Zhang Zhaohui, founder of Kechuang and Youaizhihe: Know-How in the subdivided industry, Made in China will lead the global mobile robot market

Zhang Chaohui Founder and CEO of Aizhihe
Xi'an Jiaotong University Robotics PhD Student Deputy Secretary-General of the Manufacturing System Control Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Automation
2019 Chapek Outstanding Young Entrepreneur, presided over a number of provincial key R&D programs

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Youaizhihe, the leader of the mobile robot track, the founding team was born out of Xi'an Jiaotong University's robotics professional doctoral team. In 2017, it walked out of the ivory tower. In just 5 years, it has not only won the favor of top investment institutions such as ZhenFeng, Haina Asia Venture Capital (SIG), Softbank Asia, etc., but also scaled in semiconductor, 3C, lithium battery and other fields. Landed, and overseas market expansion has also achieved good results.

2017-2019
Eat the most ash, provide the most scene-specific value
In 2017, when he persuaded the team and pulled out a luxurious team of five graduate students to go south to Shenzhen, Zhang Zhaohui had not even completed his doctoral studies.
Recalling the moment when he made up his mind, Zhang Chaohui felt a sense of urgency similar to a sense of mission: the robot investment boom that started in 2015 has receded significantly, but in the view of Zhang Chaohui, who is instinctively accustomed to thinking at the bottom, the difference between the two core variables is obvious. Appearance, will set off a wave of growth in the commercial landing of robots: "Based on natural navigation technology, flexible large-scale scheduling can be achieved, and the birth of collaborative robotic arms can ensure the safety of human-machine collaboration. The maturity of these two technologies It is the key to the current application of composite robots. It will definitely be done, and it will be too late if it is not done.”
Since its establishment in May 2017, within the first two years, Youaizhi has not fully established its direction and core value in the robotics track. While polishing the product, the team is looking for the nails of the scene with the hammer of technology. . When it comes to academic entrepreneurship, it is easy to trigger the stereotype that the technology is excellent but the scene awareness is insufficient. However, Zhang Chaohui established a simple cognition that "robots must create real value for the enterprise" early on, and has done a lot of extremely heavy and profound work. Scenario research, once the work of 10 experts stationed in the field for a year is difficult to form effective value feedback, it will be enough to drag down any start-up company, but on the road of in-depth study of scenario value, Youaizhihe has no turning back.
It just so happens that the hurricane of the robot track is also gradually ebb at this point in time. Rationalism and the return of the value standard have dominated the value judgment standard of the robot industry at this stage. As a result, UAI Zhihe, which firmly believes that "core competitiveness, customer value and the ashes eaten in the factory are directly proportional", has been favored by leading customers. In just two years after its establishment, it has completed the inspection of Michelin tires and the customs ban The two major customer scenarios of product inspection were successfully delivered.

Science and technology creators: If you want to list a taboo in the start-up stage of a technology company, "deeply trapped in a single customer scenario" must be a TOP 5 commandment. Are you trying to make a start-up period?
Zhang Chaohui: Youai Zhihe was created in response to these two beliefs:
First, robots are often regarded as production tools, but we firmly believe that robots are an advanced productivity. Since they are productivity, they must be able to create obvious value for industry scenarios. Therefore, we can only go deep into the front line of the industry and tap the industry. With the Know-How, it will be possible for robots to bring about maximum productivity changes.
Second, robots will definitely create higher value for all walks of life in the future. This is the definition of productivity, just like people can engage in various industries. However, in order for robots and people to really do a good job in an industry, they need professional training and education. Therefore, we do not intend to make a universal robot product that can be used everywhere, but with an empty cup mentality. Enter the market, and produce the robot into the appearance corresponding to the pain point of the industry scene.
From the review point of view, although the early learning cost is indeed high, it just constitutes the core competitiveness of Youaizhihe. For the Michelin tire inspection project, several of us stayed in the parking lot for half a year: in the tire maintenance of large vehicles, the detection of whether there are studs and wear problems has always been carried out by human inspection, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Michelin hopes to use robots to inspect tires and digitize the results. The parking lot is not a warehousing scene. There are cars and people with sundries. Faced with such a specific and complex scene, it is impossible to do a good job of delivery without in-depth research.
As a latecomer in the robotics industry, we came late, but we must be the most thorough, entering an industry and breaking through an industry.

Hardware or scenario for strategic decision in 2019? Chassis or software?
With the completion of the initial delivery, Youaizhihe's popularity in the market and investment circles has increased rapidly. However, in 2019, the Youaizhihe team fell into a huge strategic disagreement.
The options in front of you: Some people think that in addition to sticking to the existing scene, we should make more efforts to upstream accessories, such as producing professional mobile robot chassis, and upgrading from a gold digger to a shovel seller; some people think that Youaizhihe digs deep The industry scenario is the correct development route. Next, new industry scenarios with greater value and greater development space need to be developed. Others believe that compared with hardware, the bottleneck restricting the development of the robotics industry is software. software direction.
All parties have their own reasons, and their opinions are not completely exclusive. Some people support the combination of hard and soft, some people think that only the scene should be developed, and some people think that the scene software should be a two-pronged approach. The management style established by Zhang Chaohui is relatively democratic. In his opinion, the core team must reach a consensus on the strategic direction, so he made a decision: no one will go without discussing a result. "The disadvantage of this management method is that once there are differences, the various Sticking to one's own opinion requires a lot of discussion, and the advantage is that once a consensus is formed, the speed of promotion will be very fast."
This big discussion lasted for nearly a week, and the core team really slept in the office for a short week. On the verge of being overdrawn in physical and mental strength, the team established a consensus on the general direction and established a decision-making optimization mechanism for regular review, which has persisted to this day.

Kechuang people: At that time, what judgment did you have about the current development direction?
Zhang Zhaohui: Taking the Internet industry that everyone is relatively familiar with as an example, making universal hardware is similar to making a platform, while in-depth industry scenarios are making APPs and using Internet technology to solve a specific problem. I think Youaizhihe can’t be in a hurry to do platform things for a long time. The reason why the development of the robot industry has slowed down is because the links between robot products and industry scenarios are less and weaker, so as to undertake peer-to-peer tasks. Take the traditional mobile robot for material handling as an example. The machine is only responsible for handling in place, and the material selection process still requires manpower. In this process, a large number of analysis, decision-making, scheduling, arrangement and management are completed by people, but when the factory is unmanned After the transformation, the corresponding functions should be transferred to the robot.
There is huge commercial value in it, and the way of mining this value, after deep thinking, I think it is a software product. With robot services supported by software, robots have truly become a medium connecting the physical world and the digital world, and have become an important link in the digital upgrade of enterprises.

Kechuang people: Going deep into scenarios means that products are destined to be customized. You also mentioned in other interviews that you need to use modularity to deal with the uniqueness of each enterprise. If you develop the direction of software business, wouldn’t it be a disaster? Twice the experience?
Zhang Zhaohui: Indeed, the industrial field itself has huge complexity. The MES (Manufacturing Execution System) of each enterprise is different, and its scheduling, task engine, order management and transportation order management... are very different. We have also seriously thought about whether to completely take over MES. After repeated calculations, we thought that it was not feasible. Too much non-standardization is difficult to form the optimal logic. However, there are actually many standards in the logistics scene, so we began to do logistics for logistics. Scenario-based software services, we will become the logistics center of a manufacturing enterprise in the future, integrating robots, software and hardware to form optimal productivity.
In the end, everyone reached an agreement, and started investing in software development when there were only more than 70 people. Later, some very excellent comrades were dug to participate, and they fully embraced the new way of integrating software and hardware.

2020-2022 New challenges of opening up new territories + epidemic situation, striving to ensure 100% delivery With the reaching of the strategic consensus, the two sub-scenarios of semiconductor manufacturing and power and energy inspection have become the new base of Youaizhihe.
Energy inspection can be regarded as an upgrade and extension of the inspection direction, while entering the semiconductor industry is a bold decision based on deduction. "Large volume, high growth rate, and urgent digital upgrade" are the industry scene selection criteria determined by Zhang Chaohui. In the context of the digital age, as the basis of all electronic products, the semiconductor industry obviously meets the standards.
At present, the wafer production lines of many well-known semiconductor manufacturers at home and abroad have deployed UAI Zhihe products; and in the power energy industry, UAI Zhihe's guests include State Grid, National Energy Group, Huaneng, Dalian Top customers such as Tang and Zheneng.
"At the head of the semiconductor industry, we should be the first among domestic robots; in the power and energy industry, we are basically in the leading position."
Surprisingly, under the multiple and superimposed pressure of new industry challenges + epidemic black swan + supply chain pressure, Youai Zhihe is able to guarantee 100% delivery.

Kechuang people: The principle of 100% delivery rate and 0 unfinished ends, how did Youai Zhihe persist in realizing it despite the unfavorable factors such as the epidemic and supply chain pressure?
Zhang Zhaohui: First of all, let me talk about why we insist on 100% delivery. Mobile robots are not completely new products. Many customers have tried before and failed, causing them to completely lose confidence in robots. The reputation of a company is destroyed in such an instant. For example, in the semiconductor industry, a box of 1 million yuan and a robot can move 8 boxes at a time. It is impossible to accept the instability, and the price is not something that a robot and a robot company can afford.
The impact of the epidemic on us is mainly on the business and service side, but it is also because the epidemic has prompted enterprises to initiate labor reforms, and the market demand for robots has increased to a certain extent; as for the supply chain, we serve the semiconductor industry and judge the trend of this industry. It is relatively accurate, so last year we did a lot of actions that seemed radical at the time, such as stocking up thousands of radars at one time, so even in the first half of 2022, it was the most stressful 6 months since our establishment. We can still guarantee the delivery effect.
In the follow-up, we will speed up the alignment of business and supply chain plans. Now our business staff will pull supply chain companies together from time to time to strive for accurate plans. In the past, we waited for the business to place orders, but now we must take the initiative to adjust. In general, the first is to have the courage and ability to stock up for a long period of time, and the second is to improve the operation capacity of the supply chain.
Of course, we are still optimistic about the future prospects. The original market customers are mainly mature enterprises with digital transformation and upgrading needs, and now more and more small and medium-sized enterprises have begun to plan smart factories in the start-up stage.

Kechuang people: Does Youaizhihe have such a plan: to intervene in the start-up planning stage of the smart factory and implant a set of relatively standardized robot solutions, which can not only open up small and medium-sized enterprises, but also improve the degree of standardization?
Zhang Zhaohui: This is a good question, but to be honest, even if small and medium-sized enterprises have plans to plan smart factories, we would not suggest that they start using robots as soon as possible. Turn down some clients' unsolicited offers (laughs). At present, the main industry value of robots is still improving efficiency, but small enterprises in the start-up period must first consider the running mode and survive. We have an experience called incremental automation. Enterprises must first solve the material flow, then establish the information flow, and finally establish the decision flow. This is a reasonable digital growth path for enterprises. 90% of Chinese enterprises have not yet opened up the material flow.

Tips Zhang·Bayesian·Zhaohui·Zhang Zhaohui calls himself a "Bayesian believer", so he has established the habit of thinking about observing the world with probability and formulating strategies.
Believe is the most probable mentality to embrace a thing, and doubt is 0 probability.
All In, all-or-nothing is an extreme belief, but belief is also the correct state of mind that guarantees the greatest probability.
 Therefore, there is no doubt that it is reasonable to employ people. On the contrary, if you always do things with the mentality of trying things out, and you can't make up your mind and put in enough energy, the probability of success is almost zero.
 It is impossible for a company not to make mistakes. The way to reduce the probability of making mistakes is to increase the company's fault tolerance. "The multiple rounds of financing in 20 and 21 are based on this consideration, and it is still correct at present."

Future: Going overseas As UAI Zhihe has proved its product and technical strength in the semiconductor industry, most of the logistics robots used in wafer manufacturing scenarios are Japanese and Korean companies. Thanks to excellent product design, UAI Zhihe makes The semiconductor industry has broken through the perception of domestic manufacturers, and overseas demand has become increasingly apparent.
In July 2022, Youai Zhihe announced that it has officially become the first Chinese mobile robot member of IFR (International Federation of Robotics), and plans to increase the proportion of overseas business to more than 30% within three years.

Kechuangren: You once said that in the next 2-3 years, there will be key growth factors for the robot industry to go overseas. What kind of factors may this be?
Zhang Zhaohui: The development of the robot industry is based on the maturity of the industrial foundation. The relatively leading foreign industrial industries have incubated traditional robot head manufacturers. Their start-up time is decades ahead. Of course, latecomers want to quickly gain decades of experience. It's not that easy.
However, with the emergence of the competitiveness of China's industrial manufacturing industry, we also have a large number of more excellent and higher-value scenarios, such as mobile scenarios, and the domestic environment foundation is better. Therefore, domestic mobile robots are far stronger than industrial robots. many. In the future, the localization share of domestic mobile robots may exceed 95% or even higher, which means that products in this field, "Made in China" have international-level competitiveness. When the competitive advantage is large enough to generate generation differences, overseas markets Naturally, they will try to use these products, in the business world, using the best products means the highest efficiency, and other disputes are second.

Kechuang people: What kind of overseas strategy has Youai Zhihe formulated?
Zhang Zhaohui: The general principle is to make money with our partners, so our overseas strategy is deviated from our domestic strategy. The core of our overseas strategy is to be “integrated”.
First of all, following domestic manufacturing companies to go overseas, they go abroad to build factories, and we accompany them with our products to replicate the successful domestic model.
Second, find some overseas local customers, such as DHL, who have deployed our robots in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia. For such customers, we will try our best to cooperate with dealers and agents to share risks, work together, and earn together. money.