contract with a project team of the other party, and a team of engineers will define a car, set product attributes, balance decisions, and plan the direction of improvement to determine the final direction of the product. And important attributes, the other party's contract team to coordinate production, customized according to requirements. For example, chassis performance, generalized engineering research and development within the entire package, a narrow sense of engineering research and development, is the internal decision-making key attributes, outsourcing customization.

At present, there are more than 400 internal employees in Guanzhi, and the project team with external contracted suppliers has reached 3,000 or so, that is to say, the manpower invested in one platform is in line with other car companies, but the operation The pattern is completely different.

To let an internal team of hundreds of people to shake the external dozens of times to jointly complete the collaboration and integration work, an efficient management and operation mechanism is indispensable.

In the Qoro Management Framework, there is no VP level, and the heads of all business units report directly to the highest level. Following the appearance of the prototype car, two phases of testing have been completed. At the recent Yixing track test site, the company was up to chairman Guo Qian, vice chairman Shi Qingren, and almost all executive directors of the executives were in the same position. Not only that, the following engineers responsible for specific adjustments, including related The supplier's engineers are also on site. Shi Ke, who is responsible for vehicle performance and chassis tuning from BMW, will also personally test the car, listen to the tester's report, and make a quick decision on the spot. The supplier can get the improvement data at the first time. In the next two weeks, New prototypes that reflect the test results will be manufactured.

The internal communication meeting of Qoros is also open. All related personnel, regardless of grade, can participate at any time and everyone has the power to express it. As an automobile company, Guanzhi hopes to be as compact as an IT company or an Internet company. It is not only a production lean, but also an organizational structure that is lean, physically flat, and culturally classless.

With this talent structure, management mechanism, and outsourcing model, the process of perception is accelerating, and new things can be tried in the fastest time.

Unlike traditional companies that already have a lot of investment, Guanzhi does not have all kinds of defined burdens. In the vision of Shi Qingren, in the near future, the new Qoros car will integrate the performance of German cars, the comfort and convenience of Japanese cars, and integrate the latest technologies and ideas of the Internet industry.

On a recent day, Shi Qingren limped into the office of Guan Zhizhi in Shanghai. What many people did not know was that he had just completed a vein surgery in Germany just three or four days ago. For people who are near to old age, if it is simply a test, it is not necessary to be so desperate.