The Fiery Era: Becoming an Industrial Giant

Chapter 202 Awakening and Praise
"lead."

After knocking and entering, Zhang Yaoguo went to Zhou Zhiqiang's desk and reported, "The ministry sent some supplies, and the logistics department has received them and put them in the warehouse. Here is the list."

After Zhou Zhiqiang took the list and looked at it, he realized that it was a reward that Director Ren had promised to give to the workers.

The fifteen bicycles and ten sewing machines were far from what Zhou Zhiqiang had expected.

However, considering the current price of bicycles, it's really skyrocketing.

Bicycles are now priced at over 400 yuan, and sewing machines are over 600 yuan; the aftereffects of iron smelting have made civilian industrial products very expensive.

It will probably take until the end of next year or the year after to gradually decrease.

The company provided a full range of gifts, including kettles, cups, towels, and soap. Zhou Zhiqiang calculated that at least a thousand people in the factory would receive rewards this time.

It's impossible to satisfy everyone in the factory, but it's already quite good that over a thousand people can receive prizes.

"It's less than half of what I expected, but oh well, let it be."

After signing the list, Zhou Zhiqiang handed it back to Zhang Yaoguo and said, "There are quite a few of these things, plus the rabbit fur scarves and gloves that have been stored in the warehouse, and the small items that the factory has bought with its own funds."

"Even with this arrangement, thousands of workers can receive something tangible for the Lunar New Year."

"Yaoguo, give this to Deputy Factory Director Sun and have him meet with the union to come up with a reward distribution plan as soon as possible."

The principle is to prioritize frontline model workers and production pacesetters, while also considering the needs of employees' families facing difficulties. The funds must be distributed at the factory-wide employee meeting so that everyone can have a good New Year.

"I remember the logistics department is going to harvest another batch of mushrooms in a couple of days? Let's not put them in storage then, let's just distribute them to all the workers in the factory."

Regarding logistics matters, he only needs to offer one solution; the deputy factory director can handle the rest.

There's a lot to do at the end of the year. If there aren't any problems with the CNC team, then Zhou Zhiqiang will have to prioritize dealing with the Second Machine Tool Plant.

The training was also handed over to others. Now, Factory 190 has more than 200 apprentices on duty, and they are all technicians who have learned semiconductor technology production. The factory's production efficiency has more than doubled.

As the year draws to a close, he, the factory manager, becomes increasingly busy.

The factory director responsibility system gives the factory director a lot of power, but he also has to shoulder a lot of responsibility. If the factory is not developing well or if there are any problems with the workers, it is the factory director's responsibility.

Strictly speaking, this year is still a disastrous year, but the Second Machine Tool Plant has done quite well.

Although the New Year's goods prepared for each worker were still only five catties of flour and half a catty of meat, enough to make only one meal of dumplings.

But there are many other rewards. Aren't these twenty-five bicycle sewing machines enough to make the factory workers happy?

After a while.

Deputy Leader Wu also called, expressing his sincere pleasure at Zhou Zhiqiang's awareness and praising him for a while.

He also told Zhou Zhiqiang that although the economy is now a planned economy, each factory has a very strong sense of self-protection.

We don't want other factories to learn how to produce the machine tools that we develop and manufacture in our own factory.

Liaoyang Machine Tool Factory is a precedent. They were the first machine tool factory to receive technical assistance from Russian experts. The factory has a total of six types of machine tools, including those that were copied and those that were independently developed.

After the ministry learned of this, it wanted Liaoyang Machine Tool Factory to help other machine tool factories learn the production process; however, Liaoyang Machine Tool Factory pleaded and begged, saying that they had finally learned the process with great difficulty, and that they were severely short-staffed and could not send anyone.
In the end, they didn't teach everyone; instead, they sent technicians to teach three people the production process of imitating the Russian bear machine tool.

Forcing the order is one way to get Liaoyang Technology Factory to hand over all of its machine tool production processes.

But this caused morale to plummet within the Liaoyang Machine Tool Factory.

Moreover, at that time, everyone was encouraged to develop independently and let a hundred flowers bloom, so the Ministry of Machine Building could not go against the spirit and instructions from above.

The Second Machine Tool Plant initially focused on copying the Russian planer, but lacked the technological research and development capabilities to learn from it. Despite this, it blindly expanded the production of planers. This led to Zhou Zhiqiang being appointed as the director of the Second Machine Tool Plant.

"Zhiqiang, to be honest, I didn't expect you to be so generous in engaging in technical exchanges with the First Machine Tool Factory."

"When you brought up the production task before, I felt you might do it, so I asked Comrade Aihua to ask you indirectly. I didn't expect you to agree so readily." Deputy Leader Wu on the other end of the phone said with emotion, "Those foreign exchange-earning machine tools and CNC machine tools, there is no doubt that your factory deserves the most credit."

Moreover, with so many export orders, your factory benefits as well. Even if you vacate the contract a few years later, no one would say anything. But now it seems your vision was too high; you were looking at the whole country.

"Leader, industrial development should be carried out simultaneously across the country. Now that we have good machine tools, we should naturally supply them to industries all over the country."

But relying on just one machine tool factory like ours is definitely not enough. The involvement of the First Machine Tool Plant will also alleviate our burden.

Zhou Zhiqiang paused for a moment when he said this, and then continued, "If we're talking about personal motives, then I definitely have some."

"If both of our machine tool factories produce CNC machine tools, and we have special foreign trade tasks, then you'll have to let our factory participate in the Canton Fair."

The special foreign trade order task was to use advanced industrial products like CNC machine tools to open diplomatic doors. If they wanted to buy CNC machine tools, I would agree to some conditions.

The conditions aren't unreasonable; everything from recognizing China to issuing a joint statement on cooperation is negotiable.

These conditions are much simpler than buying CNC machine tools from Aramco, which is truly exploiting smaller and developing countries.

In comparison, buying CNC machine tools from them is much simpler.

Moreover, Zhou Zhiqiang was also striving for this opportunity because the factory would earn more if it exported.

The supply of machine tools to the domestic market is a planned task, and the value of machine tools under planned tasks is fixed.

The prices of machine tools that generate foreign exchange through exports are more flexible, allowing the second machine tool factory to earn more money, which can then be used to provide welfare benefits to the workers at the end of the year.

"Of course, I can promise you right now. If there are any foreign trade exhibition tasks, the ministry will only recommend your Second Machine Tool Plant."

"Thank you so much, boss."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Zhiqiang smiled and said, "Actually, Director Wang and I had already discussed it a couple of days ago. He would first send technicians to our factory for learning and exchange, and then our factory would send people over to provide guidance."

We'll start by producing coordinate boring machines and universal grinding machines. Once our factory is familiar with the production processes for CNC machine tools, we'll also deliver them to the First Machine Tool Plant through this same technical exchange method.

Zhou Zhiqiang paused for a moment before continuing, "One finger can't support everything; only when all five fingers are in a palm can they support the sky. Leader, I have that much awareness."

Besides his awareness, Zhou Zhiqiang also felt that sticking to a CNC machine tool was nothing special.

Others may not know, but surely he, the developer and chief engineer, knows that the CNC machine tool he is developing uses semi-finished medium-scale integrated circuits in its CNC system.

The photolithography process is too outdated and does not meet the standards. Although it is much better than the "jumbo" CNC machine with electron tubes, there is still a lot of room for improvement and development.

In the future, Zhou Zhiqiang will lead the Second Machine Tool Plant to develop and produce more CNC machine tools, including five-axis linkage CNC and so on.

Why cling to a single CNC machine tool now?

He didn't just stop working after developing and manufacturing this. With his abilities, why would he be afraid of not being able to produce new industrial products?
Zhou Zhiqiang will only worry about the workers getting tired, never about them not having anything to produce. He is going to build a blue ocean of industry.

Finally, Deputy Leader Wu praised Zhou Zhiqiang a few more times and told him that the ministry had also given him New Year's gifts today before hanging up the phone.

As for what kind of New Year's goods, Deputy Leader Wu didn't explain clearly. Zhou Zhiqiang pressed for details, but Deputy Leader Wu didn't seem to care at all.

"These leaders are quite good at creating little surprises."

After hanging up the phone, Zhou Zhiqiang continued to work on the factory's affairs. As for the New Year's gifts from the ministry, he would find out when he got back after get off work that evening.

After a busy afternoon, listening to reports from various departments and offices, discussing solutions, etc., the union and Deputy Factory Director Sun talked to Zhou Zhiqiang the longest.

The two sides argued about the reward distribution ratio and could not convince each other, so Zhou Zhiqiang was finally asked to make the final decision.

Zhou Zhiqiang's prestige in the factory was enough to persuade the two men. After he made the final decision on the plan, neither Deputy Factory Director Sun nor the union director dared to argue.

It's simply a matter of resource allocation. If we don't get it this year, we can get it next year. As long as Zhou Zhiqiang is the factory director, everyone in the factory will definitely benefit from it.

(End of this chapter)