At the end of the visit to the shipyard, Zhao Bingjun invited Yang Rui and others to the banquet as a landlord, according to the civil servant code, even if it was a banquet, it was only a standard meal, but the Yunnan rebellion, as a non-revival system, and under the 2nd Army, Yang Rui felt that he still had to sell Zhao Bingjun a face, otherwise everyone in Gyeonggi would not be at ease during the New Year, which was not conducive to stability.

There are more than 50 kilometers from the shipyard to the Yamen of the governor of Zhili, everyone first crossed the Haihe River and then got on the train from the Tanggu railway station to Tianjin, taking advantage of these few hours, Chen Shishi, who rarely saw Yang Rui, hurriedly asked about the production efficiency, he said: "Prime Minister, I want to ask, there is an article in the management magazine that says that Ford Company because of the use of assembly lines, its production efficiency is eight times higher than that of ordinary automobile companies, so can the production efficiency of China's factories be equal to it?" ”

Yang Rui, who was increasingly reluctant to talk about it, saw that Chen Quartz was asking professional questions, and at the same time he was more satisfied with others, so he asked rhetorically: "Do you know how many man-hours were for each car produced before the Ford Model T came out?" What are the man-hours of the assembly of the Model T car after the standardization of parts, and how many man-hours have become after Ford adopted assembly line production in the second year of Shenwu? ”

"This ......" Chen Quartz is a shipbuilder after all, if he asks the average working hours per coarse ton of shipbuilding, he will definitely be able to blurt out, but when it comes to cars, he is completely a layman, fortunately, Yang Rui asked himself.

"It is estimated that in the era of manual single-piece production of Ford's Model A, it would take about 800 man-hours to assemble a car; When Ford designed the Model T but did not use an assembly line, the total man-hours suddenly dropped to 216; And after three years of Shenwu, it adopted the assembly line. The total number of hours worked was further reduced to 127 hours...... [note 1]"

"That is to say......" Yang Rui said that he probably didn't spread it down, but Chen Quartz understood what he meant. Pipeline production is not the key to improving production efficiency, but the biggest improvement in efficiency is interchangeable standardized parts. ”

He said so. Yang Rui smiled slightly and nodded. I didn't want him to ask again: "Xiaguan will ask the prime minister again, if we use our production method to produce Ford cars, how many man-hours can we achieve in the production time?" ”

"At least half!" Yang Rui remembers a comparison of the production efficiency of Japanese, American, and European automobile companies that he had seen before, that is, he had made a rampant comparison between the production efficiency of Japanese automobile companies in the United States and a certain factory of General Motors in the United States, as well as European automobile companies, and finally came to the conclusion that after World War II, the European automobile companies that learned from the American mass production system were the least efficient, with 36 working hours on the assembly line, and the United States General Motors was due to the competition of Japanese automobile companies. The number of man-hours of the final assembly line is 31, while the Japanese automobile company in the United States has the shortest final assembly line time, only 16. [Note 2]

This is a comparison of production efficiency more than 70 years later, and now Ford is only in the original mass production, there is no MRP, no quality control, no other better management technology, even if you exclude the simple factor of technological progress, think about the European car companies in 60 years, the efficiency will be much higher than Ford, so calculated. If China benefits special cars, it will save more than half of the man-hours.

Yang Rui thought that maybe the Chinese-made Model T car could save two-thirds of the man-hours compared to Ford, and Chen Shishi, who was next to him, heard that it could save half of the man-hours, and couldn't help but be pleasantly surprised: "Then wouldn't my country be able to build cars?" ”

Chen Quartz's voice was too loud. So much so that Xu Huafeng, who was talking to Zhao Bingjun, also walked over, and he blamed: "Why are you shouting so loudly?" After speaking, he said, "We build cars." The Americans will definitely raise tariffs, and maybe their advantages will turn into disadvantages. ”

Chen Quartz consciously shouted too loudly. was retreated as soon as Shangguan said it, and Xu Huafeng's later sentence was said to Yang Rui. Shipbuilding, car building, and airplanes are Xu Huafeng's favorites, but the problem is that after the war, shipyards and aircraft factories have to reduce production significantly, so he attaches great importance to building cars.

"Actually, you can give it a try." Yang Rui understands his thoughts, and he also has the intention of building cars. There are production management technologies that far surpass those of the Americans, so why not show their skills in the so-called industry within the industry, automobiles.

"The research on quick mold changes isn't entirely good." Under the teaching of Yang Rui, Xu Huafeng understands that just as the key technical factor of Taylor's standardized parts is high-speed steel (only high-speed steel can process hardened steel without causing quality defects of parts, which is the premise of realizing the standardization of parts), the key to the technology of just-in-time production is to change molds quickly.

There are many stamping parts for automobiles, and Ford uses a special punch press to achieve universal and low-cost parts, but this expensive punch can only produce one type of part, and once the part is changed even slightly, the punch can only be scrapped. Just-in-time production, on the other hand, requires universal or compatible tooling and the ability to change molds to produce a wide range of parts, while in order to improve production efficiency, it must be done quickly and by workers rather than engineers. Diesel engine factories have been working on this technical problem, and although progress has been made, it is far from being fast.

"It is not necessary to wait for all the research to begin, many problems can only be solved in practice." Yang Rui said. "And our advantage is not how many man-hours we have to lose, but how many models are more than ten times better than Ford's. In the face of the tactics of the sea of vehicles, the Americans could not resist. As for tariffs, if the United States can sell as much as it wants, if a trade dispute really arises because of this, then the Americans will pay lip service to us. In any case, launching more models than GM at a lower cost than Ford is not something that U.S. Customs plus 100 percent tariffs can do. ”

"So who are we going to do it with? Do you want to pull the Rockefeller company? What if the Japanese are coming? "Hearing that the car building plan is really going to be implemented, Xu Huafeng is very cautious. He knew the model of the tractor factory, that is, to let Rockefeller participate in the shares, so that the Tonghua plant could be transformed into an American-funded company, and he could borrow his connections and resources all over the world, and Rockefeller was extremely happy to do so, because the implementation of diesel engines all over the world was what Rockefeller was willing to see, and the refinery could not only sell gasoline and kerosene.

"Japanese ......" Yang Rui pondered that Japan's production efficiency is now one-tenth of that of China, and with the Japanese spirit of study, once he participates in the shares, maybe he will learn this set of management methods back. And. The same way that the Americans were used against the Japanese was not necessarily able to deal with the Japanese -- in order to prevent the Americans from acquiring advanced management technology, the production plants and marketing companies were separated. Rockefeller only participates in the marketing company and does not intervene in the production process. But if it were the Japanese, they would have asked to get involved in the production process.

"Actually, whether Japan is an enemy or a friend or an enemy must be decided as soon as possible." Xu Huafeng understands Yang Rui's prudence, don't look at the current China and Japan are like glue, when the business of the European war is finished and they go home to count the money, then Japan must have complaints, especially in shipping, China has taken the lion's share.

"Let's not bring the Japanese in just yet." Yang Rui thought for a while before saying. He is not thinking about the big head and the small head of shipping. He was thinking about the land in the Outer Northeast. Although the secret said that the Japanese could gain territory, he didn't want to give them at all, and his bottom line was at most to give the Japanese the southern part of Sakhalin after the Russo-Japanese War, and then those ice and snow lands that China had lost lost after the Russo-Japanese War. But once the dog day is greedy and insufficient, maybe because of that piece of land, how big is Japan? How big is the Outer Northeast? Even if one-third of the area of the Outer Tohoku were to be divided, the size of Japan's territory would be doubled.

The leader's intentions are finally difficult to fathom, and Xu Huafeng feels that he does not know much about national politics and diplomacy. He had no choice but to change the topic, and he said with a smile: "Actually, the news just now, the steel plate of American shipbuilding has risen to one hundred and fifty dollars; Aluminum is also rising. In the United States, the drought and hydropower plants generate very little electricity, and aluminum production is estimated to be reduced by 20,000 tons. The price of aluminum is estimated to be $2,000; And tungsten, which is about to turn over to the sky. One hundred and fifty dollars per twenty pounds. Americans are now crazy and generally look around for tungsten ore, but they don't know if they can find it. ”

Ninety-five percent of the world's tungsten production is in China. Before the war, the price of tungsten was $7.5 per 20 pounds [Note 3], about 751 tons, but now, because of the malicious sabotage of the 'German agents', there have been several fake mine disasters and several mines have collapsed, and the price has actually reached 15,000 US dollars a ton, which is still tungsten ore, not tungsten concentrate powder. Based on the world's annual demand for more than 10,000 tons of tungsten sand, tungsten alone can earn four or five billion taels.

"In such a hurry, how can the Americans find tungsten ore?" Yang Rui shook his head, he thought of aluminum again, and said: "We have expanded aluminum production several times, and the output has also increased tenfold, why is it still in short supply, where is this used?" ”

"This ......, the aircraft is one, we launched an aluminum alloy aircraft, other countries can't make it for a while, and they don't want to buy our aircraft, so they order special parts from the aluminum alloy factory. In addition to the fact that the largest amount is explosives, the cannonballs are more powerful when aluminum powder is added. Smokeless gunpowder has now risen from one dollar per pound before the war to two dollars per pound, and is sold for $4,400 a ton, which is twice as expensive as aluminum. "Xu Huafeng knows everything before and after the war, and he talks with relish." It turned out that our explosives and nitric acid are lower than the price in the United States, when will the price be higher? ”

"Wait until the United States declares its entry into the war." Yang Rui is determined. "Now seventy percent of the nitro raw materials used in the world for the production of gunpowder are provided by us, and a rash increase in prices will definitely be criticized, but it is different for the Americans to participate in the war, and the military products they participated in the war will rise sharply, and it is normal to take this opportunity to double or two."

"I see." Xu Huafeng nodded loudly, but he thought of another thing, "Actually, I feel that platinum can also be fried." ”

"Hmm. You say. "Platinum is not a Chinese product, and Yang Rui doesn't know much about it.

"The greatest use of platinum is the catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid, and those who are still using saltpeter to produce explosives need large quantities of concentrated sulfuric acid. Russia is a platinum power, producing 250,000 ounces of platinum per year before the war, and Russia's export output has been declining due to inconvenient transportation during the war and other reasons. This country really wants to ...... Then the output of more than 200,000 ounces will be gone, and the price of platinum will skyrocket. Xu Hua said, "Why should we take advantage of this to buy more, first, for our own use, and then we can sell it at a high price to crack down on those who are still using saltpeter to make explosives." ”

"How much do you want to invest and how much can you earn?" Yang Rui asked.

"The price of platinum is now thirty-nine dollars an ounce, if it really wants Russia...... That's 15,000 ounces left in Colombia. The CIA's prediction is that without Russian supplies, platinum could well rise to $500 an ounce. Xu Huafeng read a few numbers, and he didn't know how high the price of platinum was later, "Now Britain and France have reduced the purchase of platinum because of our nitric acid." If we exchange arms and Russia for hundreds of thousands of ounces of platinum, how can we make ....... It depends on how much our smokeless gunpowder and nitric acid rise. If Britain, France and the United States think that the price of nitric acid or smokeless gunpowder is too high, it is estimated that they will have to use saltpeter. This is where sulfuric acid is used, and platinum is also used......"

Platinum is thirty-nine dollars an ounce, which is basically twice the price of gold. However, when I think that my arms have risen so many times, arms for platinum, this platinum is still extremely cheap, and once the Russian Revolution is broken, the price of platinum will definitely skyrocket. One hand controls the supply of nitric acid, and the other hand controls the platinum required for the production of explosives from saltpeter, and the two sides raise the price of each other. In addition, the Entente countries were unable to build so many saltpeter processing plants, and it was not known how much the explosives would be able to rise to a ton by then.

"Since the CIA has done a professional analysis, let's buy all the platinum in Russia and exchange it for arms." Yang Rui said.

"Buy them all? That's an investment of 50 million taels. Xu Hua sealed. He would have liked to buy some, not all. Once Russia is in war, the platinum mine cannot be produced, and even if it is produced, it will be difficult to transport it.

"Aren't the Americans unwilling to buy our nitric acid and gunpowder, so we will buy all the Russian platinum, and wait for the platinum to come to the rescue. See what they do, pry the gold teeth? Yang Rui said.

"Hehe......" Xu Huafeng stroked his beard and laughed, many foreigners use platinum for tooth inlays, if platinum is not enough. The Americans are probably really going to pry their dentures. "Then I'll arrange it when I go back."

"Let the Japanese company do it in the name of the Japanese." Yang Rui said again.

"I understand." Xu Huafeng took out a notebook to record this, he is also used to using a fountain pen now, but this is only used when he goes out.

I saw that he remembered it densely in his notebook. Yang Rui said: "Have you ever calculated, and you will play for another three years." How much can we earn? ”

"Shipping doesn't count." Xu Huafeng replied.

"Not counting shipping." Yang Rui asked.

"Not even if you don't count shipping." Xu Hua sealed. "For example, tungsten, no one thought that it could rise so high. There is also smokeless gunpowder. Now it's two dollars a pound, but no one knows how much it will rise in a few years.

In fact, the real money still depends on steel, shipbuilding, and shipping, and although the profits from arms are huge, Russia's money is limited. Britain and France can produce their own products, and the United States is also giving them loans to the two countries, so they can't make a lot of money by selling things. At present, there are 12 shipyards in the country, large and small, that are in operation, and if 1.5 million tons of ships can be built a year, then this money is really not a small amount. ”

"It's a pity that welding can't work." Yang Rui shook his head, he glanced at Xu Huafeng at the same time, a little dissatisfied. Although the shipbuilding plan of the Ministry of Industry has been raised, the efficiency of the shipyard has reached the extreme, and at the same time, the domestic machine tools are limited - even now, it is also using military machine tools to process marine parts, and the military industry no longer produces other things except the most profitable shells, but fortunately, Japan has joined in, and after half a year of training, his military factory can also produce standard ship parts.

"It's not that welding can't work, there are many constraints, even if it's technically feasible, whether it's economically and production-managed, it still takes time to study." Xu Hua sealed. "The steel used for welding is now sold for 400 yuan a ton, but this is still going up. The CIA believes that if the government does not intervene in the United States, the price of ordinary marine steel plate in the United States will eventually rise to $400 a ton, and even if it intervenes, the price will exceed $200, which is 400 dollars in Chinese dollars. At present, we are using 250 Chinese yuan a ton of ordinary shipbuilding steel, but if we want to weld it, the price of steel is estimated to double to 1 ton of Wu Baiyuan. A 6,000-ton standard ship, at least 3,000 tons of steel, this is to increase the cost of 750,000.

Spend an extra 700,000 yuan, the biggest problem is that we have no welding experience, and we don't know how much tolerance and margin should be taken when lofting and blanking. According to some experience in the early stage, the waste heat generated by welding will deform the segmented hull strictly, once deformed, and to carry out correction operations, without enough experience, the workload of correction will be much greater than the workload saved by using welding, which outweighs the loss; Then there is the error, because it is assembled in sections, there will always be man-made, design errors, and the deformation of the hull by welding will aggravate this error. Distortion and error are the most difficult problems in the implementation of welding.

Now engineers think that the margin and tolerance can solve the error problem, but too high tolerance and too little margin will make it difficult to meet the requirements in production, and the production cycle is also long; And too low tolerances and too much margin, production is easy to achieve. The manufacturing cycle is also short, and the process after it can be reworked frequently. It is quite possible that the end result will be that welding will not be faster, but slower than riveting. Now the Shanghai Jiangnan Bureau is gathering mathematicians. If you want to use the methods taught in probability theory to try out the appropriate tolerance for welding construction, once you have the results, shipyards across the country will be able to expand it. ”

It turns out that welding also produces hull deformation and error rework. Yang Rui thinks that welding is only a technical problem, and he doesn't want the biggest problem to be a production problem, but he is confident that the Shanghai Jiangnan Plant will use modern statistics to solve the margin and tolerance problems. Statistics in this era is still in the era of classical estimation, and the practical application of statistics is still only to count the population, study and study society, and has not been applied to actual management actions such as production and engineering at all, and even the concept of sampling surveys to infer the overall situation has not yet been established. Arguably. Statistics is still deep in the study, and it is basically pure theory.

In contrast, the entire academic community in China began to apply mathematics and statistics on a large scale to actual production and engineering, first in artillery and military industry, and then through quality management personnel to the entire state-owned and private factories, and now even the layout of the national transportation network and the decision of the Prime Minister's Office on certain things are based on mathematics.

Thinking of this, Yang Rui couldn't help but be a little happy, and he said: "Since the Jiangnan factory has been studying the margin and variance, I think that these problems can be solved in less than a year." ”

"Actually, you really want to weld?" Xu Huafeng was a little surprised. "Even after only a year of working out reliable margins and tolerances, the deformation of the hull is controllable, but the speed of shipbuilding in a short period of time cannot exceed that of riveting. The delay in the construction period caused by the adjustment of the operation plan of steel mills and shipyards will offset the speed advantage of later welding. Welding will begin next year, then it will be at the end of the following year. in order to make up for the lost time. But the war will be over in three years, as you might expect. This is equivalent to when the welding speed exceeds the riveting. Don't build a ship. No matter from the number of shipbuilding or the cost of shipbuilding, welding is not cost-effective. ”

"It's not cost-effective, but it's going to be implemented." Yang Rui insisted. "Experience is more important than anything else. After this time. I really don't know when Ma Yue had the opportunity to implement large-scale welding technology. Even if the quantity and cost of building a ship are not cost-effective, this experience is extremely valuable. Mr. Huafeng, this time it is a war in Europe, where will the next war be? If our industrial products are to be sold all over the world, it will not work without the navy. ”

I didn't expect Yang Rui to think so far, Xu Hua said: "Don't the Japanese have a navy?" After the war ended last year, our two countries had no stake in it, and if we cooperated, we would benefit both sides, and if we divide it, we would do two harms......"

As for the Sino-Japanese War the year before last, although it was a Japanese invasion, the high-level of the Renaissance Association knew that it was Yang Rui who deliberately provoked the war, and Japan would attack Dalian Kwantung Prefecture if it did not go to war, so many people around Yang Rui did not have a bad feeling towards Japan and hoped that China and Japan would unite. As soon as Yang Rui talked about the navy, Xu Huafeng thought of the Japanese navy, as if the Japanese navy was Chinese.

Yang Rui, who had a bad opinion of this, said: "Let's not talk about the Japanese navy, even if the Sino-Japanese alliance, one sea and one land, it is not enough." On the other side of the Pacific Ocean is the United States, and the Sino-Japanese alliance must be a thorn in the heart of the Americans. Although the Japanese Navy has many ships, can it beat the United States? Welding can save 30% of man-hours, and this technology must be mastered well, so that warships can be quickly replenished in wartime. Otherwise, if we build ships in 30 years and finish them all in three years, and the entire coast will be exposed to the threat of the enemy, and once the bombers come, even if we have already arranged most of our factories in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hubei, Liaoning, and other places, we will suffer heavy losses. ”

"Ah......" Xu Huafeng didn't expect that Yang Rui's opposition to the layout of factories in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang coastal areas and other places was because he was worried about war, and he wondered, "Our future direction is still to the sea?" Didn't you say at the last meeting that Europe would attack the west and defend the east after the war? ”

"That's what I said." Yang Rui nodded, "But if you get the place you need to take in the northwest, you still have to try your best to hand over to Russia." I don't want to fight in the east, but the real threat still comes from the sea, and our industrial scale is limited, so we can only improve efficiency in terms of technology and management, and it doesn't matter how many ships we have in peacetime, but how many ships we can build in wartime is the key. (To be continued......)

PS: Note 1, \ Henry. Hepburn, A History of Capitalist Labor Optimization, Taylor, Ford, and Toyotaism. Also, the total assembly time is not the time when cars roll off the assembly line - Ford could roll off the assembly line in 10 seconds in the twenties.

Note 2: The machine that changes the world qì, p94

Note 3: U.S. Wartime Planned Economy, 1933 edition, p110. The prices of other items in this chapter also come from here, P101-122.