The current domestic and international market environments are volatile, with industry competition reaching a white-hot stage. For us, how to navigate steadily amidst these turbulent business seas has become a core issue for in-depth consideration. In view of this, the company formally established a Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement Committee in March of this year, establishing "cost reduction" and "efficiency enhancement" as long-term and critical work tasks. After all, only by effectively reducing costs and improving efficiency can we enhance our competitiveness in the market, thereby securing survival and development space amidst these ever-changing market conditions.

Multi-departmental Collaborative Efforts to Drive Product Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement

Products are undoubtedly the core elements for manufacturing enterprises. Only by reducing product costs can we gain market competitiveness and secure orders, which are the lifeblood for a company's existence. To achieve the goal of product cost reduction, multiple departments including marketing, sales, design, R&D, process, planning, procurement, production, quality, warehousing, and logistics must collaborate, thinking and working together with a unified goal to forge a powerful synergy.

Design and R&D departments should actively engage in frontier innovation, utilizing advanced concepts and technologies to develop new products. In process optimization, introduce lean production concepts, deeply analyze production processes, identify and eliminate unnecessary steps and waste, thereby lowering product manufacturing costs.

The order delivery department should establish an efficient information tracking platform, leveraging IT means to real-time track production plans, ensuring seamless order docking, closely monitoring procurement and production progress information, and through resource coordination, minimizing delivery times.

The quality department should establish a full-process quality control system, utilizing big data analysis for comprehensive, end-to-end control and supervision of product quality. Through early warnings, identify and resolve quality risks promptly, reducing quality issues and eliminating quality accidents.

The finance department also plays a key role in product cost reduction. Utilize refined costing methods to calculate costs at each stage from raw material procurement, production processing to finished product delivery, providing precise data support for cost reduction initiatives in other departments. In budgeting, reasonably establish standard costs and through real-time monitoring strictly supervise budget execution, promptly identifying and correcting cost deviations. Furthermore, the finance department should actively participate in product pricing decisions, employing scientific methods and comprehensively considering costs and market factors to ensure product pricing covers costs while also being market competitive.

However, not all efforts yield ideal results. Take the plastic door panel products of the Camio Wing region as an example; their costs have remained high, lacking market competitiveness. Coupled with loopholes in quality control last year, leading to substantial claims from customers, the company is still in difficult negotiations with them. As a last resort, the company had to reluctantly dismantle the door panel workshop. This action resulted in many technicians having to switch careers and learn new skills, ultimately leading to a mutually detrimental outcome for both the company and employees.

Strengthening Supply Chain Management to Promote Procurement and Logistics Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement

Firstly, strengthen supplier management and actively establish deeply integrated, long-term stable cooperative relationships with high-quality suppliers. By building strategic partner alliances, share market information with suppliers, collaborate on R&D innovation, striving for more favorable procurement prices, more stable supply guarantees, and better after-sales services. Simultaneously, enhance the application of supplier evaluation results, dynamically adjusting supply shares based on actual circumstances to ensure the supply chain is both stable and vigorous.

The IT department can play a significant role in this process. Leverage big data analysis technology to deeply mine, organize, and analyze various supplier data, including on-time delivery rates, product quality data, price fluctuation situations, utilizing data visualization tools to provide intuitive and precise data support for the procurement department in selecting high-quality suppliers. Develop and improve the supplier management system, utilizing IT means to achieve real-time information sharing and interaction with suppliers, enhancing communication efficiency, lowering information costs in the procurement process, and improving overall supply chain collaboration efficiency.

Secondly, strengthening inventory management is crucial. Employ scientific and reasonable inventory management methods such as ABC classification and the economic order quantity model to precisely control inventory levels. By establishing a safety stock warning system, avoid inventory accumulation, reducing capital occupation and inventory management costs, while utilizing supply chain collaboration technology to ensure smooth production and sales.

Additionally, it is necessary to vigorously optimize logistics distribution methods, adopting innovative models such as joint distribution and centralized distribution, utilizing path optimization algorithms, vehicle scheduling systems, and other means to reduce transportation costs and enhance logistics efficiency.

Advancing Lean Management to Support Production Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement

To advance lean production management, the production department should comprehensively optimize production processes, utilizing methods such as value stream analysis to improve raw material utilization rates, eliminate material waste, and reduce defective and inferior product generation. Strengthen equipment maintenance and servicing, employing predictive maintenance systems for equipment to extend equipment lifespan and reduce equipment replacement costs. Through in-depth analysis of equipment operating rates, use industrial internet platforms to reverse derive redundancy issues in production processes and promptly track improvements, effectively enhancing production efficiency.

The equipment management department bears significant responsibility in this process. Besides routine equipment maintenance, formulate a scientific equipment replacement plan, employing equipment lifecycle cost analysis methods, combining production demands and equipment performance conditions, to reasonably arrange equipment upgrades and replacements, avoiding cost waste from过早或过晚 equipment replacement. Introduce advanced equipment monitoring technologies to grasp equipment operating status in real-time, predict equipment failures in advance, reducing production downtime caused by equipment failures, improving equipment operating efficiency, and lowering equipment maintenance and production interruption costs.

Achieving production cost reduction also requires heightened attention to equipment energy-saving retrofits. Energy consumption occupies a significant proportion of production costs. Retrofitting equipment with technologies such as frequency conversion speed regulation and waste heat recovery can reduce energy consumption, effectively slashing production costs.

Optimizing Positions and Processes to Achieve Management Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement

People are the foundational elements of enterprise operations, while optimizing business processes is the key breakthrough for efficiency improvement. Firstly, each process owner needs to comprehensively review and deeply analyze existing processes, utilizing methods such as business process reengineering and Six Sigma to identify cumbersome, repetitive, and inefficient steps. For example, in approval processes, carefully examine whether there are too many levels and excessive waiting times. During process optimization, where parallel methods can be adopted, they should never be done in series, while simultaneously establishing efficient information sharing mechanisms to lower communication costs.

The human resources department plays a leading role in process optimization and person-job matching. Through job analysis and evaluation, utilize job value evaluation models to clarify job responsibilities, skill requirements, and workload, providing human resources perspectives for process optimization suggestions. In recruitment and staffing, based on optimized processes and job demands, use talent assessment tools to accurately recruit suitable talent, avoiding personnel redundancy or skills mismatch. Simultaneously, design targeted training and development systems, utilizing online learning platforms, simulation training, and other methods to enhance employee skills, enabling them to better adapt to job changes and requirements after process optimization, improving overall employee efficiency, and lowering labor costs.

Secondly, efforts should be made to optimize person-job matching settings, enhancing personnel efficiency from multiple dimensions. The chairman clearly stated at this year's Spring Festival gathering that continuous optimization of the organization, streamlining personnel configuration, and eliminating low-value-creating jobs and unmotivated personnel will be ongoing efforts, striving to build an efficient and capable workforce. East Universe Phoenix has compressed management hierarchy by eliminating middle layers, while Camio Wing merged its outsourcing and storage departments. These measures not only reduced personnel costs but also significantly enhanced operational efficiency. Employees must continuously enhance their own value to create greater benefits for the enterprise, thereby stabilizing their positions.

Furthermore, to achieve management cost reduction, it is necessary to strengthen accounts receivable control, reducing overdue accounts. For overdue accounts with longer durations, promptly coordinate legal follow-up handling, utilizing legal means, debt restructuring, and other methods to effectively mitigate financial risks.

Full Employee Engagement to Forge Resilience Across the Entire Supply Chain

Cost reduction and efficiency enhancement efforts cannot succeed without team collaboration, requiring the full strength of the team. The severity of the market situation must be communicated to every employee, not just limited to the sales side. Everyone must have a strong sense of urgency. After all, without orders, everything is zero for the enterprise! For survival and development, cost reduction and efficiency enhancement efforts are imperative. If cost reduction and efficiency enhancement efforts are not implemented properly, the company will lose competitiveness and ultimately be eliminated by the market. All employees must deeply recognize the importance of "cost reduction" and "efficiency enhancement" efforts, fully forging resilience across the entire supply chain.

The administrative department, as the support and safeguard department for the company's daily operations, can also contribute to cost reduction and efficiency enhancement. In infrastructure maintenance, reduce procurement costs through centralized procurement and negotiating with suppliers for preferential prices. Optimize office space layout by planning to improve office space utilization rates. Standardize office equipment use and maintenance regulations to extend equipment lifespan and reduce equipment replacement costs. Additionally, the administrative department should actively coordinate with various departments to use project management tools to ensure smooth information flow, reducing inefficiency caused by poor communication and coordination, and enhancing overall operational efficiency.

In summary, only by reducing costs and improving efficiency can we gain a foothold in market competition and achieve survival and development. All employees should start with small things around them, actively participate in cost reduction efforts, take immediate action, improve work efficiency, and help East Universe Phoenix stand firmly and travel far amidst the waves of market competition.