A wheel maker helps drive development

"My mission is to turn blueprints into actual products," he said.

In 2018, Magang planned to relocate and upgrade some of its equipment.

Shen and his colleagues volunteered to undertake this complicated task and had to work around the clock to move and debug the machines.

One problem was that the algorithm for a part of the tires didn't match the actual wheels. So, he used actual wheels to identify the miscalculation and adjust the system, through several rounds of trial and error.

His professionalism and persistence won respect from the software engineers.

In 2016, Shen and his team tackled problems they encountered in producing bullet-train wheels.

"The wheels should stay balanced during high-speed rotations, which requires extreme precision during production," he said.

"My team and I spent about three months optimizing the production techniques and found that decentralized manufacturing procedures may have been the cause of the imbalances since every tiny imprecision may lead to a relatively big problem."

Shen's versatility compensates for a shortage of machines.