On December 6th, 2018, a warm and grand off-line ceremony for Shougang’s material products was held at the Qinhuangdao plant of TI Automobile. The success of this event marks the official opening of the strategic cooperation between Shougang and TI Automobile. In the current, severe situation of the steel market, Shougang Jingtang Company won the trust of TI Automobile with its strong technical advantages, perfect system guarantee, and sincere service concept, which is also destined to become a milestone of Jingtang’s giant ship to sail to the “Blue Ocean” and enter the market segment.

Push the door of cooperation open, embark on the road of cooperation, and share the fruits of cooperation. In just one year, both sides have been deeply impressed by mutual attention and mutual progress.

Make the best of the advantages to guide the firm in the direction of becoming strong 

More than 30 years ago, TI Automobile, a global auto parts supplier, established its first plant in Qinhuangdao, China in 1987. The Bundy tube produced there is mainly used for automobile brakes and fuel oil pipelines. Due to its difficult production and high scrap rate, the materials required by Qinhuangdao plant are mainly purchased from a large domestic enterprise, and some need to be imported. With more than 30 years of development, TI Automobile has continuously increased its production capacity and doubled its economic benefits. Among the top 100 best-selling vehicles in the world, more than 80% use TI Automobile’s products and technology, and TI Automobile is recognized as the industrial leader. 

One year ago, Shougang Jingtang Company, located on the coast of Bohai, Caofeidian, had been operating for more than ten years and was in full swing to fully reach the "four first-class" goals. Among them, the strategic task of “first-class products” is to “give full play to the advantages of advanced technology and equipment and large-scale equipment, and produce high-tech, high value-added, high-grade fine plates to form a core technology with independent intellectual property rights.”

Aiming at and developing the high-end multi-functional material products has paved the way for Jingtang Company to enter the market segment.

One is a rising star seeking high-end quality in its development strategy; the other is a veteran strong enterprise upholding high-end quality in expanding operations. More coincidentally, Qinhuangdao and Caofeidian are both seaport areas, only 180 kilometers apart. The superposition of opportunities has given an opportunity for cooperation between Shougang and TI Automobile.

As the Bundy tube is an automobile safety part that has extremely demanding requirements for dimensional accuracy, uniformity of organization and performance, and aging resistance, many excellent steel mills in China flinch.

"Opportunities won't wait for us." Aiming at the high-end features of the product, you have to face difficulties. Jingtang Company, the stock company marketing center, and the technical research institute immediately formed a 14-person production, sales, and research team, and made up their minds to win this product.

In order to start the Bundy tube production line audit and product certification as soon as possible, on September 29th, 2017, Mo Zhiying, Deputy Director of the Tinplate Business Department of Jingtang Company, led the research team to visit TI Automobile and introduced the equipment level, quality management system, and product development of Jingtang Company, and sincerely invited TI Automobile’s executives to visit Shougang Jingtang Company. After a lapse of 20 days, on October 18th, executives and related department leaders of TI Automobile were invited to visit Jingtang and received warm reception from leaders of Jingtang Company. The leaders of Jingtang Company personally explained the production process of Jingtang to the visiting staff, accompanied the users to visit the whole process line of iron making, steel making, hot rolling, and cold rolling, and visited the smelting and rolling analysis center. Through a day of visiting and exchanges, TI Automobile was deeply impressed by Jingtang's advanced production equipment, unmanned interference fully automated quality inspection system, perfect production management and quality system, and clean workshop environment, and fully affirmed Jingtang Company's strong manufacturing and quality assurance capabilities, and both parties formally confirmed the intention to start product certification.

Keep advanced mechanisms to consistently high quality standards

If it is the strong technical equipment of Jingtang Company that attracts the attention of TI Automobile, then Jingtang’s perfect quality management wins high praise from TI Automobile, which has a high standard for product management.

Quality is the lifeline of an enterprise, and “high quality” is the connotation of quality. The quality management system of Jingtang Company is based on ISO9000 and TS16949 standards. It forms a consistent management model from the aspects of interface quality control, layout, and performance control and seeks high quality in every link and every detail to improve the product quality and reduce quality defects as the biggest benefit, so as to continuously improve the high-end product manufacturing capability and batch product quality.

This overall quality control of the whole staff, the whole process, and the whole product life cycle is in line with the high standards of TI Automobile.

On November 1st, 2017, TI Automobile officially submitted the product certification requirements to Jingtang Company, but requested that the certificated volume production should be completed by November 15th and the user must take the trial at the end of November. In 15 days, Jingtang must complete the whole process of steel making, hot rolling, and cold rolling. More importantly, the quality indicators of finished products must be qualified once.

In the face of difficulty, Jingtang refused to retreat. The Manufacturing Department and Tinplate Business Department of Jingtang Company, together with the Shougang Technology Research Institute, quickly launched an “offensive” to the TI Automobile product certification. The team expedited the organization of production and quality assurance special meetings, formulated a detailed production guarantee plan, coordinated the planning room for pre-production production plans, ensured the production nodes of each process, and coordinated the production line to prepare the backup roll for double protection.

Bundy tube is processed by multiple steps such as copper plating, striping, coiling, and welding of cold-rolled sheet steel and its outer diameter, wall thickness, and good concentricity must be ensured by precise rolling technology. During production, Jingtang Company strictly controls the annealing temperature within ±5 degrees Celsius, and keeps sheet thickness tolerance within 5 micrometers that are only one-sixteenth of the diameter of the hairline. Each process was finely carved and striving for better and each node was carried out according to the program time limit requirements.

On November 14th, Jingtang Company successfully completed the production of the certificated volume one day in advance, which relieved all the team members. On November 19th, the certified volume was delivered to the copper plating manufacturer. After the Jingtang user representative tracked the completion of the slitting and copper plating process, they handed it over to TI Automobile for trial use on November 27th.

In early December, TI Automobile completed the evaluation of the use effect and informed Jingtang Company that it had successfully passed the certification. Carefully and quickly meeting the needs of TI Automobile, and orderly and efficiently completing the certification work, Shougang and TI Automobile found the greatest common denominator in further cooperation.

In late December, TI Automobile reported the first batch of formal orders to Shougang. So far, Jingtang Company has opened a new chapter in the development of automotive oil road steel.

Provide excellent service with consistent sincerity

TI Automobile chose Shougang from among many domestic steel companies because of its stable manufacturing capabilities and excellent system management as well as an absolutely inseparable factor – Jingtang Company's dedication to high-quality service.

All along, Jingtang Company insists that the “user comes first”, always put the user in the most important position, always keeps up with the user’s speed, and always creates value for the user to make the user experience one of ubiquitous satisfaction and a reliable and intimate feeling.

At the end of 2017, everyone was looking forward to the upcoming Spring Festival. However, on the twenty-sixth day of the twelfth lunar month, TI Automobile reported that the newly supplied double-layer pipe products were not well-tuned, and the finished product rate was low, hoping that Shougang could send technicians to assist in the research.

Hurriedly solving the urgent needs of the user shows integrity and responsibility. After receiving feedback from the user, Yang Libin, the person in charge of the Home Appliance Room of the Manufacturing Department of Jingtang Company, did not hesitate but rather immediately went to the Qinhuangdao factory with Cao Hua from the sales company and Dr. Liu Zaiwang from the technical research institute.

The prompt response touched TI Automobile. On the 27th and 28th days of the twelfth lunar month, Yang Libin, Cao Hua and Liu Zaiwang tracked the production of the whole process during the day at TI Automobile and developed a new test plan in the evening. After repeated trials and verifications, the process impact was finally eliminated and the key points of the problem were identified. The cooperation between production, sales and research to provide the user with a package of solutions is the key to the service concept of Jingtang. During the Spring Festival holiday, the team was still thinking about ways to solve problems, and exchanged ideas via telephone and WeChat. On the first day after the Spring Festival holiday, Yang Libin and Liu Zaiwang immediately threw themselves into the product certification of TI Automobile and rushed to carry out sample experiments and data analysis. They spent three days completing the work which was expected to take half a month. The hard work paid off, the production line was smooth and stable after complying with the established production measures, and the finished product rate was significantly improved.

This meant that Shougang broke the bottleneck for the batch supply of TI Automobile, and the cooperation between them entered a substantive stage.

Say thousands of words, try everything possible and overcome all the hardships. In just one year, Shougang and TI Automobile have exchanged visits and exchanged ideas for many times. On November 15th, 2018, the Global Purchasing Director of TI Automobile came to Jingtang Company, and both sides had a friendly exchange on the next steps for further cooperation and other related matters.

Up to now, Shougang Jingtang's supply varieties for TI Automobile have covered double-layer oil pipelines and single-layer pipes, accounting for 50% of TI Automobile's domestic market share. At the same time, both sides also decided to set up a joint laboratory for new product research and development, laying a solid foundation for the two companies to further deepen cooperation, mutual benefit and comprehensive development in the future.

One should be good at making and implementing plans. The strategic cooperation with TI Automobile has brought direct economic benefits to Shougang Jingtang, and given the Jingtang brand a strong "magnetic effect". Many domestic welded pipe factories have taken the initiative to find Jingtang to seek cooperation, and the Jingtang company brand radiation area is getting wider and wider.

Wide vision leads to a wide road. Striding over the threshold of the market segment, Jingtang will gradually move further and further on the channel leading to the Blue Ocean.