The Industrial Giant Reborn

After getting what they needed with Morita Shofu, Chen Zhiwen immediately arranged for someone to go to South Korea, where he established a subsidiary company, and then began to slowly acquire the shares of Samsung Electronics Industry in the stock market, which was established in 1969. The main business of the group's subsidiaries is the production of refrigerators, washing machines, televisions and other large-scale commodities, the most famous of which is black and white TVs. In two years, Samsung's black and white TVs will become the largest manufacturer in the world.

The black and white TV industry is an industry that developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan look down on. This kind of product has no market in developed countries, and the profits cannot cover the income of workers in developed countries. Therefore, it has become a textile industry. The same needs to be transferred to developing countries.

Samsung Electronics just seized this opportunity. Black and white TVs are indeed not good in Europe, America and Japan, but they are very popular in Asia and South America. This backward industry has also brought very rich profits to Samsung. In the mid-1970s, Samsung Electronics also began to produce color TV sets and began its own technological upgrades.

From black and white to color, this is a normal business development process, but at this time, Samsung Electronics suddenly entered the semiconductor industry, which made countless people laugh at its overreaching, and many people in the company objected, and the president Li Bingzhe did not agree , but the younger son Li Jianxi insisted on it, and finally started the beginning of Samsung Electronics' global hegemony in the hardware field.

Even after the 1990s, Samsung received the support of American capital to deal with the Japanese semiconductor industry, but among so many companies, only Samsung seized this opportunity, which is enough to show Samsung's ability.

The current stock market value of Samsung Electronics Industry ranks high in South Korea, but it is much worse than later generations. Midea’s overseas accounts generate a lot of cash every month. Therefore, a small part is taken to acquire Samsung Electronics Industry The stock is also a good investment, it is better than putting it in an overseas bank with no interest.

But this is just a pure investment. Before the Asian financial crisis, sell it at a high price, and then take advantage of the Korean crisis to make a profit. But it is still the same principle, just follow the US capital to make some money, and turn against customers. That's kind of unrealistic.

Time soon arrived in August, and the professional construction team hired from the United States has completed the construction of the dust-free workshop and related supporting facilities for chip wafers and liquid crystals in the Midea Industrial Park. The LCD production line and chip production line purchased from the United States have also been in place one after another. In the day and night debugging stage, the relevant workers were sent to the corresponding factory in the United States for study more than two months ago, and several experienced engineers were also dug from Japan.

Although the investment in chips and liquid crystals is not high, Chen Zhiwen still attaches great importance to it. This is the first step of the Great Wall. If this step is done well, the future can be said to be promising.

Inside an office in Midea Industrial Park, Hong Kong:

"XCMG, how is the living environment here in Hong Kong?" Chen Zhiwen said to a middle-aged man about 40 years old in special work clothes.

His name is Xu Zhishan, and he is a Chinese engineer who has worked in Hitachi, Japan for a long time. He is also responsible for chips, but it is not technology research and development, but production management.

In most industries, research and development is a higher-end job than production, even for the automobiles of the industrial crown, but the chip industry is completely different. Its chip research and development capabilities allow it to complete its own mobile phone chip research. It cannot be said to surpass Qualcomm in terms of technology, but at least it can compete. However, it has fallen into a very passive situation because it cannot produce itself.

Of course, the production of chips involves a lot of equipment with particularly high technical content, which cannot be classified as production technology, but in any case, production is also very important, even in the early 1970s of semiconductors, just a good product control Rate is the core of all investments. Only when the yield rate increases can the cost be reduced, and then there is a chance to continue iterative upgrades and occupy the market. Otherwise, it will be completely eliminated in the first round.

Therefore, Midea also spent a lot of money, entrusting several top headhunting companies in Japan, and poached several engineers from Japan who have management experience in chip or LCD factories, but most of them are Japanese, only the one in front of them Xu Zhishan is Chinese, from Wanwan, and joined Hitachi after graduating from Waseda University in Japan.

They are all Chinese, so Lei Shengli naturally attaches great importance to him. This time when Chen Zhiwen came to visit the chip factory, he arranged for Xu Zhishan to accompany him.

"Thank you, Chairman, for your concern. I live here very well." Xu Zhishan said.

"When will the chip factory start?" Chen Zhiwen asked again.

Xu Weishan replied: "In terms of equipment, the debugging has basically been completed. We have also produced corresponding chips according to the needs of many electronics factories in Hong Kong. However, the yield rate still needs to be controlled, and we also need time to do testing. , It is estimated that the results will be confirmed in October, and large-scale production can begin in December."

"Okay, then it will be less than half a year." Chen Zhiwen nodded in satisfaction.

The first product of the chip factory is the electronic watch with the largest demand in Hong Kong at present, because it is the simplest product among all electronic products, and the demand for chips is also the lowest. If it is not because the space of the electronic watch is too small, then Hong Kong The old semiconductor industry can completely hand solder transistors, which is still common on old radios.

Although the technical content is low, Hong Kong in the past and even Hong Kong in the history of theaters did not have chip production capacity and could only import from Japan. As a major customer, Hong Kong's electronics manufacturers were joined by several major Japanese chip factories because they had no choice. Price increases, but also helpless.

This is naturally suitable for the newly opened Midea chip factory. The product is simple and can be said to be one of the simplest products in the history of chips. Once qualified products are produced, the quantity is still large.

In the same way, the same is true for LCD factories. The liquid crystal panels on electronic watches can also be said to be the liquid crystals with the smallest demand area in the market, and the quantity is also very large.

"It's just that, chairman, we are still far behind in terms of employee proficiency. With the current employee capabilities, the yield rate is difficult to control. This is just the chip of an electronic watch. If it is replaced with a more complex chip, it will be an uncontrollable problem. That's too much." Xu Zhishan said.

"Then what do you think?" Chen Zhiwen nodded and asked. He knew that what Xu Zhishan said was very euphemistic. This kind of factory with high technical content has very high requirements on the quality and ability of employees. It is definitely not an ordinary processing factory. Xiaobai, you can play around.

Once many people are not familiar with, do not understand, or have insufficient ability, chips can be produced in time, and there may be a large number of scrapped, and such technical problems, even for an expert like Xu Zhishan, it is difficult to find the source. This kind of problem emerges endlessly, and the factory will not be able to produce, and if the problem is left in the hands of the client, it will be even more serious, and all customers will cancel the order, and the chip factory will definitely fail, even if Chen Zhiwen has more funds. This situation is also helpless.

"I understand that both the chairman and Manager Lei want to cultivate chip talents in Hong Kong, but it will take a long time, at least two to three years. The people you sent to study in the United States did learn some knowledge, but this is still It is far from enough. To solve the current problems, we need a large number of people who have experience in chip factories to work here. They will be responsible for each node, while other Hong Kong workers can help on the sidelines and learn slowly. In this way, the two In about a year, there will be a large number of experienced engineers or technicians, so there will be no problems, and the LCD factory may be the same," Xu Zhishan said.

"A large number of skilled technicians?" Chen Zhiwen said with a slight frown: "It's not a big deal to dig a few or even a dozen problems from Japan, but if there are more, it will be very troublesome, and it will take a long time. From the perspective of time , it is difficult to cooperate with our production plan, and these Japanese may not be serious about teaching us Chinese."

"Chen Sheng, in fact, there is no need to recruit a large number of people from Japan, there is one in the next door." Lei Shengli said suddenly.

"Wanwan? Do they have a chip industry now?" Chen Zhiwen asked in surprise. As for the semiconductors of Wanwan, he naturally knows how powerful the future generations are. TSMC can compete with Samsung to a large extent, even in In a few fields, it is even stronger.

In his impression, all these things about Wanwan should have started when Zhang Zhongmou, the vice president of Texas Instruments, left the United States and returned to Wanwan to establish TSMC, and it was in the 1980s. As far as he knows now, there is nothing wrong with Wanwan. A bit of a well-known chip company.

"There are not only chips, but also liquid crystals, but they have just been established." Lei Shengli said: "It was also some time ago, and Xu Sheng accidentally learned from a friend that as early as a few years ago, the Wanwan government I started to prepare for the development of the chip and LCD industry, but because of the low efficiency of the government, this matter has been proceeding slowly. Wanwan also saves foreign exchange, and talked with many factories for a long time. It was not until last year that the production line was finalized, and production began this year. , much less efficient than ours.

But one thing is that the Gulf government sent hundreds of electronic engineers to practice in some large factories in the United States a long time ago. These people have studied in American factories for several years. "

"Is there such a thing? This is really a blessing to us." Chen Zhiwen almost laughed happily.

If you are really sleepy, send pillows. Money can solve a lot of things, such as buying production line equipment and purchasing technical patents. As long as it is not the most advanced, it is generally not a problem, but technical personnel are a headache. , but it is very difficult to recruit a team, and it is even more difficult, almost impossible, to recruit engineers in all aspects of the chip or LCD workshop, which may be much more difficult than acquiring this company.

Especially here is Hong Kong, a desert of high-tech industry, so people can only be dug overseas, and the culture and language are different from Japan, which has relatively good technology, but it is different in Wanwan, at least everyone is Chinese, Cantonese Although it is not quite the same as Hokkien, but it has the same kind of foundation, and it will be fine after a little adaptation.

"I went to investigate this matter. These people were sent to IBM, Intel, HP and other factories for internships. They are high-tech engineers specially selected by Wanwan, and they all understand English. The experience in the past few years must be very good. Rich, it's just that they have signed a training agreement with the Wanwan government, and if they want to leave, these people need to pay a lot of liquidated damages." Lei Shengli said.

"How much per person?" Chen Zhiwen asked.

"It's almost 10,000 US dollars per person. This price is very high based on the price of Wanwan. It is estimated that the Wanwan government is also worried that these people will be retained by American companies." Lei Shengli said.

"How much are their salaries in Wanwan?" Chen Zhiwen asked again.

"My friend is actually one of these engineers. Their salary in Wanwan is almost NT$10,000 a month. This is actually a very high salary in Wanwan, but they still think it is too little. Maybe it was because he was used to the salary of his colleagues in the United States, so he contacted me by accident, and he originally wanted to use my relationship to go to Japan." Xu Zhishan said.

"So that's the case, it's reasonable." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said.

The value of talents in high-end industries has nothing to do with where they are located. Their value has always been in line with international standards, because in developed countries, they can also find very good jobs. This is also the reason why many talents in the mainland of later generations went to Europe and the United States. It was not until the mainland economy reached a certain scale and the price control was low that it became easier to retain talents.

"So we can start here, the liquidated damages of 10,000 US dollars is a bit expensive, and we don't need hundreds of people here." Xu Zhishan said.

"It doesn't matter if it's $10,000 per person. Let's arrange the headhunting company over there, or your friend from XCMG, to get the information of these people first, understand the ability of each of them, and then Let's make a comprehensive selection, and dig out whoever we think we need, and we can talk about salary." Chen Zhiwen thought for a while and said.

For $10,000, in Hong Kong, where housing prices have almost doubled, you can easily buy a full-paying house in a non-prime area, or pay a down payment in a high-quality community such as Taikoo Shing and Whampoa Garden. This is the life of many Hong Kong people. The dream is just a drop in the bucket compared to the chip industry.

It is difficult to find hundreds of talents in Hong Kong who are proficient in English and have a foundation in the electronics industry. They can be selected by the Gulf government and sent to the United States. The experience of a large factory for several years is even more rare. If it is not for the Wanwan government to come forward and arrange so many people to go to factories like Intel and Hewlett-Packard for internships, I am afraid it is not a daydream?

"There is another problem. These are the core personnel of Wanwan's semiconductor industry. If we poach people on such a large scale, it may cause their dissatisfaction." Lei Shengli said.

"If you are dissatisfied, you will be dissatisfied. What can they do with us?" Chen Zhiwen shook his head and said, "As long as we don't do anything wrong, and dig a part of it, it won't be a big deal. Just keep a balance."