| Before 1980s, the major idea of firm operation is to produce as much as possible to gain economics of scale. The key point of earning profit stands on the production of commodities. Many firms indicate the same pattern: uniform products, long-time production circle, concentrated managerial rights. From then on, competition in markets became more severe and demand of consumers diversified and individualizes. Wider range of production, shorter production circle, higher service quality and abilities to deal with any quantity of orders timely are becoming the new rule of competition in markets. So many firms adopt a series innovation such as timely supplying system, all-aspects quality management, accurate manufacture, and so on. But because these new strategies aim at improving the efficiency of operation in a exiting firm and managers in the firm does not realize a complete change in structure and operation model is urged by the new market environment in the modern background. In another word, production-oriented firm has to convert to client-oriented firm. The core spirit of client-orient firm is that satisfaction of clients to products and services provided by firms is the resources of profits. It depends on the idea that customer is the center of all activities of the firm.The Chinese market economy has only got off to a short start. So Chinese firms including state-owned and private enterprises step into an exploring strategy and struggle for a new management model adapt to the society in China. But more and more foreign entrepreneurs which own advanced equipment and rich experience in management will enter Chinese domestic markets when China join WTO. It is urgent for Chinese firms to absorb good managerial skills and techniques from each other and also from foreign firms. I think that the research and summary of the evolvement of Zigong Hard Alloy Corporation Limited, Chengdu Branch, will be helpful to development of Chinese enterprises.Zigong Hard Alloy Corporation Limited is a huge skeleton enterprises which is a main researcher, producer and exporter of hard alloy and products of wolfram and molybdenum. It has a integrated system from smelting and producing hard alloy and products of wolfram and molybdenum to refining and modeling. In 1994 it achieved the quality level of the certification by the quality center of Three Gorge and ISO9002 of BSL, then its trade mark of "Great Wall" gained recognition as a fine trade name in the world. The sailing net has spread all over the country and abroad. Its products are used widely in machine-manufacture, metallurgy, mining, oil-refining, electronic industry, air and space navigation, etc.. It has been the second big at home and the fifth big producer of hard alloy in the world.Chengdu branch was set up in 1992 with 100 million yuan investment. It is now a large base that integrates researching, producing and market exploring and outputs advanced and highly valuable products. It is supposed that the total sail in 2000 will be 100 million yuan and is expected to reach 500 million yuan in 2005.According to the protean market environment, if the firm stands on its existing products-oriental model, it is not able to realize its goal and even will be washed out by ruthless markets. So the branch firm has no choice but a complete structure conversion to be a client-orientated firm. This paper includes four parts. In the first part, it provides definitions of product orientation and client orientation and their patterns. In the second part, it discusses the necessity of the conversion from product-orientated firm to client-orientated firm in such two aspects: on one hand, the foundation of survival and development of a firm is the client-centered idea in a rapidly change and unmerciful market; on the other hand, only when a firm is client-orientated it will materialize the idea. The third and fourth parts are the main body of this paper. In the third part, it describes the history of the conversion in three aspects such as structure de... |
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