As a listed company, Aucma's data in recent years are not good-looking, and its volume is now an order of magnitude lower than that of Haier and Hisense. But Aucma's experience in the process of transformation is a typical case of enterprise transformation, which is still worth studying and understanding.
First, the brilliant first curve-Aucma's highlight moment
Aucma's predecessor was the Huanghai Refrigerator Factory under Qingdao Hongxing Electric Appliance Group, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. Due to long-term mismanagement, 1990 factory was on the verge of bankruptcy due to huge debts. 1990, 35-year-old Lu volunteered and became the director of the factory 1 1 in March of that year. Since then, Aucma has been pushed to the peak.
The story begins a bit like Haier in Zhang Ruimin, although later they took a completely different road. From Lu's appointment to 200 1, Aucma's refrigerator production and sales ranked first in the country, and its image of "king of electric freezers" has gradually taken root in people's hearts.
This is the highlight of Aucma. Lu Zeng, then the chairman of the company, was as famous as Haier Zhang Ruimin, Hisense and other famous entrepreneurs.
In 2000, the company went public; In 2005, Lu was elected as the China Economic Person of the Year of CCTV, and his evaluation was: "The situation that the field of ultra-low temperature refrigeration products is dominated by Japan and the United States has been completely rewritten; Take the lead in advocating the' value war' and shout out the loudest voice for the sustainable development of China's home appliance industry. "
Second, the difficult exploration of the second curve-Aucma's diversified road
Because the competition in the domestic home appliance industry has been very fierce, the growth rate of the industry has also begun to slow down. In order to make a good layout before the arrival of the industry limit, Lu began to implement the diversified development strategy in 2000.
The company launched electric vehicles, solar energy, lithium batteries, marine life, real estate and other projects, and carried out unrelated diversified exploration, but the effect was not ideal, and even dragged down the development of the group.
In hindsight, the failure of this unrelated diversification seems obvious.
First of all, these are relatively large investments and long-term projects, which require a lot of continuous investment. Secondly, due to unrelated diversification, the original enterprise resources cannot be reused and need to be restarted. Technology, talent and market are all from scratch. Thirdly, these directions look promising, but the timing of intervention is not necessarily appropriate, such as electric vehicles.
The results are as follows: five years after the diversification strategy was launched, the company invested nearly 250 million yuan in lithium battery projects, with a loss of more than170,000 yuan; Invested more than 60 million in vending machine projects, with a loss of more than 6.5438+0.5 million yuan; It is planned to invest 30 million yuan in MP3 project, and actually terminate the business after investing 6,543,800 yuan+0.5 million yuan.
In addition to the direct losses of these projects, these high-tech industries that need continuous capital supply subsequently lead to insufficient blood supply for the company's main business. At the most difficult moment, the air conditioning factory, as the pillar of the company's main business at that time, was once shut down.
In order to get out of the quagmire of diversification, Aucma Group allocated 654.38+94.7 million yuan to Aucma, a listed company. In March 2006, the scandal was exposed; In April, the Qingdao Municipal Government held a press conference, and 16, the veteran of the helm enterprise, made a curtain call.
Third, how to find the second curve? -Fractal innovation
Like Aucma, Haier, Hisense and other companies are also looking for a second curve, but they all start with related diversification.
On how to find the second curve, here is a thinking mode: fractal innovation.
The so-called fractal means that things have self-similarity on different scales. For example, common snowflakes and coastlines are all manifestations of nature's fractal.
Similarly, if we enlarge the first curve, we will find that there are many small S curves of different sizes, such as companies, products and components. One of the S curves can grow into a second curve.
In the development of the main business, that is, the first curve, through continuous innovation and iteration, there may be multiple fractals, one of which may grow into the second curve of the enterprise after the market environment changes in the future.
For example, Apple rushed into the iphone, removed the call function, and fractal out the ipod. After iteration, the ipod became the ipad.
Therefore, finding the fractal in the first curve to grow into the second curve is a more economical and effective transformation method than going outside to find projects and carry out irrelevant diversification like Aucma.
Why? Because the fractal is naturally generated in the first curve through minimally invasive innovation iteration, if it feels good, it can be verified in a small scale in the market. If the closed loop is opened, you can invest resources to try the second curve. In this case, whether from the perspective of risk or cost, it is far better than going to the market for mergers and acquisitions, or blindly looking for the expansion of new projects.
Fourth, focus on the whole cold chain-the road to transformation in Li Wei.
After Lu withdrew from Aucma, Li Wei, a 37-year-old master of economic management in Tsinghua University, took over.
After Li Wei took office, he took three actions to get the company back on track from the crisis.
The first action is to stop bleeding. In 2007, Li Wei cut down the burdensome industries which accounted for nearly one third of the company's total assets. The company gave up more than 500 million accounts receivable and completely gave up lithium batteries, LEDs, real estate and other baggage projects. After slimming, Aucma passed the dangerous period and rebuilt the development foundation with refrigeration, small household appliances and electric vehicles as the core in the transformation.
The second action is blood transfusion. At the end of 2009, the company completed its second venture, and the reorganized company returned to the main refrigeration business, and gradually transformed from C-end to B-end. Since then, the business focus has shifted from household appliances to commercial and medical fields. It was during this period that Aucma was no longer satisfied with the general domestic refrigeration level, and they kept refreshing the low temperature record, and the ultra-low temperature commercial refrigeration equipment at MINUS 150℃ began to be put on the agenda. From the external environment, although Aucma was weak in the urban market at that time, they seized the east wind of the policy of home appliances going to the countryside and sank to the rural market in time, winning a rare breathing space for themselves.
The third action is reengineering. Li Wei tried to reshape the company's organizational and management culture. He began to strictly control the company's financial access, and changed the financial function from the financing orientation in the past high-speed development period to the supervision orientation through the attachment of the chief financial officer. He has formulated a more stringent target management assessment system and formed an iron law of not engaging in personal relations and speaking fairly and justly with achievements. "It's that simple. I have no friends in the enterprise. " He said, "I didn't ask you to leave class, but the performance asked you to leave class." This merciless and uncompromising management method has gradually fundamentally changed the company's operating process.
We are mainly concerned about his business transformation.
In 20 15, Aucma adjusted its enterprise orientation, and Li Wei proposed "Internet plus full cold chain", from providing a single refrigeration product to providing an overall temperature solution. Domestic refrigeration, commercial refrigeration, biomedical refrigeration, ultra-low temperature equipment, cold chain logistics equipment and other product divisions within the enterprise are integrated through the cold chain platform to provide a common cold chain management system.
Listed companies raised more than 700 million yuan in that year and invested in the construction of their smart cold chain factory, R&D center, special vehicle for cold chain logistics and O2O marketing management system.
The advantage of this is to improve the universality and modularity of products and reduce the complexity and product cost. At the same time, the synergistic effect also came out, and the whole cold chain promoted the transformation and upgrading of Aucma.
At present, this transformation of the company has achieved initial results, and the growth rate of comprehensive income of cold chain services has been higher than that of household appliances.
Five, Aucma's fractal innovation
After determining the strategy of the whole cold chain, Aucma has made a lot of fractal innovations in its main business.
For example, temperature-controlled tea cabinets, sample banks for frozen people or embryos, ARKTEK vaccine storage boxes manufactured in cooperation with the Gates Foundation, and meta-refrigerators developed for Africa are all good examples. At present, the highest refrigeration capacity of Aucma terminal equipment has reached MINUS 150℃, ranking first in the world.
Because African countries often have power outages (many countries have power outages more than 20 times a day), even in South Africa, the government can only try to maintain industrial electricity consumption. To this end, Aucma has developed a "meta refrigerator" suitable for the African market.
After field test, Yuan refrigerator can still provide stable heat preservation of 2℃ to 8℃ in the high temperature environment of 43℃ in sub-Saharan Africa after sudden temporary power failure. If the operation fails, you can automatically seek manual intervention, transmit self-diagnosis data through built-in remote control hardware, and give an alarm through sound and light.
At the end of 2065438+2008, Aucma cooperated with Huada Gene to build the first fully automatic ultra-low temperature biological sample bank at MINUS 86℃ in China. In a cold storage of tens of square meters, nearly 400,000 test tubes containing human samples can be placed and kept stably for 30 years.
Moreover, according to the needs of the market and customers, Aucma has also carried out continuous fractal innovation in more subdivided fields.
Abstract of intransitive verbs
Due to the irrepressible complexity, scale limitation and entropy increasing effect, there is a limit point in any industry. If an enterprise wants to continue to operate, it must explore and try the second curve before its main business reaches its limit.
Fractal innovation is a good way to explore the second curve. Through the continuous innovation and iteration of the main business, many fractals will appear at the company, product and business department level. These fractals, combined with technology and market, may grow into the second curve of enterprises when the market environment changes.
Li Wei is seeking the second curve for Aucma through fractal innovation. Although it is still too early to say that Aucma's transformation is successful, compared with the Lu era, Li Wei's strategic success probability is obviously greater.