On the special occasion of the 150th anniversary of Siemens’ roots in China, the “Siemens China Leadership White Paper” has been officially released. A series of Western “Leadership Stories” will serve as a supplement to the White Paper, starting from four strategic priorities:
Customer Impact
Empowered People
Technology with Purpose
Growth Mindset
It tells the moving story of the leaders of Xijia in different businesses and different positions.
This is also the further implementation of the “Leadership Narrative”, helping to build a diverse, adaptable and resilient Siemens team that continues to empower itself.
#Customer impact
#Empowered people
Character introduction: Wu F, the current general manager of Siemens Mobility China Customer Service Department, is responsible for the full life cycle services of high-speed rail, locomotive, subway and rail infrastructure products. He joined Siemens in 2005 and has nearly 20 years of experience in the rail transit industry.
At different stages of the development of China’s rail transit market, we have seen Wu F and his team’s persistence and pursuit of providing customers with the fastest and best service; we have also learned about his deeds of empowering the team from zero to one. Let’s walk into Wu F’s leadership story together, and experience his interpretation and practice of “achieving customers” and “empowering people”.
01High-speed rail service business from scratch: join hands and empower customers to be a sincere and reliable partner
“We stay up all night with our customers to check all vehicles and deal with emergencies together. All of this is for the smooth and safe operation of the high-speed rail and to become the most reliable partner for our customers.”
In the early stage of the rapid development of China’s high-speed rail industry, Siemens Mobility took advantage of its products and technologies to obtain a large number of orders. At that time, high-speed rail was a brand new thing for Chinese customers, and it was highly dependent on after-sales service. However, Siemens’ products and technologies all come from the German team. The Chinese service team has just been established and has limited information and technology, which brings great challenges to Wu F and his after-sales service team.
First of all, in order to better serve customers, Wu F and his team have always insisted on the localization of technical capabilities. Starting from scratch and learning quickly, the Chinese team took over the after-sales service in only 2-3 years. In addition, Wu F also led the team to constantly reflect and iterate in service practice and technical learning, built a complete modular practice training and assessment system for the internal team, empowered customers, provided training for customers, and communicated with customers. At the same time, we can monitor and deal with faults in a timely and accurate manner to ensure the operation order of high-speed rail.
Secondly, in practice, Siemens will always be a sincere, reliable and responsible partner for customers. At the beginning of China’s high-speed rail operation, Wu F and his service team were always on call at the depot for a long time. Since the maintenance work of the high-speed rail needs to be carried out at night, all-night work has become the norm. The next day, Wu F and the team continued to support on-site in case of emergencies, day and night, to provide customers with the most timely services.
Although these extra efforts will not bring direct business benefits, Wu F and his team have been practicing the principle of “providing the fastest and best service for customers”, and become the most trustworthy and reliable customers with practical actions. It also laid a solid foundation for Siemens Mobility to win follow-up orders for high-speed rail. So far, nearly 900 high-speed trains from Chinese customers have been equipped with Siemens traction systems.
The 160 km/h CJ3 EMU type test site, the left one in the picture is Wu F.
02Starting from the “heart”, serving customers: respecting changes in demand, thinking ahead of customers, and achieving win-win situation for all parties
“In the current Chinese transportation market, customers buy whatever Siemens has. What we need now is to really sit with customers, listen and observe, and help them figure out what they really need.”
After the development of the high-speed rail and subway market has gradually become saturated, Siemens Mobility has opened up a new track for intercity trains. In the process of business expansion, Wu F and his team actively seek new markets, new partners and new business cooperation models. Opportunity awaits those who are prepared. Starting from the “heart”, Wu F and his team stand out from the competition with hard skills and soft power, help them expand their business territory in the field of rail vehicles, especially intercity trains, and become partners that accompany the growth of customers.
Faced with the low feasibility requirements of “one model for multiple scenarios” put forward by customers, the Siemens team guided customers to clarify their operational priorities and jointly discuss more reasonable solutions.
Faced with the extremely high requirements of customers for response speed, the Wu F team obtained the authorization from the headquarters as quickly as possible, and the local team in China was solely responsible for connecting with the customer to ensure agile and fast response.
In the face of customers’ needs for constant adjustment in projects, Wu F said: “In the current market environment, the change in customer needs will never change. What we need to do is to learn to adapt constantly.” Respect customers’ changes, Thinking about problems from the perspective of customers and co-creating with customers are the principles that the Wu F team has always adhered to in practice.
03China Competence Center from Scratch: Fully Empowering and Stimulating Team Potential
“The process of starting from nothing is always full of doubts and thorns, but I believe in the unique value of each person, and I am willing to give each person opportunities. When their potential is fully stimulated, the impossible may become possible. “
In the process of providing services to customers, Wu F found that the maintenance of some core components needs to be sent back to the headquarters or partner companies, resulting in a long service delivery cycle, and with the impact of the epidemic and the shortage of raw materials in special periods, the customer’s operations will be affected. greater trouble. In order to solve this pain point, Wu F came up with the idea of building a Chinese competence center. On the basis of the original local high-speed rail maintenance capabilities, the capability was further improved and expanded to cover products such as locomotives and subways, hoping to realize the testing and maintenance of core control components locally. to improve responsiveness and delivery efficiency.
The first step Wu F took was to actively seek empowerment from the headquarters. Through benchmarking and workshops, Wu F developed a complete set of planning and business plans for the capability center construction project. After several rounds of communication, he successfully persuaded the headquarters and obtained further authorization to fully support the team by taking advantage of its technical and re
