On the 5th of December, a special Ceremony for the 10,000th Great Wall “P Series”, China’s first global passenger pickup, was held in Great Wall Motors’ Chongqing Smart Factory. With members local government, high level Automotive Journalists, various upper managers of the pickup brand of Great Wall Motors, industry experts from all over the country and hundreds of media representatives witnessed the historic moment.
The backbone of the legacy of the now legendary brand that is Great Wall Motors has been the Pickup. Since its first official production on August 30, Great Wall “P Series” has achieved a breakthrough from “zero to ten thousand” in only four months of production and has compounded the phrase “Great Wall speed” with this strong performance. Standing at the beginning of a new era, Great Wall “P series” will be successively launched in the various markets worldwide and compete with the international mainstream pickup brands. The Great Wall “P Series” Series will further help the globalization process of Great Wall Motors.
Born to be icebreaker, Great Wall “P Series” will reshape the global pickup map
In China, the Great Wall “P Series” has attracted great attention and won the recognition from consumers since its launch. In October this year, Great Wall “P Series” made a good start with a retail sales volume of 5,020 units and instantly ranked first among domestic high-end pickups above 100,000 yuan. In addition, more than 10,000 units of the Great Wall “P Series” were sold in a short period of time, setting a record in the market segment. The hot sale of the Great Wall “P Series” not only proved its powerful strength as a superior product, but also accelerated the arrival of this historic moment.
During the event, Zhang Jiaming, General Manager of the pickup brand of Great Wall Motors, said that Great Wall “P Series” should surpass joint ventures in terms of product, beat joint ventures in terms of sales volume, compete with luxury cars in terms of service and create a new service standard for global passenger pickups. With a global product, quality and service as the standard, it will comprehensively accelerate the globalization process of Great Wall Motors, bring unprecedented amazing experience for users and make pickup lifestyle even more popular!
At the same time, the market performance of Great Wall “P Series” poses a new challenge to the mass production capacity of Great Wall Motors’ Chongqing Smart Factory, which was completed only three months ago. Thanks to the intelligent manufacturing concept of “green, environmental protection, lean and efficient”, Great Wall Motors’ Chongqing Factory has built a real smart factory with the help of the smart information system that integrates research, production, supply, marketing, people, finance and materials, which is a strong support for the rapid increase of production capacity and the overseas expansion of Great Wall “P Series”.
At the site, Meng Shujie, General Manager of the Chongqing Branch of Great Wall Motors, said that against the background of Great Wall Motors’ comprehensive globalization, Great Wall Motors Chongqing Smart Factory, as a key force in the globalization process, will support the globalization strategy of Great Wall Motors based on its industry-leading intelligent manufacturing level and promote “Chinese power” to change the world together with other members of the global production system of Great Wall Motors.
In terms of intelligent manufacturing, the factory is leading in automation. The welding workshop has 98 Fanuc robots with 100% automation rate. The painting workshop has 46 gumming and spraying robots. The stamping workshop has two large automatic high-speed stamping continuous production lines, with the functions of ADC one button changing mould and ATC one button changing stamping tool. The final assembly workshop has the SPS+AGV automatic delivery system with 70% automatic on-line rate. Meanwhile, by applying APS system, MES system and other systems, the factory realizes production planning coordination, creative process control, quality management, equipment management, supply chain coordination, information collection and equipment integration.
In terms of intelligent operation management, the factory realizes a series of intelligent logistics management such as internal and external logistics management, logistics quality management, distribution management and order-driven warehouse management based on the WMS (Warehouse Management System) and the LES (Logistics Executive System). Moreover, the EAS platform and virtual cloud system are adopted to realize intelligent digital operation management of e-procurement, human resources management, driving point management, office automation, asset management and employee self-service platform.
With the 10,000th Great Wall “P Series” Rolling off the Line, Great Wall Pickup enhances the confidence of hitting higher sales targets and will usher in the era of 3.0 multi-purpose passenger vehicle with its industry-leading and innovative product quality. With the launch of Great Wall “P Series” Off-road Pickup, Great Wall “P Series” will also accelerate the implementation of the globalization strategy of Great Wall Pickup and even Great Wall Motors.
Empower Great Wall Pickup to become world’s top three pickup brand and accelerate the globalization process of Great Wall Motors
According to Li Chunlei, Chairman of China National Automotive Journalist Association, the Chinese pickup industry is most in need of outstanding auto enterprises such as Great Wall Motors, who combines its own development strategy, gives play to its own advantages, continues to develop new pickup products in line with the market demand, further enhances its brand value and promotes the further prosperity and development of the Chinese pickup industry with the help of all walks of life.
At present, Great Wall Pickup has proposed the “1-2-3” Strategy, that is, to maintain the absolute NO.1 place in domestic and export sales; to achieve annual sales of 200,000 units by 2020; and to achieve cumulative global sales of 3 million units by 2025. Great Wall Pickup will also compete with international mainstream pickup brands, and finally achieve its vision to become “the world’s top 3 pickup brand”.
Looking back at the history of overseas sales of Chinese auto brands, Great Wall Pickup began to export as early as 1997, marking the beginning of Chinese auto brands’ entering overseas markets. Up to now, the export volume of Great Wall Pickup has reached 330,000 units, ranking first for 21 consecutive years and covering five continents, demonstrating the strength and global influence of the Chinese brand.
In addition to the globalization of product, Great Wall Motors has also realized the globalization of R&D and production. At present, Great Wall Motors has successively built overseas R&D centers in Japan, the United States, Germany, India, Austria and South Korea. The manufacturer has built a global R&D layout covering seven countries and ten regions in Europe, Asia and North America with the Baoding Headquarters as the core, which has become the key cornerstone for Great Wall Motors to master the future core technologies.
Great Wall Motors’ Tula Factory in Russia was put into production in June this year. Great Wall Motors Chongqing Smart Factory was completed in August. The Great Wall Motors Pinghu Vehicle Project integrating production and R&D was officially started in October. The Whole Vehicle Production Project of Taizhou Branch of Great Wall Automobile was formally started in November. In just half a year, four vehicle manufacture bases of Great Wall Motors have been put into production or started construction, improving the nine factories and 5 CKD plants creating a global production system of Great Wall Motors with a rare “Great Wall Speed” in the industry, providing a strong guarantee for the improvement of production efficiency and the global development of Great Wall Motors.
In the future, with the gradual liberalization of China’s pickup policy, it is believed that Great Wall “P Series” will create a greater sales spectacle in China by virtue of the lean and efficient production capacity released by Great Wall Motors Chongqing Smart Factory. Meanwhile, in the wave of overseas sales of Great Wall Motors’ products, it will bring more overseas market incrementally for Great Wall Motors and continue to accelerate the globalization process of Great Wall Motors.