Liu Li carefully tucked her engineer's certificate into the bottom drawer of her desk, placing it alongside her numerous awards and honors. Without posting any notices or making any public announcements, her life and work were quickly filled with new roles and responsibilities—the factory's appointment document was issued, officially placing her concurrently as deputy director of the machining workshop.

This was a subtle yet crucial shift. The deputy head of the technical department was in charge of technological innovation and promotion, with a relatively focused perspective; while the deputy director of the workshop had to deal directly with the most basic and complex production management. She still kept the technical department's office, but she had to spend more of her time in the deputy director's office in the machining workshop, a noisy corner of the factory filled with the smell of machine oil and metal dust.

Sitting at that slightly worn wooden desk, with dents in several places that looked like they'd been rubbed by tools, on her first day, Liu Li felt strange. Outside the window, the familiar roar of machine tools filled the air, and on the wall hung production schedules and safety management procedures—a perspective completely different from when she used to come down to solve problems as a worker or even a technician.

What lay before her was no longer a single part drawing or process document, but a thick stack of monthly production plans for the workshop, work hour statistics reports for each shift, equipment maintenance records, and even lists of personal protective equipment requisitions. She needed to coordinate the production rhythm of different work sections to ensure an uninterrupted supply of raw materials from the upstream workshop and timely fulfillment of the needs of the downstream assembly workshop; she needed to approve leave slips and mediate minor frictions between workers caused by work arrangements; she needed to monitor the operating status of each key piece of equipment to prevent production interruptions due to downtime.

The biggest challenges come from "people" and "mechanisms".

She quickly noticed an omnipresent "inertia." The workers went to work on time and processed parts according to the blueprints, but their enthusiasm seemed to be suppressed by something invisible. The experienced workers were skilled, but rarely took the initiative to seek process improvements; the young workers were energetic, but in an atmosphere where "doing more or less makes no difference, doing well or poorly makes no difference," they were gradually worn down.

"Master Wang, the C620 machine on shift three seems to have a slightly lower utilization rate this month compared to last month?" Liu Li looked through the reports and found Master Wang Jianguo, who was taking a break during the work break. He is now the workshop's technical consultant, and although he doesn't directly manage production, he has a very high reputation.

Master Wang held up his enamel mug, blew away the tea dust on the surface, took a sip, and then slowly said, "That machine is old and worn out. Its precision is not very stable. It's hard to do delicate work, and it's a waste of its talent to do rough work. Xiao Li's team is in charge of that machine. Anyway, they still get paid at the end of the month. Who wants to go through all that trouble? As long as they can complete the task, that's fine."

"Completing the task quantity"... Liu Li astutely grasped this phrase. Current production assessments primarily focus on whether the "quantity" targets set by the planning department have been met, with virtually no detailed evaluation of quality, efficiency, cost, or equipment maintenance. This leads everyone to prioritize "getting it done" rather than "doing it well," "doing it quickly," or "doing it more economically."

She tried to push for some small improvements. For example, when she saw that the tooling fixtures in a certain process were poorly designed and affected efficiency, she drew up an improvement sketch and discussed it with the team leader, Lao Chen.

Old Chen held the sketch, looking troubled: "Director Liu, your idea is good, but... modifying the tooling requires approval and we need to find a machine repair shop for processing. If it delays the production progress of this batch of work, who will be responsible? Besides, after the modification is completed and the efficiency is improved, our team's workload may be increased next year, but the wages will not be increased by a penny. What's the point?"

These words, simple yet realistic, left Liu Li speechless for a moment. She realized that she was not facing a simple technical problem, but a tough and inert web woven from the old management system. The "iron rice bowl" mentality was deeply ingrained, and without effective incentive mechanisms, relying solely on the enthusiasm of technical personnel and the demands of individual leaders was insufficient to fundamentally mobilize the initiative and creativity of the vast majority of workers.

Standing in the workshop aisle, watching the workers operate the machines methodically and listening to the deafening yet uninspiring sounds, Liu Li frowned deeply. A sense of powerlessness crept in, but more than that, a strong urge to change the status quo was ignited within her.

She could overcome the technical challenges with her knowledge and perseverance. But the deep-seated management problems involved a more complex web of interests and a shift in mindset, and the resistance to them was likely far greater than she had imagined. Her new position gave her the opportunity to implement reforms within the workshop, but it also thrust her into the limelight, forcing her to confront the deeply entrenched old order.

The chair of the deputy director of the workshop was much hotter than I had imagined.