Low-profile Bombardier riding the rails to success

Though President of Bombardier China, Zhang Jianwei is a low-profile businessman. He is rarely in the limelight as he leads the company from strength to strength.

A Canadian manufacturer of both trains and planes, Bombardier Inc is recognized as "one of the most successful foreign companies in the industry" yet it rarely publicizes itself in China.

"We speak less and do more," said Zhang, a native of Shandong province in East China.

The down-to-earth attitude has been the foundation of the company's fast track to success in the world's second-largest economy.

Zhang was sent to develop Bombardier's rail business in China in 1999, four years after he joined the Montreal-based corporation and 12 years after he had left China.

"At that time, I did not have any employee, or even an office in the first months. So I spent days negotiating with customers and nights calling my colleagues back in Canada in my 6-year-old daughter's bedroom.

"My daughter complained because she could not fall asleep. But when I finally moved out my 'office' in her room several months later, she came to complain that she could not fall asleep at night without my telephone conversations in French with colleagues back in Montreal, which had already become her lullaby," said Zhang.

Fourteen years later, Bombardier has four manufacturing joint ventures and seven wholly owned enterprises with more than 4,000 employees across the country, and signs billions of dollars in contracts yearly.

By July, it had already won 13 railway orders this year with more contracts expected, Zhang said. The deals were inked despite the fact the Ministry of Railways, Bombardier's major customer, was dismantled in early 2013.

"China has a huge market for rail transport. So the dismantlement has little impact on our performance as long as we can do well our homework of understanding customer needs and coming up with the solutions."

Zhang stressed the importance of "homework", noting that at least 50 percent of the problems in the Sino-foreign cooperation are caused by miscommunication and misunderstanding instead of conflicts of interest.

'Local roots' strategy

"It is difficult to understand the business practices if we use a Western way," he said. "The culture, the political context, and the business practices are different, let alone the languages."

That was why Bombardier established its "local roots" strategy in 2009, said Zhang. "We form our local team and train local talent. With the local team, we can understand better customer needs and respond faster to market changes."

Along with localization, Zhang said the most important factors for success in China are his company's advanced technology, proven product and respect to commitment.

He added that transfer of technology "is a hot topic in the cooperation between Chinese and Western companies".

"But our cooperation with Chinese partners is much beyond a simple technology transfer. Instead, we have been jointly developing world-class technology with our Chinese partner."

Zhang gave a long list of technology co-development projects in China including the very high-speed train CRH380D produced with Chinese manufacturer CSR in Qingdao, the CSeries fuselage with Aviation Industry Corp of China in Shenyang and the C919 and CSeries with Commercial Aircraft Corp of China in Shanghai.

"Frankly speaking, in the field of railways, Chinese customers are more demanding than their Western peers, but the most important for us is to do well our homework and satisfy their requests."

Zhang admitted that the competition in China is tougher. "We are facing more challenges here than in the international markets, both technically and commercially. But the market is big enough for the coexistence of many players.

"There are so many potential business opportunities, we work very hard to develop the opportunities by focusing on supplying better solutions to the customers."

Partners and rivals

He also talked about cooperation with the competitors.

"In the rail transportation industry, our main partners are also our main competitors. Cooperation and competition coexist.

"For example, both (rail equipment makers) CSR and CNR are our main partners in our joint ventures and in our consortium. They are also our most important competitors in China.

"But we work very well together, we compete with each other, and we seek for complementary advantages, common interests and win-win results in most cases."

Looking ahead, Zhang is very confident in Bombardier's sustainable success in China.

"The market is big - the opportunities are there. We need to understand better and better our customers' needs and focus on satisfying their requests.

"We have a very strong local management team, we have our local technical talent and we have our facilities in China. We are ready to face more challenges."

lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn

The high-speed CRH380D manufactured by Bombardier's joint venture BST can reach 380 kilometer an hour. Provided to China Daily

(China Daily 09/11/2013 page26)