Beijing, Petrochemical Design Institute.

"Xiao Feng, let me introduce you to you. This is Dean Kang of the Design Institute. He is the first generation expert in ethylene equipment in our country and an academic authority. It can be said that there are currently one who is engaged in ethylene equipment research in China. They are all students of Dean Kang, or even students of students. Dean Kang, this is Comrade Feng Xiaochen, assistant general manager of our Equipment Industry Company. He is a student and an economist of Professor Chen Rongru of the Academy of Social Sciences."

In an office of the design institute, Wu Shican enthusiastically introduced Feng Xiaochen to a 50-year-old scholar-like person. The scholar is named Kang Haidong, the vice president of the Petrochemical Design Institute and a veteran ethylene expert. Wu Shican already knew Kang Haidong many years ago, but he had a lot of dealings in recent years. Wu Shican respects Kang Haidong's academic status very much, but Wu Shican has a lot of complaints about his cooperative attitude.

Two years ago, the country launched a project to localize 600,000 tons of ethylene equipment, proposing to rely mainly on its own strength to build a 600,000 tons of ethylene equipment to form the construction capacity of large-scale ethylene, and then promote more ethylene construction projects on this basis. According to the model that has been formed before, the state finance directly allocates funds to the equipment industry company and entrusts the equipment industry company as the general contractor of the project, and is responsible for the final result. The equipment industry company must split the project into several sub-projects and find subcontracting enterprises to entrust construction in China.

Wu Shican originally came from a chemical industry. After hearing about this work, he volunteered to be responsible for organizing the design tasks of the ethylene device. He said that he was responsible, not because he led a group of technicians to draw and calculate in person, but because he contacted a domestic design agency to complete the design work of the device.

The institution with the strongest ethylene equipment design capabilities in China is this Jingcheng Petrochemical Design Institute. They designed China's first ethylene equipment in the 1960s. Although it is only a small device with an annual output of 5,000 tons, the technical accumulation formed is very considerable. In the 1970s, in line with the global development trend of large-scale ethylene equipment, the State Planning Commission took the lead in organizing the technical research on 110,000 tons of ethylene equipment annual output, among which the task of device design was also undertaken by the Petrochemical Design Institute.

The technical research and development did not achieve the expected results. China's technical accumulation in chemical equipment mainly comes from 156 key projects assisted by the Soviet Union in the 1950s. After 20 years, these technologies have become outdated. Due to historical reasons, domestic scientific research institutions have seriously insufficient technical exchanges with foreign countries. The work of technicians is almost done behind closed doors, and it is not surprising that they will eventually return in a defeat.

In the past decade, the country has implemented the policy of reform and opening up. On the one hand, it has introduced a large number of advanced technologies from abroad, and on the other hand, it has sent personnel to study and learn from abroad. The technical level of various research institutions is no longer the same as in the past. The Petrochemical Design Institute still has enough confidence to undertake the design tasks of large-scale ethylene equipment entrusted by the Equipment Industry Company.

Wu Shican has been engaged in scientific research management for many years and has some understanding of the technical level of various domestic institutions. He chose the Petrochemical Design Institute to be responsible for the design of ethylene equipment, and he also attracted the ability of the Petrochemical Design Institute. When he first contacted Kang Haidong, Kang Haidong threatened to complete the theoretical design in half a year and take out the design drawings in one year, which made Wu Shican feel the courage of this old friend.

According to the contract signed by both parties, the Equipment Industry Company paid the design institute a 10 million yuan design fee for the first phase. The design institute immediately organized a research team and began the design work.

The first step in design is theoretical research, mainly to determine the process and technical process of ethylene production. Wu Shican was invited to attend several discussions. At the beginning, he was shocked by the various concepts, theories, etc. in the participants' mouths. He felt ashamed that his knowledge could not keep up with the development of the times and was full of hope for this design work. But later, he felt something was wrong. The theoretical seminar was held several times, and everyone was still stuck in concept discussions. The topic of discussion became more and more biased. Sometimes he could defend a process that was not important for an hour or two, but the overall design idea was not determined for a long time. This is not a good phenomenon.

In response to this situation, Wu Shican reminded Kang Haidong more than once: "Director Kang, our theoretical research has been done almost. Should we start the overall design?"

"Old Wu, don't worry, the overall design must also be theoretical first. If the theoretical research has not been completed, the overall design cannot be done. You are also aging industry, and you should understand this principle." Kang Haidong always said perfunctorily like this.

Of course, Wu Shican knew that theory should be first and theories should be determined before the overall design can be started. But after so long theoretical research has not yet had a result, can Wu Shican not be in a hurry? The country gave the entire project ten years, which sounds long, but there are many things to do. After the theoretical design is completed, it is the overall design, and then the drawings and process requirements are required. These process requirements will face various practical difficulties when the manufacturing company reaches the manufacturing company, and it will take time to solve these difficulties. When all the equipment is manufactured, it will also require installation, testing, trial production, etc. It will be really not rich at all in ten years.

According to the plan discussed in advance by Wu Shican and Feng Xiaochen, there is no need to do too much innovation in theory for the first set of domestically produced 600,000 tons of ethylene equipment, and just use some mature foreign process plans. It is actually very stressful to digest these existing process plans within half a year, so the equipment company spared no expense, hoping that the Petrochemical Design Institute could invest more manpower and material resources to promote this project.

Wu Shican had already expressed this meaning when he first came into contact with Kang Haidong. Based on the existing research force of the Petrochemical Design Institute, he roughly estimated the progress and then proposed the goal of completing the theoretical design in half a year and taking out the drawings in one year. But who would have thought that half a year had passed long ago, and these experts from the Petrochemical Institute were still arguing about some theoretical details, and it was still far from forming a consensus, so how could Wu Shican accept it?

Helplessly, Wu Shican had to timidly make a hint to Kang Haidong, pointing out that if the Petrochemical Institute cannot complete the design as scheduled, the equipment company will have to take the contract to make a statement, and at that time it may require the Petrochemical Institute to pay the breach of contract compensation. Kang Haidong didn't care about Wu Shican's slightly threatening hint. He hummed and haha ​​to Wu Shican and emphasized various difficulties to Wu Shican, and the subtext was just one sentence: If you have the ability, you should be fined.

Wu Shican really dared not punish the Petrochemical Institute. If the Petrochemical Institute was a company, the equipment company would definitely have to take the contract to claim compensation according to what Feng Xiaochen had done in the past. But the problem is that the Petrochemical Institute is a public institution and has no profits. All the funds come from state funding. If the equipment company wants to claim compensation from the Petrochemical Institute, the Petrochemical Institute would either ask the state finance to pay the money, or cut off the salary of thousands of people in the hospital to pay the money. The former would definitely not be able to do it. Even if Kang Haidong dared to do it, Wu Shican would not dare to accept it. This would cause a big mess.

In this way, things were delayed again and again, and it took more than a year. Wu Shican could no longer bear it, so he had to ask Luo Xiangfei for help. Luo Xiangfei had only one solution, which was to send Feng Xiaochen to solve it. Feng Xiaochen happened to have obtained some of the core ethylene technology transferred by the other party from Chigu Production Institute, and he also needed to discuss with the experts of the design institute about digestion and absorption of this technology.

"Director Kang, Director Wu and I came here this time to implement the problem of the ethylene equipment design progress. According to the contract signed by both parties, the Petrochemical Design Institute should have completed all the designs half a year ago and can hand over the drawings and process requirements to us. But so far, we have not received these materials, and we don't know which link the problem is."

After the guests and guests exchanged greetings, Feng Xiaochen sat down on the sofa and directly expressed his intention.

"Assistant Feng, we are really embarrassed to talk about this."

Kang Haidong sat on the large swivel chair behind his desk and replied slowly. He said embarrassedly, but there was no sign of guilt on his face. In his opinion, the country handed over the task to them. When will they complete it, it is not the turn of Feng Xiaochen and others to say that they have a short story. He has seen more worlds, so how could he take any equipment industry company seriously?

"We underestimated the difficulty of this task. Of course, there are some communication problems between the two parties. When Director Wu first contacted us, he did not specifically explain what technical requirements this project would meet. From the perspective of our design institute, we designed a large ethylene device with the spirit of being responsible for history, so we must strive for excellence in every detail. In this way, the progress will inevitably be affected." Kang Haidong said to Feng Xiaochen verbally.

"I don't know much about being responsible for history. Can Dean Kang explain it?" Feng Xiaochen said in a low-key manner.

Kang Haidong said: "Responsible for history. Simply put, the devices we designed should have our unique features. We cannot imitate mature foreign technologies everywhere. We must reflect the contributions of our country's engineering and technical personnel to mankind. If we just copy foreign technologies, what do we need to do? Isn't it enough to find a few draftsmen?"
Chapter completed!