With a history of 34 years, Weihua Group, together with Changyuan City, the city where it is located, is getting younger and younger.
25% weight reduction, 30% height reduction, 20% consumption reduction, 20 decibel noise reduction, and 90% impact reduction... A series of "reduction" characters are the new attitude displayed by Weihua Group's world's first "new Chinese-style" crane.
Cranes are known as "steel giants" and tower in port terminals, factory workshops, and engineering front lines. They generally weigh millions of tons. "For the safety of builders and in response to the national 'carbon neutrality' and 'carbon peak' goals, the manufacturing of traditional cranes must be transformed into lightweight, intelligent and green ones," said Han Hong'an, chairman of Weihua Group.
The significant reduction in product weight is due to the fact that Weihua Group has always placed great emphasis on innovation, talent and investment.
In Weihua Group, there are as many as 29 national technology centers, R&D centers, and testing centers, as well as heavyweight postdoctoral scientific research workstations and academician workstations. The group has more than 7,200 employees and a scientific research team of more than 1,000 people. The leaders are Yang Shuzi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhang Tiegang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Every technological innovation that seems very small to outsiders contains the wisdom of a large number of technical personnel. For a crane weighing more than 300 tons, the rocker arm shakes greatly during operation. How should the operator be frightened? The anti-swing precise automatic positioning control technology independently developed by Weihua Group has already ended this kind of shaking - the swing amplitude is reduced by more than 95%, and the control accuracy reaches 2 mm. It is the first of its kind in the world and fills the technical gap in this field.
"That is already the first-generation product. Our second-generation product has achieved an accuracy of 1 mm. Currently, we are developing a third-generation crane. The control accuracy of the swing arm is even smaller, and the immediate stop time of the swing can be shortened to 1 second or even ignored." Han Hongan said proudly.
The technology team is strong and the management team is also very high-end. From Weihua Group to Weihua Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd., most of the senior executives come from first-tier cities such as Nanjing, Changsha, and Wuhan. Yu Youfei, who resigned from an important position in a central enterprise, has been a Weihua native for nearly 20 years. The newly introduced group president Li Guoqiang is from Changsha and has led three listed companies.
In Weihua Group, ordinary workers also have a stage to show their value.
Xia Weixin, a single-beam first-class welder, has been with Weihua Group for 17 years. He has grown up through labor and passed down his craftsmanship in the welding arc. As long as the products passed through his hands, the quality qualification rate is as high as 99%. He also solved the production problems of many first-in-class products such as the 300T yacht handling machine. As the technical backbone of the team, he walked into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and was awarded the honorary title of National Model Worker.
It is precisely because of the increasing number of "Xia Weixin" that in the Weihua Intelligent Industrial Park, only robots are seen "waving" their arms, but operators are rarely seen. "We have changed the traditional welding process. What used to require 50 people now only requires 10 people, and does not even require manual operation." said Xie Baohua, executive vice president of Weihua Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd.
Whether abroad or in any region in China, as long as there is a network signal, as long as the machine fails, Weihua Group's big data center can promptly alarm and send out fault signals to achieve full life cycle management of lifting equipment. At present, the big data center has accumulated various types of equipment connected to it, covering 29 provinces in China and Southeast Asian countries and regions, and its users involve 121 enterprises and units in 13 industries such as machinery, electromechanical, and petrochemical industries.
There are as many as 666 small industrial categories in the country, and today Weihua Group has provided services to 665 of them. Among the invention patents in the entire crane industry, 51.7% come from Weihua Group. It was the first to compile the "Crane Index" and became a reflection of the industrial system.A "barometer" of the operating conditions of the manufacturing industry. In the crane industry, Weihua Group is also the first company in the world to implement 5G technology. Their newly developed "new Chinese-style" crane has been sold for less than a year and has sold more than 5,000 sets.
Among the city’s more than 1,500 “above-standard” companies, Weihua Group is one of three companies with main business revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan. In 2021, Weihua Group ranked among the top 100 enterprises in Henan with revenue of 14.8 billion yuan. Pursuing innovation and thirsting for talents, Weihua Group's annual R&D investment accounts for more than 4% of its annual sales revenue.
In Changyuan City, Weihua Group also has "one priority", which is to attach importance to social welfare undertakings. "To repay the country and society, I will donate 1/3 of my personal wealth to the education in Changyuan City, so that children can enjoy better education." When a reporter asked Han Hongan about his specific thoughts, this entrepreneur who wore patched clothes as a teenager and had 127 scars on his body due to work when he was young immediately corrected: This is not an idea, but a promise!
