"Here are two pieces of Chinese cigarettes. Here is three thousand yuan in cash. You can use them to fund the work. If you complete everything as required, I will personally give you a bonus!"
·Purchasing is mostly done by the other party, but Li Yan has given price requirements, which requires a certain amount of connections and means, so funds and cigarettes are considered necessities.
Li Aiguo walked in without asking too many questions, because the factory has been in full swing recently.
Everyone is making preliminary preparations for new products, and they are somewhat looking forward to them.
Now that procurement and finance have been arranged, as the production supervisor in the factory, Li Aiguo naturally has a more important job.
"Uncle San, this is five thousand yuan, which is for the next production line renovation and upgrade."
Li Yan watched Uncle San go out with the money, still thinking about something in his heart.
What is five thousand yuan enough for?
Three thousand yuan is only enough to purchase and treat guests to dinner. Is five thousand yuan enough to upgrade the production line?
That’s enough.
The production line needs to be upgraded.
It’s not a big fight, but a “software” upgrade.
The main requirements are not difficult:
Lay anti-static rubber and equip with an electrostatic bracelet.
Plan a clear material area, assembly area, testing area, and packaging area.
Making a simple function testing fixture can test startup, display, call, ringtone, and vibration at the same time.
Compile the simplest work instructions and quality inspection standards.
For example: there are no dead pixels on the screen, no noise during calls, and no lag on the keys.
The most careful and literate female workers are selected from the existing female workers to form a "mobile phone assembly commando team", and are trained by the third uncle himself.
By the way, most of the workers in our Xingchen factory are female, accounting for more than 80%.
Li Yan took a deep breath and stretched. He had been busy deploying plans in the past few days.
Now that everything has been arranged, Li Yan can relax a little before finishing it.
What?
Why doesn't Li Yan go in person?
Li Yan is the boss. Even though this project is very important to him, it is better to leave these basic things to the people below.
Otherwise, what kind of boss would you be?
Besides, procurement or negotiation are not my strengths at all.
It can't be compared to the employees who work in purchasing and sales all year round, and the third uncle who is the production supervisor.
What you have to do is to grasp the general direction, and that is enough!
But next, Li Yan still has things to do.
And this matter is also related to the key to the success of the next product!
…
Time: November 17, 2007.
Sister Li, the purchaser, came back after a long journey with several mainstream copycat phones and a stack of quotations.
Li Yan immediately summoned the two "technicians" Xiao Zhang and Xiao Zhou who graduated from technical secondary schools in the factory, as well as his third uncle and others, and started a "disassembly meeting" in the office on the second floor.
An anti-static mat was spread out on the table, and Li Yan did the work himself, using a precision screwdriver to disassemble Tianyu, Gionee, CECT and other mobile phones one by one.
He explained while taking it apart:
"Look, this is the motherboard, all the chips are here. MTK's solution is highly integrated, we can't move it, and we don't need to move it."
"Pay attention to the middle frame bracket, which determines the strength and internal stacking of the phone. Our design must be more reasonable."
"Look at their battery compartment and card slot The position, the design is very anti-human, we can change it."
"The molding line of this case is too obvious, and the spray paint is cheap. This is our opportunity."
Xiao Zhang and Xiao Zhou took note of it crazily with their notebooks. It was the first time they looked at a mobile phone from the perspective of "product" rather than just "parts".
Furthermore, the bonus promised by Li Yan is the key to temptation.
In the next time, the factory staff will continue to try to disassemble and assemble these prototypes. They must be familiar with the process as much as possible before starting a new project.
Li Yan turned on the computer in the office equipped with Windows XP system and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 and started the most critical step.
This software was bought when I was making complex accessories, and almost no one knew how to use it. Now it has become Li Yan's "magic pen".
He began to build a 3D model of the mobile phone casing based on the internal structural dimensions obtained by disassembling the phone.
In terms of styling, he abandoned the silly, bulky shape of the male model and designed a more rounded transition and a thinner visual appearance. When Li Yan designed the casing, the back adopts a slight arc curve to fit the palm of the hand perfectly.
In the current situation of the mobile phone market in 2007, the public model only considers whether it can be installed, and never considers the grip.
Hold it in the hand, the user can intuitively feel that "this phone is very high-end", which creates a huge psychological advantage.
The buttons adopt an integrated design, saying goodbye to the loose feeling of separate buttons;
The texture of the side buttons and the opening of the earpiece are carefully designed.
He rendered two colors in software: "obsidian black" (not pure black, with a slight pearlescent light) and "flame red" (extremely high saturation, very eye-catching).
This kind of design concept comes from later generations in 2025, although it is somewhat overkill when placed on today's straight plate machines and assembly machines.
But it is foreseeable that it will definitely have a great design impact!
You must know that Li Yan does not just think that as long as his design is good-looking, sales will be high.
It was only after careful consideration that we worked hard on this designed track.
The first point is that the design highlights its own products and forms a strong contrast with other shoddy products on the market.
The second point is price!
High-looking design, low price positioning, and our products are very competitive in the market!
Yes, it is not the competitiveness that dimensionality reduction attacks, but just good competitiveness.
This is reality, not a game. How can these alone have a huge impact on today's mobile phone market?
However, Li Yan naturally has his own trump card.
At this time, Li Yan copied the designed 3D drawing file into a USB flash drive, took Xiao Zhang with him, and drove to a familiar mold factory in Baoan, Shenzhen.
Although there are some brands of male models on the market that can be used, what Li Yan wants to make is the difference in design.
A set of mobile phone case molds, including front case, back case, keyboard and battery cover, usually costs 60,000 to 80,000.
Li Yan lowered the price to RMB 55,000 on the condition that he would be responsible for the design and the other party would only be responsible for the processing.
As for the payment method, Li Yan proposed the "3331" payment method.
That means a 30% down payment, 30% after the first mold trial, 30% before mass production after acceptance, and the remaining 10% as a quality deposit, which will be paid off three months later.
This is also a relatively common pattern.
As for the development cycle, Li Yan insisted on delivering the T1 trial sample in 20 days.
At this time, the mold factory owner who was sitting in front of the tea table in the office looked at the professional design drawings handed over by Li Yan and knew that this was not nonsense, so he finally agreed to the price and payment method.
It's just that Li Yan immediately made an additional request.
Li Yan asked the mold factory to add a vacuum nano-coating process to the "Flame Red" and "Obsidian Black" paint surfaces.
This technology already existed in 2007, but it was mostly used in high-end digital cameras and automotive accessories, and had never been used in mobile phones.
Nowadays, most of the knock-off mobile phone casings are made of solid-color plastic spray paint, or simple electroplating to imitate metal. The paint is easy to peel off and the texture is cheap.
This is one of Li Yan's trump cards.
Hmm, a normal thing is that the cost of the mold has increased by 15,000.
Li Yan paid the deposit on the spot.
After the mold is completed, we still have to wait for the development cycle, so we need to continue to launch some of the next killer features...