01.

Before September 2022, Ivan's life revolved around the farm. He fed the animals, assisted with births, and tended to the fields. This relentless 24/7 pace honed his resilience. A single phrase—'A good company is hiring'—spurred him to take a position as a bending operator in the workshop, balancing his responsibility to his family with anticipation for new opportunities.

The difficulty of the transition far exceeded expectations. While farming relied on accumulated experience, the workshop demanded precise mastery of machinery principles and rote memorisation of quality standards. While communication on the field's ridges was straightforward, collaborating with Serbian and Chinese colleagues in the workshop presented language barriers as the first hurdle. Initially, progress could only be made through gestures and repeated phrases such as 'try again'. 'Every day felt like learning an entirely new craft,' Ivan later remarked with a smile. When cross-cultural communication stalled, he tackled the language barrier by practising technical jargon and everyday phrases, sentence by sentence, using translation software. He gradually progressed to having light-hearted chats with his colleagues. Unfamiliar with the machinery and processes, he shadowed senior staff, observing and asking questions, and jotting down critical operations in a notebook to study repeatedly.

His “fearless” attitude enabled him to keep pace with the company's rapid growth. As orders increased and new product trials became more demanding, he volunteered to work overtime with the technical team, thoroughly memorizing the process parameters of each new product. When new team members struggled to keep up, he took them under his wing and taught them step by step. He shared his own transformation experience to encourage them: 'Take your time. You'll learn it.' The leader mentioned that, on several weekends, he saw Ivan walking around the workshop, checking machine operations and reviewing production records. Ivan seemed at ease. Ivan admitted, 'Seeing the qualified products pile up on the assembly line brings me more joy than seeing a bountiful wheat harvest.'

A year later, Ivan had grown into a line team leader. His new role presented new challenges. When he first encountered the SAP system, he was overwhelmed by its complex interface. He used his free time to study tutorials and seek advice from colleagues until he could accurately verify every piece of data. Initially worried about 'managing people,' he proactively learned about each team member's strengths, broke down company goals into specific, actionable tasks, and assigned responsibilities accordingly. No matter what challenges arose, he approached them with the 'down-to-earth' attitude he had developed on the farm—never shying away from difficult tasks or avoiding responsibilities.

The work environment changed from the fields to the workshop, but his determination to “do the job well” remained unwavering. Ivan's story teaches us that true excellence lies in steadfastly pursuing the path you've chosen, taking one steady step at a time. This calm, steady resolve is the most inspiring force of all.

02.

In early autumn 2012, the first breezes of the season swept across Huai'an's newly completed factory building, the steel framework of which cast jagged silhouettes in the dawn light. Twenty-four-year-old He Xiaoqiang arrived brimming with enthusiasm and, from that moment, became the first lead extrusion operator at Huai'an's aluminium extrusion plant.

The assembly line flowed like a surging river while order reports piled high on desks. Yet technicians capable of independently handling complex processes were few and far between. Standing in the workshop, Xiaoqiang, with a decade of extrusion experience, watched the bustling yet occasionally stuttering production line. He realised that his operational expertise had reached a critical threshold and that it was time to stop merely 'ploughing away'. Clenching his fist, he approached the section chief and declared, 'I wish to transfer to the process department!'

“These minor issues can be resolved by feel alone. Why be so pedantic?” grumbled a veteran operator while recording parameters. Xiaoqiang countered, ‘Sensitivity fluctuates with state, but standards remain constant.’ He was firmly rooted in the workshop, codifying passed-down knowledge into standard operating procedures and transforming years of anomaly cases into single-point training sheets for OPL. These were displayed neatly on the production line kanban boards. New recruits followed them, and veterans cross-referenced them, resulting in a visibly smoother workflow.

As the sole factory producing structural components at the Huai'an base, the workshop is responsible for prototyping the group's R&D projects. When the large-section, multi-chamber sill beam project was first proposed, however, the workshop erupted. “This structure is too complex — it's simply impossible to manufacture!” the quality assurance officer shook his head. “It requires high-precision, high-grade equipment that our current machinery can't provide.” The senior equipment technician also waved his hands in refusal. Just as everyone had deemed the task utterly impossible, Xiaoqiang fixed his gaze on the production board and, in a firm voice, declared, ‘Let me try.’

From that day onward, he shuttled constantly between the workshop and the laboratory. At dawn, he stood by the extruder, observing the extrusion process, taking temperature readings and fine-tuning the settings. Afternoons found him alongside the testers, scrutinising the display of the tensile testing machine and recording each set of experimental data. In the evening, he pored over tables of experimental results and trial-and-error reports, analysing the causes line by line until late into the night. After thirty days of relentless persistence, the first multi-chamber sill beam that met the specifications slid off the production line and a smile flickered in his eyes. The task that everyone had deemed 'impossible' had finally been conquered.

Over the course of thirteen years, He Xiaoqiang witnessed the factory evolve from a single extrusion press to nine operating extrusion lines, and from mass producing trim strips to mass producing multi-chamber structures. This journey has seen a shift from 'experience-based methods' to 'replicable standards'. With a technical foundation grounded in the production floor, he has continuously honed his craft. Today, the extrusion operators he personally trained are deployed across all factories, yet he remains in the workshop, where he started. Just as in that first autumn, his eyes still gleam with an unwavering passion for his work.

Minth MBU has created the column 'Light Chasers' 

Since April, 2023.

Aiming at pursuing the warm stories around us

We hope that more people will see the light, follow the light, become the light and spread the light.