All Efforts are not made for Nothing, Get Yourself a Mentor

2023 New Year’s Address

Dear colleagues,

Happy New Year!

How time flies! It's time to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. On behalf of the company, I wish you a happy New Year, good health and good luck. Thank you for your support and dedication to the company in the past year. The year 2022, which is about to pass, is a year full of challenges for us. This year is full of ups and downs.

Since moving into the new modern plant in 2021, we are full of hope and plan to expand the production line in the new plant. To this end, after the commencement of the project this year, we have increased our recruitment efforts, and in just one month, the number of in-service employees has exceeded nearly 400 in 2021, reaching more than 2200.

In the first quarter, our order receiving situation was quite good, and we could basically meet the production requirements. In the second quarter, orders received dropped sharply, this made it difficult to meet production. We had to meet internal production capacity through pull production, reducing the total load from the original average of four months to three months, shortening the cycle by an average of a full month, and expected orders to recover in the third quarter. However, by the third quarter, the order receiving situation was still not ideal. At this time, we are facing great pressure, and the whole Wenzhou glasses industry was not very prosperous at that time. If we choose to downsize at this time, it will be difficult for employees to find jobs outside. I often say that every employee is not only a person behind him, but also represents the livelihood of a family. We cannot easily choose to downsize because it not only hurts the employees' hearts, but also our reputation. In the past 20 years or more, I have never had downsize. In addition, I am also looking forward to the order recovery in the fourth quarter. We just need it, and the employees are just here. So I asked our planning department to pull the production again. In the third quarter, the total load was increased to about 2 months, which was one month shorter than that in the second quarter. Through this mode, we have kept our employees, and ensured the stability of internal output every month and profitability. However, compared with the first quarter, our order load decreased by two months, from four months to two months, which means that our overall cycle is about 60 days on average. Thank God, the orders finally picked up in the fourth quarter. Although it was not ideal, our output and orders were in direct proportion to each other. We didn't need to continue to reduce the load, still less I don’t know how to shrink it again. Through this pull production, although the decline in order receiving output value has been marked in 2022, our manufacturing and shipping output value have been flat, and the company is still in a healthy development.

Such a rough year makes me think much. The brain is turning all the time. As the Grand Historian wrote in Bao Ren An Shu, "Gai Xibo acted in the book of Zhou Yi; Zhong Ni wrote the Spring and Autumn; and three hundred pieces of Poems were written by the sages in angle." To sum up this difficult year, I want to tell you something:

Causal relationship

With the growth of age and the number of years in business, I will always fall into memory unconsciously. Especially when I am not doing well, many memories and events will float in my mind inadvertently. In the past 20 years of my career, we have established cooperative relations with most of the world's famous customers. We have gained many opportunities and lost many opportunities. We have the happiness of growth and the trouble of stagnation. Finally, I found that no matter what happened, it could not escape a causal relationship.

When I was young, I always liked to argue, debate and complain about others when problems occurred. I always used conspiracy theory to consider everything. But now look back and see which of these problems were not caused by us? Which are not doomed? All the results can be found in our own reason, cannot do anything, and turn to our own.

I often say that most of us come from the countryside, knowing that no pains, no gains, and that there can be no unprovoked rice in the field. If you want to harvest, you should sow, transplant seedlings, weed and fertilize. When the harvest is bad, we should not blame the harvest, let alone the God. We should think about how much we have paid before. The results we have obtained today must be the result of the previous accumulation. All efforts are not made for nothing!

Bodhisattvas fear causes, and ordinary people fear fruits. Ordinary people feel terrible and upset because of the bad results. But Bodhisattva is afraid of every cause of doing things. If the cause is wrong, there can be no good results. Therefore, in everything, we should work hard on the cause and pay attention to the motivation of everything. If you work hard on the cause, it will come naturally.

Deliberate practice

I have always cherished our team. Most of our teams have grown up in Ouhai. We have experienced a lot together, and the enterprise and the team are also achieving each other.

So I always think that the fundamentals of our team are good, especially during the outbreak of the epidemic this month. Since the deregulation of the domestic epidemic, most of our people have been hit by the epidemic in a short time, and more than 700 people in our company have asked for leave in one day. But on average, our employees have less than two days off. Many of them rush to work when they are ill. The management of the production site carries a thermometer in his pocket. He can't leave the front without a high fever. Our senior management team basically takes a day off and returns to the work site wearing masks. I often say that the foundation of our team may not be very good, but we are very competitive, we are all competitive, and we are also very resilient. Over the past 20 years, we have been falling down and climbing up. After one economic cycle after another, we have been moving forward at the forefront of the market.

But after we fell too many somersaults, did we reflect on some somersaults? Is it necessary for us to fall? Is it necessary for us to take some detours? I don't want us to sing praises of difficulties every day. Singing praises of failure is the mother of success. In the New Year, I hope our team will not only continue to work hard and remain resilient, but also think more about how to make progress.

We often say that the greatest wealth of an enterprise is to have a stable and self-cultivated team. While most of our team has worked in Ouhai for many years, have you ever thought about such a stable and hard-working team? Why can't you make a good pair of glasses? Also, many of our customers have cooperated with us for many years. Why can't they be served well? Why there are so many customer complaints?

Many years ago, the book "Heterogeneous" mentioned the 10000 hours rule, which said that if a person did a thing for more than 10000 hours, he would become an expert. But I think that if we don't use our brains, think more, summarize and think carefully, there is no difference between working 10000 hours and working one hour. The premise that the 10000 hours rule can work is that we do things with our hearts and minds. In the New Year, I hope our team can make real progress, not only in terms of age, but also in terms of experience. We must force ourselves to practice deliberately and make progress. Constantly apply PDCA improvement techniques to make your work more perfect. Progress must be intentional, and it can never be a simple, mindless, repetitive result.

To conscience

Over the past 20 years, we have always been proud that we are an enterprise with ideals and pursuits. We established the vision, mission, values and enterprise spirit of the enterprise when the enterprise was very young. Because we clearly know what kind of enterprise we want to become, we have our own code of conduct.

In terms of products, we have always emphasized that we have our own benchmark whether customers have requirements or not, and we have clearly defined the bottom line of "products are like people" and "quality=morality+quality".

But when I patrolled the production site, picked up the products on the production line, and faced customer quality complaints again and again, I began to doubt our benchmark. I even question whether we really have a bottom line? Can our actual results match the requirements?

Now the quality of our products is completely guaranteed by the customer's inspectors. If the customer has not inspected the goods, we dare to deliver any kind of frame to the customer, which is why we have some problems. Even we doubt whether that is a product of our own making.

Some of our customers did not arrange inspection, which is exactly the greatest trust of our customers, and also the embodiment of our true morality and quality. Can our conscience rest with these customers? Do we really have a bottom line? Through cooperation with us, our customers' products are becoming better and better, more competitive, or more and more common?

In the New Year, we should ask ourselves more about what is right as a human being, and we should find our mission, values and spirit. As a manufacturing enterprise, we need to find our confidence in our products and our position in our products.

Greet uncertainty with certainty

Frankly speaking, 2022 is the most anxious year since I worked. Because there are too many uncertainties in the future, I don't know what will happen and it is difficult to plan. I asked myself how to do it more than once, and I never stopped thinking about ways. In the end, it seems that I suddenly understand that we are just a small part of the society. There are too many things that cannot be decided. The uncertainty of the general environment is normal.

As a manufacturing enterprise, we only need to ask ourselves which will remain unchanged and which will be determined in the next ten or twenty years. We don't need to worry about the uncertain things and the things that we can't change. We should focus on doing the certain things well. As a manufacturing industry, we should think more about what customers will always pay attention to. I think that no matter when customers pay attention to quality, cost, delivery time, R&D and service capabilities, these are certain. The customer will definitely require more and more cost saving, shorter delivery time, more and more stable quality, stronger research and development, and better service. If we do these things well, we can meet the customer's needs. I believe that many uncertainties will eventually become more and more certain. In the New Year, we must increase investment and reform in these five areas. I believe that if we do these determined things well, we won't have to worry about the future at all. We are worried because we have not done well in what we should do, and we have no confidence and confidence.

Since the COVID-19 in 2020, because of the domestic isolation system, I have not gone abroad for nearly three years, and our company has not visited foreign customers for nearly three years. The epidemic has separated the world for three years, but I believe that all this will be over soon. China has been fully liberalized since the first week of December. I believe that the isolation system will go into history in 2023. Now is the darkness before dawn, because of the open policy, we have a large area of infection COVID-19. This year is also the first time in 20 years that we have not held a New Year's party. A while ago, everyone fell ill and had no time to rehearse. At the same time, because everyone was recovering from a serious illness and was afraid of catching cold, we put these expectations into the New Year for everyone's health.

I have always been a born optimist. I believe that as long as we work hard and think of ways, we will find the way to development. Although the development of the past year has been full of ups and downs, I am still optimistic about the future. As Albert Camus said, "Every winter ends in spring."

Of course, I also know that this optimism is based on our own performance in all aspects in the future. The New Year is about to begin. I hope you can work hard, study hard and make progress every day in the New Year. In order to build Ouhai better, we need your participation. Thank you again!

Happy New Year!