Those Years When I Was Forced to Top the Forbes List

Chapter 290 The First Step in Supply Chain Management

Afternoon, outside the Fifth Ring Road.

Economic Development Zone.

This place also has another name, Yizhuang.

The neat rows of silver-gray factory buildings in front of Chen Xuebing resembled a well-organized circuit board.

This is the first time Chen Xuebing has come here since investing in BOE six months ago.

He then discovered that BOE's fifth-generation production line was not as simple as he had imagined; on the contrary, it was quite luxurious and technologically advanced, looking more magnificent and grand than Huawei's campus, a sight to behold.

Something built with billions of dollars is extraordinary.

BOE's reception was rather simple. Recently, BOE's leadership has been quite busy, and only Wang Dongsheng came, but he was very enthusiastic towards Chen Xuebing.

"Mr. Chen! This is so sudden! You should have told me earlier, and I would have sent someone to pick you up from the airport!"

BOE's current situation has changed dramatically, and the person we should thank the most is General Manager Chen.

With a share price of just over five yuan and a growing reputation, many investors have seen BOE's potential and are currently flocking to its doorstep.

Chen Xuebing displayed the composure of an investor in front of Wang Dongsheng, and said with a smile, "You're too kind. I'm here today to bring you orders for the new production line, so you won't lack confidence in it."

"Oh? How many orders?"

Wang Dongsheng was a homebody and was unaware of Chen Xuebing's recent news.

In fact, Chen Xuebing's recent actions have not been reported by name much. He has deliberately suppressed the news about TD3G. Huaqiangbei is not a mainstream propaganda platform. No matter how turbulent the internal situation is, it is almost inaudible to the outside world.

Chen Xuebing didn't reveal anything, but glanced outside and said, "Let's wait a bit."

The two waited for ten minutes at the factory gate before a black Crown pulled up.

A short-haired, capable woman wearing glasses got out of the car and quickly walked over when she saw Chen Xuebing and Wang Dongsheng greeting her.

"President Chen! President Wang!"

"Hello, Mr. Rong." Chen Xuebing shook hands with a faint smile: "You've already seen our new engineering machine, haven't you?"

"I see!"

Rong Xiuli has recently witnessed firsthand the power and influence of this General Manager Chen.

MediaTek hasn't been bothering her lately. She found out that Spreadtrum had managed to defeat the chip giant MediaTek in just three months in Huaqiangbei, all thanks to the support of this Mr. Chen.

The phone that captivated her was also developed by Mr. Chen's company.

"But Mr. Chen, both MediaTek and your chips have increased in price these past few days. What agreement did you reach? The price you're offering me won't change, will it?"

The situation in Turkey has changed drastically. MediaTek and Spreadtrum have monopolized the market, and their agreement to settle the dispute would cause huge market volatility for external parties.

The previous batch of contracts signed by Tianyu at $9.3 were still at the market high, and Tianyu's management complained to Rong Xiuli. Now that the price has been raised to $11, $9.3 has definitely become a price trough.

"Hehe, the market is volatile, so it will probably go up a bit more. But since you didn't betray us before, we won't treat you badly now. We'll raise it by $0.5. I guarantee you'll get a real-time price lower than Bird's."

Chen Xuebing proposed this price, and Rong Xiuli agreed after only two seconds of hesitation. This was because MediaTek and Spreadtrum had been engaged in a price war, and both sides had been starving for too long. This price increase affected almost everyone, with major manufacturers' purchase prices rising to at least $10 or more.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Chen!"

"Mr. Chen, what's going on?" Wang Dongsheng asked, somewhat confused.

"Oh, let me introduce you to Mr. Rong from Tianyu Langtong. You may have seen their Tianyu mobile phones. Their sales reached 500 million in the first three quarters of this year, and recently their sales have skyrocketed. I am optimistic about Tianyu. This year or next year, it will definitely be the sales champion in the mobile phone market."

Tianyu Langtong's headquarters are in Tongzhou, but the screens are sourced from Shenzhen Tianma. Previously, BOE's fifth-generation line mainly focused on laptop and TV screens, so the two companies were not in the same industry.

However, both of them knew about each other's products, and Rong Xiuli had long heard of Wang Dongsheng's reputation, so they shook hands politely.

Wang Dongsheng had many questions in his mind, but seeing that the person had already arrived, he raised his hand and said:
"Shall we go inside and talk?"

"This is our array process! We deposit thin-film transistor arrays on an 1100mm×1300mm glass substrate and use semiconductor technologies such as photolithography and etching to create precision circuits." This step of sputtering metal and semiconductor thin films is equivalent to first laying out the circuit materials, and then using photolithography technology, like photo printing, to "expose" the circuit pattern onto the thin film, and then using chemical solutions to etch out the fine lines.

"This is the cell assembly process! The array substrate and the color filter substrate are aligned and bonded together, liquid crystal material is injected and sealed to form a liquid crystal cell."

This step involves precisely bonding two processed glass plates: one is an array glass with circuitry, and the other is a colored glass with red, green, and blue color blocks. Liquid crystal material is then injected, much like making a sandwich.

"That's the module assembly process! It involves installing the LCD cell, backlight, driver IC, and other components!"

This step involves attaching the driver chip to the edge of the panel like a staple, and then adding accessories such as backlights and a casing to turn it into a ready-to-use display.

Chen Xuebing asked questions when he didn't understand, and watched slowly while Wang Dongsheng explained.

Throughout the introduction, most of the operations were done by machines.

"The level of automation is very high," Chen Xuebing nodded in approval.

Rong Xiuli was also learning on the side; it was a rare opportunity to visit such a factory.

“That’s for sure!” Wang Dongsheng laughed. “Our alignment precision reaches the micron level, and almost all of our production processes need to be completed in a cleanroom. The era of manual etching in semiconductors passed thirty years ago.”

"What's the difference between OLED and this?" Chen Xuebing was still thinking about OLED.

"We use a-Si amorphous silicon backplane, requiring only one TFT switch per pixel! OLEDs must use low-temperature polycrystalline silicon backplanes, forming high-mobility transistors through laser crystallization technology, requiring 4-6 TFTs to drive a single pixel! The electron mobility is hundreds of times higher, resulting in a faster response speed!"

"The light-emitting structures are also different. OLEDs use an evaporation machine to 'evaporate' organic light-emitting materials onto a substrate to form self-emissive pixels, while LCDs rely on the deflection of liquid crystal molecules to control the amount of light transmitted through the backlight, requiring the additional assembly of a backlight module. This is what you meant by the screen being thinner and wider!"

"In terms of packaging, OLEDs require an oxygen-free environment."

Simply put, LCDs are dominated by physical properties, while OLEDs are dominated by chemical properties!

When Wang Dongsheng first met Chen Xuebing, he discovered that Chen liked to get to the bottom of technical matters and insisted on understanding them thoroughly. So Wang tried to explain things in the simplest way possible.

Chen Xuebing was also very satisfied.

He now understands that the pixel arrangement patterns he saw in his previous life, such as diamond, rubber duck, and pearl arrangements, were all in the array manufacturing stage. He needs to study them in more depth to see if this information is useful, and then find a suitable opportunity to give Wang Dongsheng some pointers.

However, the issue of control must be resolved first.

"Mr. Wang, the stock price is still one yuan short, and there's less than a month left."

Chen Xuebing brought up the original board seat performance-based agreement.

"Hey! You mean this!" Wang Dongsheng was already prepared: "Send someone over anytime! We can add three board seats and a CFO! We don't need any performance-based agreements!"

"Hehe, there's no need for new ones." Chen Xuebing realized that he seemed honest on the surface, but was actually trying to take advantage of loopholes.

The agreement stipulated a nine-member board of directors, with three seats. If he really wanted to make a decision on something important, he only needed to win over two directors.

If new seats are added, the number should be at least 13 (an odd number), which would make a completely different difference.

"We will fulfill the contract once BOE's stock price reaches six yuan. I will also help you sort out BOE's financial and profit direction."

It wouldn't be difficult for him to push BOE to six yuan within a month.

Of course, if BOE creates obstacles during this period, things will become extremely difficult, and its next approach will not be cooperation, but acquisition.

BOE is a major supplier in building the mobile phone empire, and once integrated into the supply chain, its financial sales will change dramatically, and its market value will skyrocket.

He will also see his first significant profit by the end of March next year, but the exit of his equity stake will weaken his control.

He came today to probe Wang Dongsheng's attitude.

Of course, as a partner, you can't force someone to cooperate without offering something in return; directly threatening them would be disheartening.

Rong Xiuli was the first sweet treat he gave to BOE.

(End of this chapter)