Zhang ruimin biography examples

Zhang Ruimin was born on January 5, , in Laizhou, Shandong, China to a working class family in Qingdao, Shandong; his parents were employed in a local garment factory. As a youth, Zhang was swept up in the Cultural Revolution and like many other students, he joined the Red Guards as the movement cascaded across the country. He visited Mao's birthplace and attended rallies in Beijing since all schools had been closed, and when the movement was finally disbanded, he was able to avoid being sent down to the countryside.

Due to the widespread upheaval, Zhang was unable to attend university most having been shut down ; instead, he began his career in obscurity at a state-run construction company in Qingdao in After a short stint as deputy manager of the Qingdao Home Appliances Company from to , Zhang was named director of the Qingdao Refrigerator Factory on 26 December , the fourth person appointed by the Chinese bureaucrats to run the small, ailing, and collectively-owned factory, which had debts of 1.

Zhang began the turnaround of the company in with an order to destroy 76 defective refrigerators. After a customer complained, he lined up all the defective models on the factory floor, and told those responsible to smash them. His remarkable act of destruction impressed upon all his employees that poor quality would not be acceptable under the new management.

In , Qingdao Refrigerator was renamed Qingdao Haier Group, borrowing and transliterating the last syllable of its German partner, Firmengruppe Liebherr. Zhang Ruimin stayed on as general manager, but he concurrently enrolled himself at the University of Science and Technology of China to study towards a master's degree in business administration; he graduated in He was named the chief executive officer of Haier Group the company had dropped "Qingdao" from the name in One of his first steps was partnering with Liebherr, a German appliance maker that became a key source of technology.

Zhang Ruimin was born in Qingdao

His management philosophy is a blend of international management principles and Chinese wisdom, with innovation and excellence at its core. In a period of 20 years, Haier has grown to become the no. In , the Haier trademark was valued at more than 60 billion yuan, the highest in China.