Tuesday, January 13. We visited the Midea Group in the Pearl River Delta. Media Group is a leading producer of home appliances especially microwave ovens. In 2008 it had US$13.1B sales. It has a strategy of lean manufacturing and a slogan of “Midea it’s your idea.”
Midea produced eighteen million units of microwave ovens in a world market of seventy million. It has about a quarter of the world market. It has gained this share in less than 10 years. The factory is ISO9001 and ISO14001 certifications.
Midea Group has been listed on the stock market since 1993. The owners bought back the Chinese government’s one-third share, so it is now completely privately owned.
We toured the microwave ovens factory. Fourteen lines of 60 workers each produce 2,500 microwaves on each line per day. Two twelve hour shifts run per day. Workers earn RMB1,000 each month. They are given housing, transportation and food allowances. A star rating system is used for allocating promotions and bonuses. This corporation does not have a system of stock options. None of the companies we have seen use this as compensation.
http://global.midea.com.cn/midea/about/aboutMidea_GroupProfile.jsp
We then visited the Shunde District of Guandong province. This is the ancestral home of Bruce Lee’s family. We took a look at the Shunde Administration Service Center. It houses 34 departments and 150 service counters to provide license applications, registrations, etc. http://www.newsgd.com/citiesandtowns/foshan/info/200309170062.htm
Finally we had a wonderful Chinese lunch. See previous blog entries for descriptions!
The building is the Guanzhou TV and Sightseeing Tower. It is expected to be the tallest such tower in the world.
Tomorrow Hong Kong!
1 comment:
With the recent events of the Olympics being in China and the big fuss being made about the pollution, did any of these larger companies seem to have any "green initiative?" Did either of them seem concerned about the environment?
-Sydney
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