Lu Huiying: A Pursuit Called Surpassing Oneself

"Lu Huiying is capable and has drive," her leader says.
"Section Chief Lu has 'three many's: many meetings, many phone calls and many e-mails,' says Director Zhang of the office.
"Section Chief Lu has strong learning ability and pursues perfection," says Yang Lei of the Research Management Section.
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Lu Huiying is truly busy. The meeting with her took place after she had finished a day's work, so that she could tell her own story.
"I can only press bravely forward"
In 2011, Lu Huiying, then close to 40, came to the Lanzhou R&D Center as deputy head of the Research Management Section. She had never done research work in any real sense before, and now she had to review profound papers and lead a group of research elites; invisible pressure came at her from every side.
Recalling her arrival four years earlier, Lu Huiying shows both a weight on her mind and high morale: "At that time I was very anxious and had no confidence at all, but I could only press bravely forward. I had no choice."
With a refusal to admit defeat, Lu Huiying began her path of learning. She sought out research reports from several years before and studied them one by one, taking notes as she read. She kept a notebook especially for recording what she learned, filled densely with chemical equations. When reading a research report, if she did not understand it the first time, she read it a second, third or fourth time. Whenever she met a problem she did not understand, she modestly asked her colleagues until she had grasped it thoroughly. Through her persistent study, within just a few years she had basically mastered the knowledge in the key R&D fields and was able to handle all kinds of problems in research management work with ease.
In 2014 the Lanzhou R&D Center had 80 projects under way. To ensure that the projects proceeded according to plan, she followed up and learned about their progress by various means, focusing on the key ones and pressing those that lagged, so as to ensure that each project advanced on schedule. When a project team hit an R&D bottleneck, she organized discussions of the topic at the right moment and mobilized experts in the relevant fields to find solutions together and break through the bottleneck. Thanks to the joint efforts of her and her colleagues, Lanzhou R&D achieved a 97.5 percent completion rate for its research project plans even when short-term production and operation tasks suddenly surged.
"I am only at ease when I handle everything myself"
After gradually becoming familiar with her new work, Lu Huiying set herself even higher demands. Her colleagues all say: "Section Chief Lu is a person with a very strong sense of responsibility who always wants to do things perfectly." Hearing this, she smiles. She says: "I am simply incapable of being lazy. If I am lazy, something is bound to go wrong in the work. Over time, I have found I am only at ease when I handle everything myself." In my view, handling everything herself is a way of doing things better and constantly pursuing perfection. But the road to perfection is destined to be a hard one, and Lu Huiying resolutely chose hardship and devoted herself to perfection.
2014 was the year with the largest and heaviest short-term production and operation tasks in the history of Lanzhou R&D, and short-term tasks demand rapid response and timely feedback, completely different from the normal rhythm of research work. Faced with such change, research staff were not used to it and did not understand it. Every task required ascertaining the real situation and needs and required communication and coordination at many levels and in many directions, including with the company's various departments and even the company leaders in charge, with sister units within the company, and with users and partner organizations, as well as coordination with the relevant institutes and centers inside the center itself.
Faced with complicated and suddenly surging work, Lu Huiying had only two choices: either sacrifice the quality of the work or sacrifice her rest time. Devoted to perfection, she resolutely chose to give up rest and work overtime to ensure the work was completed on time and to standard. Among the people working overtime at the Lanzhou R&D Center, her figure could always be found. In her words, her work starts in the evening, because in the daytime she has to communicate and coordinate with all sides, and only when everyone else has left in the evening can she settle down to work. Once, in order to rush out a document for the company, she worked overtime for three nights in a row and completed the preparation of material for a company meeting, winning recognition from the company's leaders. When the company organized the launch of the ERP system at the R&D Center, she gave up almost all of her rest time and worked alongside everyone else, leading the team to bring the Lanzhou R&D ERP system fully and smoothly online in just one month, earning praise from the ERP project team.
"Let research and the market fly together"
In Lu Huiying's view, choosing the right direction matters more than pursuing perfection. As market competition becomes ever fiercer, research staff are taking part in the market more and more, providing genuine technical support for the company's core business. "Our work is now ever closer to the market and research staff are ever more grounded. I feel that my work now is to let research and the market fly together," Lu Huiying says.
JAC Motors is an important customer of the Lanzhou Plant. At the end of last year, JAC Motors was going to Mohe to carry out a driving test in a severe cold area, and needed 170 kilograms of a special oil product that the Lanzhou Plant found difficult to produce and that had to be specially blended by the R&D Center. Lu Huiying only learned of this on a Friday, while JAC Motors required the oil to be delivered to the test site by the following Tuesday. That meant that within three days the whole sequence of blending the oil, analysis and testing, filling and delivery had to be completed. With time so tight and the task so urgent, and with raw materials insufficient and the person familiar with this technology away on a business trip, Lu Huiying was so anxious that blisters came out on her lips. She telephoned the technical staff to ask about the raw materials for blending this special oil while calling around in search of those materials. When everything was ready and the technical staff got off the train on Friday evening, they went straight into the laboratory to blend the oil. Before the oil was even ready she had already lined up the work that followed. On Saturday she arranged for evaluation and analysis staff to work overtime on tests and analysis, on Sunday the blended oil was packaged, and on Monday a dedicated person and vehicle were sent to deliver the oil. Watching the delivery vehicle recede into the distance, Lu Huiying's anxious heart was finally set at ease.
Besides meeting customer needs, when customers complain Lu Huiying also has technical staff assist the sales staff in handling the complaint. To address this problem, Lu Huiying worked out a set of procedures. Step one: after receiving a customer's quality complaint, the sales staff go to the site at the first opportunity, collect first-hand evidence from the scene, take photographs on site and ascertain the specific circumstances, such as whether the oil is Kunlun oil and the batch number of the oil in question. Step two: the company's head office feeds the relevant information back to the production plant in good time, the plant staff check the formulation and quality of the oil in that batch, and after the results are reported to the company, if technical staff are needed to help resolve the matter, the company passes both the information confirmed by sales and that confirmed by the plant to the R&D Center, whose technical staff then do further work on the basis of it. Lu Huiying says that following these procedures not only improves the after-sales service image of the Kunlun brand but also raises the efficiency of solving the problem.
Surpassing the person one was before is the only true surpassing. This saying could not fit Lu Huiying better. To surpass the person one was before is to keep letting go, keep innovating, keep crossing boundaries, keep extending oneself and keep challenging oneself. On the road to surpassing herself, Lu Huiying presses forward without hesitation, on and on and on. (Contributed by the Party and Mass Work Division)