Quality is the very foundation of an enterprise's establishment and plays an irreplaceable and critical role in enhancing industrial competitiveness. In recent years, China has taken reform and innovation as its driving force, continuously strengthened standards leadership and the supporting capacity of quality infrastructure, and fortified the defense line of quality and safety through a series of measures such as strengthening enterprises and industrial chains through quality and brand cultivation. Driven by these efforts, the quality qualification rate of the manufacturing sector has steadily climbed, the international influence of brands has continued to expand, and the pursuit of high-quality development has become the common goal and shared direction of the vast majority of enterprises.

Against this backdrop of high-quality development, a summit dialogue bringing together the highest standards of quality management from China and Europe kicked off on October 29 in Linyi, Shandong. More than 160 industry guests gathered to focus on the core topic of performance excellence management, engage in in-depth exchanges on advanced quality concepts, and jointly chart a grand blueprint for the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.

When speaking of performance excellence management, one cannot fail to mention the highest honor in this field—the EFQM Global Excellence Award. As one of the world's three major excellence management awards, alongside the U.S. Baldrige National Quality Award and Japan's Deming Prize, the EFQM Global Excellence Award adopts a globally recognized performance excellence management framework that helps enterprises efficiently respond to management changes, achieve continuous performance improvement, and provides scientific guidance for the high-quality development of enterprises worldwide.

"At present, the global manufacturing industry is undergoing unprecedented and profound changes, with intelligent manufacturing and artificial intelligence technologies accelerating in iterative development. Under these circumstances, the performance excellence model has become a powerful lever for Chinese enterprises to cope with complex environmental changes and achieve sustainable development." These remarks by Duan Yonggang, Executive Vice President of the China Association for Quality, precisely pinpoint the significance of the performance excellence model for China's manufacturing industry.

It is worth noting that in recent years, Chinese enterprises that have continuously increased their investment in performance excellence management have also repeatedly achieved outstanding results in the EFQM Global Excellence Award selection, demonstrating the strong strength of China's manufacturing industry. The host of this summit—Shandong Lingong—is an outstanding representative among them.

As early as 2019, Shandong Lingong successfully won the highest seven-star certification of the EFQM Global Excellence Award, becoming the first enterprise in China's construction machinery industry to receive this honor and setting a quality benchmark for China's manufacturing industry.

Shandong Lingong wins the highest seven-star certification of the EFQM Global Excellence Award

For many years, Shandong Lingong has consistently upheld the quality policy of "Reliable, Efficient, Industry Model; Quality, Value, Customer's First Choice," starting from the traditional quality inspection model, continuously exploring and refining its quality management system, and gradually building a development pattern with quality as its core competitiveness. Today, the company has entered the stage of excellence in quality development and continues to deepen its high-quality development strategy. What is particularly commendable is that, with the EFQM Excellence Model as its core guide, Shandong Lingong has deeply integrated the essence of advanced European quality management with the actual needs of Chinese manufacturing, pioneering a new model of performance excellence with Chinese characteristics and providing a replicable "Chinese solution" for the industry.

"Over the past six years, we have deeply integrated the EFQM Excellence Model into the entire process of R&D, manufacturing, and service, enabling advanced management concepts to truly take root." So said Wang Zhizhong, Chairman of Lingong Group.

At the R&D level, with the performance excellence system and the three major management systems of quality, environment, and safety and health as solid support, Lingong drives full-chain innovation based on the scientific RADAR model; by establishing a tiered incentive system, it effectively stimulates the improvement vitality of multiple links including R&D, production, supply, and sales, forming a continuously evolving ecosystem driven by both management mechanism innovation and technological innovation. Among these, the "One Full, Two Innovations, Three Combinations" innovative management model has become the company's most representative best innovation practice.

In the field of intelligent manufacturing, the company has systematically advanced the automation upgrades of four core links—welding, machining, assembly, and logistics—and achieved remarkable results: the welding automation rate has risen to 85%, the excavator assembly automation rate has risen to 20%, and the automation rate of some final assembly lines has reached 77%; the machining lines for some key components such as main control valves have achieved 24-hour unattended operation, which not only greatly improves production efficiency but also significantly enhances the consistency of product quality.

The upgrades in the service link are equally impressive. Relying on its smart service center, Shandong Lingong has achieved automatic matching of service engineers and one-click warranty repair functions; it has developed a maintenance service assistant to help staff quickly locate equipment faults and carry out precise diagnosis; through the smart customer service platform, service experts can remotely assist in fault diagnosis; at the same time, with the help of data analysis, it predicts component failures and automatically generates service orders, comprehensively improving service response speed and quality.

Through the coordinated construction of the management cockpit, the quality digital platform, and the smart service center, Shandong Lingong has achieved full-process data-driven operations. Its quality management model is shifting from the traditional "post-inspection" to the modern "pre-prediction," equipping quality control with a "smart brain."

On October 29, after an in-depth on-site visit to Shandong Lingong, Russell Longmuir, CEO of EFQM, offered this assessment: "Lingong has not only perfectly implemented the EFQM Excellence Model but has also, in combination with its own practices, deepened and innovated it with rich Chinese characteristics. Its practical achievements, especially in intelligent manufacturing and green transformation, already possess global demonstration value and are worthy of study and reference by enterprises worldwide."

Guests visit Shandong Lingong

"Customers lost because of price will still come back; customers lost because of quality will never return!"

This striking statement by Wen Degang, General Manager of Shandong Lingong, not only expresses Shandong Lingong's persistent commitment to quality but also demonstrates the company's firm promise to "reliably bear heavy trust."

Building the enterprise on quality and strengthening it through brand, Shandong Lingong will, looking to the future, unswervingly advance quality development and brand enhancement, steadily move toward the "Hundred Billion Goal" and the corporate mission of "Taking the Famous Brand Path and Building a Century-Old Lingong," and continue to inject strong momentum into the high-quality development of China's manufacturing industry.