The 2018 (16th) China Top Ten Management Practices Forum and Awarding Ceremony of Chief Executive China was held in Shenzhen on December 12, 2018.

On that afternoon, Li Jie, publisher of the Chief Executive China, released the list of the 16th China Top Ten Management Practices 2018, under the witness of numerous entrepreneurs and leaders in management and other fields. This annual list has great value and influence in the domestic industry. CIMC Vehicles (Group) Co., Ltd. was selected in the list by virtue of its practice of "Intelligence-driven Digital Transformation." David Li, CEO and President of CIMC Vehicles, was invited to receive the award. He, together with the award-winning entrepreneurs, strived to explore the management way of enterprise transformation and upgrading at the "new starting point" of China's economic transformation.

Mr. David Li said, "I have been working as a professional manager for 32 years in Shenzhen, a frontier city of reform and opening-up. Today, thanks to the support of the Chief Executive China and many friends, I got this award, which is a summary of my career and an encouragement for me to continue along the path of professional manager. Although I might retire in several years, I wouldn't stop learning and keeping fit."

Mr. David Li noted at the dialogue session that “The rapid development of CIMC Vehicles in the past made most employees intoxicated with the success in the past. Therefore, we are determined to ‘smash’ the core organization, restructure the organization, and rebuild the value, so as to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the organization.”

He believed that as the business world is full of distractions and temptations, focus is surely the foundation of a successful enterprise. "How do we stay focused? We must keep moving at high speed and have no time to linger. Innovation is based on the direction we choose, and focus is not contradictory to innovation. The best way to help the team stay focused is to clarify the mission of the company to advance around our main business."

This event was themed "Creating Win-Win Results through Wisdom beyond Boundaries," and was specially supported by the Education Center for Executives, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Comments of review experts

The development of China's manufacturing industry was mainly driven by three physical factors in the past: labor, capital and land. However, this situation has changed in recent years as the demographic dividend no longer exists and the effect of capital is no longer apparent. Any further breakthrough in China's manufacturing industry requires residual factors such as technological progress, institutional innovation and structural optimization rather than these physical factors. CIMC Vehicles offers a good practice in the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industry, which is worth exploring and learning by China's manufacturing industry.

- Tian Xinmin, Deputy Dean of Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Amid the tide of digitization, the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries is an urgent task faced by all manufacturing enterprises in China. With focus on the global semi-trailer industry, CIMC Vehicles strives to build replicable and intelligence-driven digital plants and an agile organization system with customer value as the core, and has ranked first worldwide in terms of production and sales for four successive years. CIMC Vehicles's management practice has set an example of transformation and upgrading for Chinese manufacturing enterprises in the digital era.

- Hu Zuohao, professor of Marketing Department, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University

The transformation of large enterprises has many constraints, so they have to go through a long period of "growing pains." The insight of Mr. Li Guiping into the fact that innovation is the premise of transformation and the need to start from culture and personnel, deepen the essence of management, and promote the digital transformation of CIMC Vehicles is worth learning for all large enterprises that want to implement the digital transformation.

- Wang Sai, partner of Kotler Marketing Group China and a well-known growth strategy expert