The Fiery Era: Becoming an Industrial Giant

Chapter 197 Ministry Summary Conference
The next day, as soon as the Second Machine Tool Plant started operations, everyone could feel that the atmosphere in the plant had changed.

The excellent results motivated all the workers to work even harder.

When the experienced workers arrive, they usually smoke and pour water first, and chat with their coworkers during the rare morning break.

But today, many people not only arrived early, but also started the machines as soon as they arrived and got to work without saying a word.

Yesterday, the factory's loudspeaker broadcast a message of shared honor and disgrace for everyone. With such excellent results and glory, they naturally want to maintain it and continue to build the Second Machine Tool Plant into the best in the country.

However, the results of this Canton Fair have made the Second Machine Tool Plant number one in the country, and even in the Asian region, there are few that can surpass them.

To be frank, there are only a handful of industrial powers in Asia, and the only one that can compete with China is the rapidly developing China after the war.

Industrial development in other Asian countries is not good. A few countries in the same bloc are doing alright, but they are only partially developed industries supported by Russia and do not have a complete industrial system.

The high-precision machine tools produced by the Second Machine Tool Plant changed the perception of China in many countries.

A few years ago, they defeated a coalition of seventeen countries, and now they've brought out world-class high-precision machine tools, and at such a low price.

Many countries no longer consider China a poor agricultural country, and have therefore made considerable contact with China behind the scenes.

Diplomatic relations were not established immediately, but opinions were exchanged and some foreign trade orders were signed; driven by heavy industrial products, nearly $400 million in foreign trade orders were completed throughout the year.

This will greatly alleviate domestic pressure, and with more foreign exchange, we can purchase many supplies.

Foreign countries impose blockades on them for high-end technologies and some controlled machinery and equipment, but they don't impose much blockade on raw materials such as grain and iron ore.

If you want to buy, you can still buy, but the country used to be very poor and lacked foreign exchange, so you couldn't buy much.

As long as agricultural resources can keep up, the country can develop its industry rapidly; moreover, if it were to exchange these machine tool technologies for chemical production lines, Zhou Zhiqiang would definitely be willing.

However, they have not yet opened up the international situation. In the eyes of other countries, they are still in cahoots with the Russians. Even if the two sides have disputes, the nature of their countries has not changed.

Perhaps we should wait until they completely break with Russia, or even show signs of war, before introducing chemical production lines.

If Zhou Zhiqiang were to dedicate himself to research, he could certainly achieve great things in chemical engineering.

With his current learning ability and the help he has gathered in research and development, it may only take him three or four years to develop something from scratch in the field of chemical engineering and finally achieve results.

However, this is still a long time. In three or four years, he might be able to bring semi-automated production lines to China and then move towards fully automated workshops.

It's better to wait and import chemical production lines from abroad; in comparison, the heavy industry sector is developing better.

Zhou Zhiqiang arrived at the factory in the morning and continued to develop the CNC system module design in the office for a while. When it was almost time, he packed up his desk and left.

It was almost noon, and he planned to go somewhere else to look around, while also waiting for his son and nephew to arrive.

So Zhou Zhiqiang headed towards Professor Yu's group's office to find out about the progress of the servo motor.

I also asked them if they had received their meal vouchers.

When Zhou Zhiqiang arrived at the office of the Tsinghua University student group, he learned during a casual conversation that everyone had received meal vouchers from the factory office, and only then did he feel relieved.

Professor Yu and the others congratulated Zhou Zhiqiang, saying, "Zhiqiang, your Second Machine Tool Factory is really amazing. It's not like there weren't factories that exported machine tools to other countries before."

"But for your factory to secure such a large order and sell so many machine tools in just one year is truly unprecedented."

"Haha, Professor Yu, stop flattering me. It's all related to the situation in our country."

After laughing, Zhou Zhiqiang explained, "If the price weren't so low, they wouldn't have bought it at all; if the price of machine tools in our country were the same as that in the US and Europe..."
Even if our country's machine tools are better, they still won't buy so many.

To put it bluntly, the reason they're willing to buy so many machine tools is because they believe it will be very beneficial to them.

If there's no benefit involved, even countries in the same camp won't give you face.

Regardless, it's a good thing that domestically developed and manufactured machine tools are being accepted by other countries.

Zhou Zhiqiang and Professor Yu hadn't been talking for long when Zhang Yaoguo knocked on the door from the outside. However, after the door opened, he didn't come in but instead gestured to Zhou Zhiqiang from the outside.

No outsiders are allowed in any of the offices of the CNC project team. This was a rule that Zhou Zhiqiang established before the research even began.

When he was at Factory 190, Director Liu never went to the technical department.

The same was true at the Second Machine Tool Plant; if Zhang Yaoguo needed to find Zhou Zhiqiang, he had no choice but to call him out.

After Zhou Zhiqiang came out, Zhang Yaoguo said, "Boss, the security guard at the factory gate just told me that your family has arrived, and I just brought them to your office."

"Okay, thank you for your help, Yaoguo."

Zhou Zhiqiang glanced at his watch; it was ten minutes to lunchtime, so he decided to go back to get his lunchbox and prepare to get his food.

However, Zhang Yaoguo suddenly spoke up: "Boss, are you planning to go get food? How about I go for you, or you can go back to your office and wait."

"Okay. Then I'll trouble you, Yaoguo."

"No trouble at all, it's just a small matter."

Zhang Yaoguo quickly replied that there was nothing wrong with helping the leader get meals, and besides, Zhou Zhiqiang treated him very well. Last year during the Spring Festival, he even gave him a lot of tickets because he worked overtime.

Running errands is nothing these days.

"Okay, thank you for your trouble. In addition to the meat dishes, please order two more servings of vegetable dishes and steamed buns."

After Zhou Zhiqiang finished speaking, he gave Zhang Yaoguo two more meal tickets and some money. There were four of them eating lunch today, and three meat dishes would definitely not be enough.

After receiving the meal ticket, Zhang Yaoguo immediately went back to get his lunchbox. He knew there would be a long queue for the lunch, so he needed to get there early.

Zhou Zhiqiang walked towards his office and saw his son and nephew sitting obediently on the sofa, with his mother-in-law sitting beside them.

When Mei Xiuxue saw Zhou Zhiqiang push the door open and come in, she smiled and said, "Zhiqiang, you're here."

"Yes, Mom, I sent my assistant to get the food. They'll be back in a bit."

After Zhou Zhiqiang finished speaking, he walked over and patted his son and nephew on the head.

He wasn't worried at all about leaving the children with his mother-in-law. Both children were very well-mannered, and now even Guo Yuting hardly takes care of them anymore, leaving them all to his mother-in-law.

A short while later, Zhang Yaoguo brought over the lunchboxes. There were six lunchboxes in total, filled with plenty of food.

Zhang Yaoguo borrowed a few lunchboxes from the general affairs department. Upon hearing that Zhou Zhiqiang needed them, the department immediately gave him four extra lunchboxes. The lunchboxes contained two servings of braised rabbit, one serving of spicy rabbit, two vegetable dishes, and six steamed buns.

Each lunchbox was packed full, enough to feed the whole family.

"Thanks, Yaoguo. Have you gotten your food yet?"

"I'm done too, I'm right outside."

"Then you should go eat too, I'm all done here."

Zhou Zhiqiang waved his hand, telling Zhang Yaoguo to hurry up and eat. He then opened his lunchbox and ate with his mother-in-law, son, and nephew.

Zhou Zhiqiang might not be able to finish all three meal tickets by himself, so he asked his two children to come to the factory and eat with him.

I left right after lunch, so it didn't affect the factory's production.

------

After entering December, the temperature in Beijing dropped sharply.

Several heavy snowfalls occurred within a month, covering the houses in Beijing with a layer of white frost.

Looking around, the city of Beijing seemed to have turned into a 'white city'.

However, a good snowfall is a sign of a bountiful year; with heavy snow this year, there might be a good harvest next year.

Factory No. 190, Technical Department.

"This is our design goal. We can't just think about achieving simple functions, otherwise the CNC system we develop and manufacture will not be able to handle complex machining."

The functions must be modularized and grouped to achieve more powerful computing capabilities, thus enabling more complex machine tool processing.

After summarizing all the proposed solutions, Zhou Zhiqiang rejected some ideas and finally settled on a mature, production-ready integrated circuit solution.

"Team leader, nearly a hundred logic gates. Won't that consume too much power?"

"A larger size is fine; processing capacity is paramount. Even if power consumption is high, production efficiency is still the priority."

Zhou Zhiqiang paused for a moment before continuing, "Compared to the previous machine tool projects, this CNC machine tool can produce the amount of work that other machine tools can do in one day."

But its power consumption is only twice that of other machine tools. Do you think it's a gain or a loss?

"Moreover, the power consumption is unavoidable; our current lithography process can't manufacture such small circuits. Once the lithography process is optimized and improved in the future, integrated circuits can be redesigned."

After Zhou Zhiqiang finished speaking, he looked around again, and seeing that no one had any objections, he said, "Then let's start manufacturing according to the previously arranged tasks. There's not much time left until the New Year, so comrades, we need to hurry."

The Lunar New Year is earlier this year, it will be in mid-January.

All things considered, they only have about twenty days left. If they can manufacture their first medium-scale integrated circuit, they will be considered successful.

If we can manufacture it before the end of the year, then we can also manufacture the CNC machine tool within twelve months.

This is truly a miracle for them.

Although it only took twelve months, they only rested for five or six hours a day, but their total working hours were almost equivalent to the working hours of research teams in other countries for about two years.

It was through continuous overtime work to meet deadlines that such miracles were created.

After assigning the tasks, Zhou Zhiqiang approached Zhao Chenghui privately and said to him, "Comrade Chenghui, I have to leave for a while. The department is having a meeting today, so please keep an eye on the group."

"Okay, go ahead."

After agreeing, Zhao Chenghui said with a smile, "Comrade Zhiqiang, you're going to become famous in the ministry this time. Putting aside everything else, I estimate that no factory can compare to your Second Machine Tool Plant this year."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Zhiqiang smiled and said, "It's all thanks to the support of the ministry; otherwise, how could we have produced so many?"
"I can't say anymore, time is running out, I need to get to the ministry quickly."

After saying that, Zhou Zhiqiang walked towards the gate of Factory 190. He had already notified his driver to pick him up.

He doesn't need to worry about the CNC team in the near future. The functional module design of the integrated circuit has been finalized, and all that's left is to proceed with manufacturing steadily.

The ministry holds a meeting every year, mainly to bring together the directors of factories directly under the ministry and some factories that are developing rapidly and shoulder important production tasks.

The factory managers who came to Beijing for meetings were almost all from factories that ranked in the top dozens in terms of output value.

With heavy responsibilities come more production tasks, resulting in higher output value.

Zhou Zhiqiang also came last year, but at that time the Second Machine Tool Plant had just started to develop and had taken on tasks from the Second Ministry of Machine Building, as well as some orders from Russia.

It wasn't as dazzling as it is this year, so back then he just listened to the leaders' speeches and didn't communicate with the factory directors from other factories.

This year is hard to say. We secured foreign trade orders worth tens of millions, and our output value this year is over 60 million. Next year it will definitely exceed 80 million.

As far as he knows, there are few factories in China that can generate such high output value.

After Zhou Zhiqiang arrived at the ministry, he was quickly led to a relatively large room in the ministry, where tables and chairs were set up, and there was a nameplate on the table.

Zhou Zhiqiang was the fifth in the first row. After finding his seat, he sat down and waited for the meeting to begin.

A moment later, someone sat down next to him. Zhou Zhiqiang turned his head and saw that it was an acquaintance. He said, "Director Wang, it's been a long time."

Sitting next to him was Wang Zhijun, the director of the No. 1 Machine Tool Factory in Beijing. When the No. 1 Machine Tool Factory was assigned production tasks, Director Wang came to their No. 2 Machine Tool Factory. At that time, Zhou Zhiqiang chatted with Director Wang for a while.

"Director Zhou, thanks to the generosity of your Second Machine Tool Factory, our factory will also have good results next year. But this year, we will be left far behind by your factory."

After Director Wang finished speaking, he glanced back at the other factory directors in the room, and then continued in a low voice, "Not just our factory, Director Zhou, look at the expressions on the other people's faces."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Zhiqiang turned around and glanced at the crowd. Most of the people who had come had a heavy, frowning expression on their faces, and very few of them had a smile on their face.

Factory Director Wang added, "Not many factories can maintain growth. Only your factory and Dafeng Agricultural Machinery Equipment Factory can maintain growth. As far as I know, only your two factories can."

Other factories are somewhat sluggish, with production tasks significantly reduced; it's uncertain whether this will continue next year.

However, their factory will be able to increase its production tasks next year, thanks to the fact that the Second Machine Tool Plant's production efficiency is not high, and it cannot handle so many foreign trade orders all at once, so some of them were allocated to their factory.

If it weren't for this good news, Director Wang felt that his expression today would be just like everyone else's.

(End of this chapter)