Tech Giants: Starting from Bankrupt Companies

79: Chapter 79: New Product Rolls Off the Production Line, A Milestone MomentThe Birth of the Special Zone Workshop

July 23rd, Monday, 6:30 AM.

In the northeast corner of the assembly workshop, a 2,000-square-meter area was cordoned off by blue partitions. A striking slogan was posted on the partitions: ’Innovation Special Zone — The Starting Point of 0.001mm Precision.’ This was the ’Special Zone Workshop’ designated by Lin Wan, and it was also the first experimental field for the Shenyang Machine Tool regeneration plan.

Inside the partitions, the world was completely different.

The floor was newly poured epoxy, light gray, smooth as a mirror. The roof was equipped with an air conditioning system and air purification devices, keeping the temperature constant at 22°C ± 1°C and humidity at 45% ± 5%. The LED lighting was professionally designed, with uniform illuminance and no shadows. Forty surveillance cameras and temperature/humidity sensors collected data in real-time, displaying it on a large electronic screen at the entrance.

The most conspicuous items were the twelve machine tools waiting to be retrofitted—six were old equipment originally from Shenyang, and six were semi-finished products shipped from Guancheng by Starry Sky. They would be transformed into the first batch of ’Jingwei-Shenyang Edition’ CNC lathes.

At seven o’clock sharp, the mixed team gathered.

From the Starry Sky side, twelve people arrived: young engineers led by Zhang Rui, with an average age of twenty-eight, wearing uniform dark blue work clothes with the Starry Sky flame logo printed on their chests.

From the Shenyang side, twenty-eight people arrived: eight Old Master Craftsmen like Ma Zhendong and Liu Jianguo, ten key middle-aged personnel around thirty-five, and ten young technicians under twenty-five—they had volunteered for the Special Zone project.

Zhao Tiezhu stood in front of the team, holding a roster: ’From today on, this place is the ’Jinggangshan’ of the new Shenyang Machine Tool. The rules are very simple—do things according to Starry Sky’s standards, and solve problems using Shenyang’s experience. Any questions?’

’Yes,’ Liu Jianguo raised his hand. ’General Manager Zhao, this floor is too slippery. We’re used to walking on rough ground in our work shoes; it’s easy to fall here.’

Zhang Rui responded immediately: ’Master Liu, we have prepared anti-slip shoe covers, two pairs for everyone. In addition, the wheels of all tool carts and material carts have been replaced with polyurethane silent wheels.’

Liu Jianguo nodded and didn’t speak again.

’Alright, let’s divide into groups now.’ Zhao Tiezhu began reading the list. ’First group, spindle box assembly, team leader Master Ma Zhendong, deputy team leader Zhang Rui. Second group, bed guide rail scraping, team leader Master Liu Jianguo, deputy team leader Engineer Li...’

After the list was read, the forty people were divided into six groups. Each group was a combination of ’old, middle-aged, and young,’ with Starry Sky and Shenyang personnel mixed together.

Ma Zhendong walked to the first machine tool and patted the cold cast-iron bed: ’Old buddy, starting today, I’m giving you a new heart.’

The War of Bolts: The Clash Between Feel and Data

The conflict erupted on the first afternoon.

When assembling the spindle box, according to Starry Sky’s standardized operation manual, all bolts had to be tightened using a torque wrench, strictly following the specified values: M12 bolts, torque 78N·m; M16 bolts, torque 176N·m...

Zhang Rui held the torque wrench and demonstrated to a young technician: ’Stop when you hear the ’click’ sound. Not more, not less.’

Ma Zhendong stood by and watched for a while, his brows furrowing tighter and tighter. Finally, seeing a technician repeatedly adjusting a bolt due to nervousness, he spoke up:

’Xiao Zhang, this won’t work.’

Zhang Rui stopped: ’Master Ma, what’s wrong?’

’Bolts aren’t tightened like this.’ Ma Zhendong walked over to the machine tool and pointed to the mounting surface of the spindle bearing housing. ’Look here, cast iron base, aluminum alloy bearing housing, two different materials, the thermal expansion coefficients are different. Now the workshop is 22 degrees, you tighten it to 78 N·m. When the machine starts running, the bearing temperature rises to 60 degrees, the aluminum alloy expands faster than the cast iron—the bolt stress will exceed the limit, either pulling the threads or causing the bearing housing to deform.’

Zhang Rui was stunned. This problem wasn’t in the textbooks, nor was it in the standardization documents.

’Then... how should it be tightened?’ He asked humbly.

Ma Zhendong took a common open-end wrench from his toolbox: ’Our old way—’tighten two and a half turns, back off half a turn.’ Leave a little elastic margin so the material has room for thermal expansion.’

He demonstrated personally: his wrist exerted force steadily, the wrench turned, he stopped at a certain position based on feeling, and then gently backed off a little. The movement was as smooth as breathing.

’But there’s no quantitative standard for this...’ Zhang Rui hesitated.

’Feel is the standard,’ Ma Zhendong said. ’I’ve been working for thirty-eight years, and I’ve tightened at least one hundred thousand bolts. I know how much force to use for what kind of mating surface just by the feel in my hands.’

The two were at a stalemate.

On one side was Starry Sky’s principle of ’digitization, standardization, and traceability,’ and on the other was the Shenyang Old Master Craftsman’s ’feel honed by decades of experience.’

Zhao Tiezhu arrived upon hearing the news. After listening to both sides’ statements, he pondered for a moment and proposed a compromise:

’How about this, Master Ma, you tighten them using your method. But Xiao Zhang, you install strain sensors on the bolts to monitor the changes in preload in real-time. Let’s do an experiment—record the actual torque range corresponding to the ’feel’ and see if this range can be standardized.’

This plan was acceptable to both sides.

Over the next three days, the first group became a large-scale experiment site. Ma Zhendong led three Old Master Craftsmen to tighten 128 sets of bolts of different specifications using the traditional feel. Zhang Rui’s team installed sensors on each set of bolts, recording the force value curves during the tightening process, the final preload, and the stress relaxation within the following 24 hours.

By the fourth day, as data accumulated, patterns emerged.

Unexpected Discovery: Modern Verification of Traditional Wisdom

On the evening of July 27, in the conference room of the Special Zone Workshop, Zhang Rui projected the analysis report onto the large screen.

’We analyzed 128 sets of data,’ his voice carried suppressed excitement. ’The ’feel’ of Master Ma and the others indeed corresponds to a torque range, not a fixed value. For example, for M12 bolts, the final torque they tightened fluctuated between 72-84 N·m, with an average of 78 N·m—exactly our standard value!’

Ma Zhendong’s eyes lit up.

’What’s more critical is this,’ Zhang Rui pulled up a set of comparison curves. ’On the left are bolts tightened strictly according to 78 N·m, showing stress changes during simulated temperature differences (22°C → 60°C). On the right are bolts tightened according to Master Ma’s ’tighten two and a half turns, back off half a turn’ method.’

The graph clearly showed: the bolts tightened with the standardized method saw stress increase sharply as the temperature rose, with the peak exceeding 80% of the material’s yield limit. The bolts tightened with the traditional method had a gentle stress increase, remaining within the safe range.

’And this,’ Zhang Rui zoomed in on the time axis. ’After continuous monitoring for 72 hours, the average stress relaxation of the standardized bolts was 12%, while the traditional method only relaxed by 3%. This shows that ’backing off after preloading’ really does improve long-term stability.’

There was silence in the conference room.

These cold, hard data points provided a scientific footnote to decades of old experience.

Ma Zhendong slowly stood up, walked to the screen, and pointed to the winding curves: ’I don’t quite understand these squiggly lines. But I know that here in the Northeast, it’s minus twenty degrees in winter and forty degrees in the workshop in summer, a temperature difference of sixty degrees. If the machine didn’t have some ’elasticity,’ it would have broken down long ago.’

He turned to Zhang Rui: ’Xiao Zhang, your set of standards is good stuff, precise. But it was set for an ideal environment with constant temperature and humidity. The reality here wasn’t taken into account.’

Zhang Rui nodded deeply: ’Master Ma, I understand. Standards are dead, reality is living. We must incorporate the ’living reality’ into the standards.’

The final solution was produced: ’Temperature Difference Compensation Tightening Method.’

Based on the standard torque value, an elastic adjustment range was provided according to environmental temperature differences, material matching, and operating loads. At the same time, ’slight backing off after preloading’ was written into the operation manual as a standard operating step—but the backing-off amount was changed from ’feel’ to a quantitative value of ’0.1 - 0.15 turns.’

This fusion plan was engraved on the wall of the Special Zone Workshop:

’Respect data, but do not be superstitious about data.’

’Trust experience, but verify experience.’

July 31, 10:00 AM.

The Special Zone Workshop was quieter than ever.

Forty people stood in a circle, with the CNC lathe that had just finished its final debugging in the middle. It had been fitted with brand-new protective covers, the dark gray paint was as smooth as new, and the screen on the control panel glowed with a standby blue light.

This was the first ’Jingwei-Shenyang Edition’ CNC lathe.

It was also the first machine tool with two lines of text engraved on its nameplate.

Zhao Tiezhu stepped forward and uncovered the red silk on the front protective cover of the machine tool. The nameplate below was revealed—

First line: Shenyang Machine Tool · 1953

Second line: Starry Sky Manufacturing · 2017

The font was carefully designed: the first line used the Song typeface of old machine tool nameplates, solemn and primitive; the second line was Starry Sky’s standard sans-serif font, modern and concise. The two lines were arranged one above the other, separated by a shallow horizontal line in the middle, like a fault line in history, and also like a continuation of heritage.

Applause broke out, not enthusiastic, but very heavy.

’Now, precision testing,’ Zhao Tiezhu announced.

The testing team leader was Starry Sky’s Quality Director, a stern, middle-aged engineer in his fifties. He took three inspectors and began a full inspection according to the highest standards.

First item: Spindle radial runout.

The inspector inserted a precision test bar into the spindle taper hole, and the dial indicator needle gently pressed against the surface of the test bar. The spindle rotated slowly, and the needle began to swing slightly.

One turn, two turns, three turns.

The data stabilized: 0.001 mm.

’Starry Sky standard is 0.002 mm,’ the testing team leader recorded expressionlessly. ’Better than the standard.’

Second item: Repeat positioning accuracy.

Under program control, the workbench moved repeatedly to ten preset positions. The laser interferometer measured in real-time, and data scrolled on the screen.

Final result: ± 0.003 mm.

’The standard is ± 0.005 mm. Better than the standard.’

One item after another. Guide rail straightness, spindle axial runout, turret repeat positioning, cutting test piece precision...

All data were better than the Starry Sky standard.

Last item: Continuous machining stability.

The machine tool was set to run an automatic program, continuously machining 100 aircraft engine blade positioning pins—these were typical high-precision parts for the Jingwei series of lathes.

The first part came off the line, checked by a coordinate measuring machine: all dimensions qualified.

The tenth, the thirtieth, the fiftieth...

Only the rhythmic cutting sound of the machine tool and people’s suppressed breathing remained in the workshop.

The ninety-eighth, ninety-ninth, one hundredth.

When the one-hundredth part was removed from the machine tool, four hours and seventeen minutes had passed.

The final report of the coordinate measuring machine was printed out. The testing team leader took the report, looked at it for a long time, and then looked up:

’Continuous machining of 100 pieces, precision retention rate: 99.7%.’

He paused and added: ’The best record of Starry Sky’s Guancheng base is 99.5%.’

After a brief silence, cheers erupted.

Young people jumped up and high-fived, and the Old Master Craftsmen patted each other’s shoulders hard. Zhang Rui and Ma Zhendong hugged each other—a twenty-eight-year-old Tsinghua master’s graduate and a fifty-eight-year-old eighth-grade fitter, both with red eyes at this moment.

Liu Jianguo turned around and walked to the corner of the workshop. He took off his reading glasses and wiped his eyes hard with the back of his rough hand. Someone wanted to go over to comfort him, but was held back by Ma Zhendong: ’Let him cry. This old man has been holding it in for three months.’

Yes, three months. From questioning, resistance, and confrontation, to testing, compromise, and fusion. Behind the offline of this one machine tool was the difficult grinding of two generations and two cultures.

Zhao Tiezhu picked up the microphone for the workshop broadcast, his voice a bit choked:

’I announce—the first prototype of the ’Jingwei-Shenyang Edition’ has been successfully trial-produced!’

Thunderous applause.

And amidst the applause, the machine tool stood quietly there. The two lines of text on the nameplate shone with a warm luster under the lights.