By YI FAN

CHINA’S Three Gorges Water Project, with the huge amount of hydropower it generates, is transforming some of the traditionally tourist-oriented cities along the Yangtze River. Manufacturing is booming, and Hubei’s Yichang City has seen the birth of a phoenix – the Yichang Changjiang Machine Technology Co., Ltd. (Changjiang Machine).

Changjiang Machine rose from the ashes of the now defunct Changjiang Machine Tool Plant. The new company, with its advanced production facilities, occupies an area of 150,000 square meters, and has assets of more than RMB 100 million. Some of its technology is imported from the United States, Germany and Switzerland. The company develops and manufactures a wide range of gear-shaping and groove-milling machines as well as precision gears. It is China’s largest gear shaping production base, and its products are widely used in the auto and military industries, aviation, mining and heavy machinery. The company has a foreign trade license and its products are sold in the United States, South Korea, North Korea, Thailand, Iran, Jordan and Southeast Asia as well as in the domestic market.

Piloting the enterprise is 37-year-old Ye Yousheng, who got his MscEng from the Wuhan-based Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Ye became president of Changjiang Machine in the darker days of October 2002, when its annual revenue was just RMB 8 million and the per capita monthly salary RMB 400. Ye turned the company’s fortunes around by focusing on its human resources, customers, reputation and sci-tech standards. He started with the company’s management structure. After a period of concentrated effort, the company passed the ISO9001 quality system, the ISO14001 international environment management system and the OHSAS18001 occupational health and safety system, becoming the country’s first machinery manufacturer in China to hold all three certificates.

Ye Yousheng realizes that his company’s staff is its driving force, and has built up a competent and motivated staff base. “To me, competence equals talent. It is created by competition and measured by performance,” he says. Based on these principles, he has designed and implemented various incentive-based human resources schemes that have breathed new life into the company. Within a year, Changjiang Machine saw a remarkable recovery, and in 2003 it brought in record revenues. In 2004, it doubled revenues and increased the per capita monthly salary to RMB 1,500, attracting back some of the talent that had left disillusioned by the company’s predecessor. There are now more than 120 senior engineers and technicians working at Changjiang Machine.

Meanwhile, Ye Yousheng has pushed to improve his company’s products, research and development and marketing strategies. The company reinvests 5 percent of its annual revenue in product research and development, and releases new products every year. In 2004, the company developed the country’s first advanced XK9310x2 CNC groove-milling machine for processing automobile diverter valve cores. This product has been listed as a manufacturing program in the State’s 2005 “Torch Plan.” One of its latest products, a rack gear-shaping machine, is expected to revolutionize the operation of elevators in China’s skyscrapers.