In recent years, Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., Ltd (SWS ) focuses on the strategic goal of “pushing the conversions of Made-in-China, Chinese Speed and Chinese Product into Create-in-China, Chinese Quality and Chinese Brand”, puts efforts to build SWS brand which has received remarkable achievement. In the future, SWS will work hard for building SWS brand into an example and a new benchmarking in Chinese Shipbuilding industry in the new era, and writes a new chapter of Chinese Shipbuilding Brand Construction.
Build SWS into an international brand based on integral advantages of CSSC
It is often said that to make an easy thing well done is not easy, and to make the easy thing perfectly done is an excellence. SWS is just the Chinese shipbuilding enterprise who builds the capsize bulk carrier into an excellent and world famous brand. In early 1999, SWS is still in her establishment preparatory period. Though a great number of works related to “establishment, shipbuilding and talent cultivation” are on the waiting list, SWS leadership has already focused their attention to product research and development. Under the full support of CSSC, SWS entered into the research and development of the first generation of green and environment-friendly 175K DWT capsize bulk carrier in China. After 2 years of R&D and continuous improvement, SWS launched her first generation of such product in May, 2001. Due to the environment-friendly gene and elements in her innovative design, SWS’s first 175K DWT Capesize Bulk Carrier became the first Chinese vessel which received the green character of ABS classification. This vessel was listed into National Major Equipment Innovation and Development Project, and it is also the maximum tonnage ship built in China at that time. It attracted the high market attention from the market the moment it was launched. Owners like Belgium Bocimar, Greece Cardiff, American Foremost, COSCO SHIPPING and a great number of world famous shipping companies came to SWS shipyard for cooperation one after another; Chinese Hongkong Shipping Industry also organized a group visit to SWS for survey, exchange and business negotiation. The orders flooded in like snowflakes. From then on, the capesize bulk carrier of SWS got an instant success and wide recognition in the market.
As per the statistics, so far, SWS has already undertaken nearly 300 capesize bulk carriers and over 250 of them delivered which ranked top one in the world. SWS has already become a technology leader and market price maker on this ship type.
After years of elaborate cultivation, the capesize bulk carriers of SWS have already been the most exported “top brand” Chinese vessels which occupied the highest market share. It also received the Copper Prize of the 5th session of Shanghai International Industrial Fair, the A class prize of Shanghai High and New Technology Achievements Transformation Project, the first prize of CSSC Science and Technology Progress Award, the second prize of Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award, Excellent Product of the 6th session of China Hi-tech Fair, etc. It was also renowned as Shanghai Top Brand, Top 10 Chinese Ships, and Annual Brand Ship Type in 2008 and so on. The green gene and innovation idea made Chinese Capesize ship brand everlasting prosperous. The developing strategy of “Constructing One Generation, Developing One Generation, and Reserving One Generation” made Chinese capesize vessels remained their strong vitality.
In order to push the continuous improvement and upgrading, SWS succeeded in meeting the individual need of customers based on flexible strategy in the early stage, and then further explored customer needs, followed and mastered the changes of rules, pre-developed and reserved one generation of every ship type, actively improved the performance of ships, formed product series, and ensured their leading role in the industry. According to the feedbacks from owners and latest technical conventions and requirements, SWS successively developed multiple generations of bulk carriers including 177KBC, 176KBC, 206KBC, 188KBC, 181KBC, 208KBC, 180KBC, 187KBC and 210KBC.
On December 5, 2017, the latest dual-fuel 210KBC developed by SWS received the AIP certificates from BV and LR at the same time during the Shanghai Maritime Exhibition. The ship is the 11th generation of Capesize bulk carrier launched by SWS who has the independent intellectual property rights, and it is also the world's largest tonnage dual fuel bulk carrier approved by classification society. Industry experts said that SWS has formed a unique series of Capesize bulk carriers from the 1st to the 11th generation, which fully reflects the enterprise culture of technology innovation and the spirit of excellence craftsmanship of SWS. At present, SWS has become a veritable research and development center of Capesize bulk carrier in the world. The Capesize bulk carrier built by SWS is one of the top-quality ship types with strong market core competitiveness in Chinese Shipbuilding Industry, which completely has the independent intellectual property rights. It has been praised by the industry as a successful example changing from "Made in China" to "Created in China”. After years of efforts, the brand ships of SWS have sprung up like mushrooms. Such as: SWS - VLCC, SWS - container vessel, SWS - VLGC, SWS - Offshore Engineering. These brands have won a large number of orders for SWS, and become a backbone product for the development of SWS.
In recent years, the annual delivery, newly-contracting orders, hand-held orders of SWS by tonnage have been at the forefront in the world, its bulk carriers accounted for 15% of the global market share, 300,000 tons of very large oil tankers (VLCC) accounted for 9% of the global market share. At present, SWS has made great achievements in many marine and offshore engineering fields. In 2016, three 18,000 TEU super-large container vessel and several 83,000 and 85,000 cubic meters very large liquefied gas carriers (VLGC) were successfully delivered. At present, 20,000 TEU, 21,000 TEU, and 22,000 TEU Ultra-large Container Vessel (ULCV), Suezmax oil tankers, enhanced Aframax oil tankers with ICE-CLASS, 400,000 DWT of very large ore carrier (VLOC) are under construction. In the field of offshore engineering, SWS has delivered or is building the FPSO, deepwater semi-submersible drilling rigs, jack-up drilling rigs, deepwater drilling ships, platform service vessels and so on.
Top level design strategy to ensure coordinated implementation of sustainable brand construction
"In the past 20 years, SWS has always adhered to the business philosophy of "facing competition, steady innovation, and honest service and seeking win-win situation". It has always adhered to the education of employee awareness on the close connection between brand building and enterprise development, the close relation between brand status and enterprise survival, and firmly relied on dual drives as scientific and technological innovation and honesty and trustworthiness to build SWS international brand. Wang Qi, chairman of SWS, said that brand positioning is closely related to brand building, and SWS attaches great importance to it. SWS puts the traditional product brand and high-end product brand on the same position at the same time, sticks to synchronous development in the civil ship, marine engineering and cruise business areas , forms a self-contained product line, and has laid a leading position in the industry. In the future, SWS will carry out cooperation with well-known operating companies in demand side with, and cooperate with well-known manufacturers in the supply side, cultivate multiple SWS brand products, and further promote transformation and upgrading. SWS also promotes brand building through grid management in unison between the higher and lower levels. SWS has set up a Brand Strategy Management Committee directly lead by the chairman of the board to strengthen the top-level design of brand strategy and co-ordinate the management of brand. SWS set up a brand management organization to be in charge of all aspects of brand building, such as responsibility implementation, planning, training organization, brand promotion and key process planning, management document preparation, conduct monitoring, evaluation and continuous improvement.
After several years of efforts, SWS has formed a "one center, two principles, three satisfactions, four unifications" mode of work, that is, customer-centered (transpositional consideration with shipowners, implement brand management); market-oriented principles, marketing with innovation principles (innovated customer manager, brand manager working mechanism); Pre-sales & marketing satisfaction (through new product recommendation, multi-channel advertising, large-scale exhibitions, customer visits, etc.), process construction satisfaction (construction team to evaluate the quality of the process and collect comments for unqualified items), after-sales service satisfaction (on-board warranty services, customer claim report analysis); target unification of brand market, system unification of brand evaluation, planning unification of brand marketing, process unification of brand operation.
Honesty, trustworthiness and quality first lead multi-level brand building
Quality image is the foundation of brand image. SWS has always attached importance to the establishment of strict system and strict management in order to promote the quality image building.
SWS promotes quality improvement by informatization. SWS's information construction has always been in the forefront of the industry. In 2015, SWS took the lead to pass the implementation and standard certification of "integration of information technology and industrialization" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; In 2017, SWS vigorously promoted intelligent manufacturing, strived for key breakthroughs on robot application like cutting, welding, coating and other aspects, digital measurement and digital control and other fields. SWS basically realized the introduction and application of section steel robot cutting line, medium and thick plate welding robot, universal parts welding robot unit development, micro-panel welding line, large plane coating robot development and application, digital pipe fabrication workshop planning and partial operation. The quality of product manufacturing has been steadily improved. In 2017, CSSC held a seminar on "Industrialization, Intelligentization and informatization shipbuilding" at SWS. After visiting the quality training center, HGG steel pipeline, welding robot and other production sites, the participants spoke highly of the specific practices and the achievement got by SWS on "Industrialization, Intelligentization and informatization shipbuilding" .
In the spirit of excellence and continuous innovation, SWS introduced brand life-cycle management method into brand maintenance and evaluation, and established the brand evaluation model system. By comparing the best internal and external benchmarking practices, SWS defined the relevant promotion indicators (market, product, innovation, customer, quality, etc.); by promoting the establishment of regional grid platform, developing the intermediate product full-cycle software and other measures, SWS refines the collection of product quality information and regional team quality information in the production process; by the construction of staff credit database and quality question bank, SWS refines the collection of information related to staff quality awareness and business skills; by the application of big data analysis tools, SWS continues to improve brand data analysis and application.
Brand building is especially needed to create a corresponding spirit of enterprise and corporate culture. For a long time, SWS takes the core value of the enterprise as the main line, continuously implants the cultural elements suitable for the brand, systematically molds and disseminates the connotation of the brand culture, and forms a unique brand culture. Through employee quality forums, quality competitions, essay collection and other activities, SWS carries forward the spirit of "craftsmanship of a great power" among employees so that they could firmly establish brand awareness and customer awareness, carefully build the products, and constantly enhance the value of the brand based on their positions with the spirit of excellence.
Under the guidance of the brand strategy, several products of SWS have won related honors: the 110,000-tonnage Aframax crude oil tanker has won the title of "China Top Brand", the 300,000-tonnage FPSO has been awarded "New Century Excellent Brand Ship Type of 2013",the jack-up drilling rig has won the title of "Shanghai Top Brand" and the 3000 meters deep water semi-submersible drilling rig “HAI YANG SHI YOU 981” has won the special prize of National Science and Technology Award in 2014. SWS has also won many related awards, including the title of "Shanghai Quality Model Enterprise" in 2013, the Shanghai Quality Management Award in 2014, the Shanghai Quality Gold Award, the title of "Advanced Quality Management Unit" from 2013 to 2014, the title of "Advanced Model Enterprise of National Implementation of Excellent Performance" in 2015, and the title of "Global Performance Excellence Award", "Advanced Shanghai Enterprise on Implementation of Excellent Performance" title in 2014 and 2015. In 2016, SWS received 300,000 yuan brand cultivation grant from the Shanghai Pudong New Area Economic and Information Technology Commission to help enterprises fully carry out brand building and management work; In 2017, it was awarded the title of "2017 Pudong New Area International Trade Brand Demonstration Enterprise". Dozens of operating areas were rated as the national, Shanghai "star rating site", hundreds of teams were rated as the national, Shanghai quality of trust team, excellent quality control (QC) team.
Under the coordinated arrangement of CSSC, SWS cooperates with China Classification Society (CCS), DNV GL, LR, ABS, etc. to carry out horizontal benchmarking management among international, domestic and industry, jointly carries out brand activities, absorbs and learns the brand cultivation methods of advanced enterprises at home and abroad, and develops multi-level cooperation with government authority, industry associations and media. SWS also holds forums, new products introduction conferences. SWS displays her brand culture through public wechat account, website, exhibition hall, HSE simulation center, quality training center and other pavilions. SWS also makes full use of her annual corporate social responsibility reports to publicize her brand. SWS is getting farther and farther along the road of brand building, and is getting closer to the goal of setting an example and a benchmark in Chinese shipbuilding industry in the new era.
