Eight Categories of SANY Products Ranked First in Customer Satisfaction Survey of Construction Machinery Industry in 2011

On Sep 24th, named as “Rise of Chinese Equipment Manufacturing Industry”, the press conference of 2011 Customer Satisfaction Survey of construction machinery industry was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Initiated by China Association for Quality and National Customer Committee of China Quality Control Association, the evaluation surveyed over 3000 customers using construction machinery products. Eight categories of SANY’s products including concrete pump truck, stationary concrete pump, line pump and batching plant ranked the first in the survey among self-owned brands.

The Rise of Self-owned Brands

It is the first customer satisfaction survey in construction machinery industry. The subjects are direct customers using construction machinery products of mainstream brands within China including self-owned brands and foreign brands. With the principle of “customer comes first” and based on the characteristics of the products and markets, the survey took over 3000 customers between July and Sep in 2011, so as to truly reflect the degree of customer satisfaction and product quality of these brands.

The evaluation covers 14 kinds of products from six categories, including concrete machinery, lifting machinery, road construction machinery, scraping machinery, pile driving machinery and excavating machinery. The result shows that in the construction machinery market of China, customer satisfaction degree of self-owned brands is generally higher than that of foreign brands. The customer satisfaction degree of self-owned brands, represented by SANY and XCMG, is higher than that of Putzmeister, Schwing, VOGELE, Liebherr, Doosan, Komatsu, Caterpillar and Bauer in all products except for crane and roller, in which the satisfaction degree is lower than that of Liebherr and Ingersoll Rand respectively.

8 categories of products of Sany Heavy Industry, which has been developing rapidly during the recent years, have the highest degree of customer satisfaction in the survey, namely, line pump, batching plant, concrete pump truck, stationary concrete pump, paver, crawler crane, excavator and rotary drilling rig.

According to the host, the result indicates that the construction machinery industry has gained great advancement since the implementation of “Several Opinions of the State Council on Accelerating the Invigoration of Equipment Manufacturing Industry” in 2006 and “Adjustment and Revitalization Program for Equipment Manufacturing Industry” in 2008. Some of the products have paralleled or even exceeded foreign products in quality.

Improvement in Competitiveness of Chinese construction machinery industry

According to senior experts at the press conference, higher customer satisfaction degree of self-owned brands indicates that the overall competitiveness of Chinese construction machinery industry is on the same level with foreign competitors.

The market condition of the recent two years also demonstrates that. Data shows that the market shares of self-owned brands in concrete machinery, scraping machinery, road construction machinery and pile driving machinery are all around 90% since 2010. Excavators made in China are substituting imported excavators steadily. The market share of domestic brands further increased from January to June in 2011, increasing from 37% in January to May to 37.7%, while the market share of foreign brands decreased from 63% to 62.3%. The share of Korea and Japan has decreased by 4.7% and 5.5% respectively compared with 2010, and the share of Europe and USA has increased by 0.9%.Domestic brands increased the speed in substituting the products from Japan and Korea. SANY has exceeded Komatsu to be the top corporation of the industry. In the global market, the competitiveness of Chinese brands has also improved significantly. During January to June in 2011, the export products in construction machinery industry increased by 60.78%, showing strong global competitiveness.

According to experts, the high degree of customer satisfaction of self-owned brands mainly comes from high price-performance ratio of their products. They provide better service at prices 40% lower than the same kinds of products from foreign brands while their machines performs as well as those of foreign brands. The survey shows that the customer evaluation of service quality for self-own brands is more than 10 points higher than that of foreign brands. For instance, recently Sany Heavy Industry promoted its service commitment of “Trouble-free throughout service life” and upgraded the traditional equipment service to value chain service, becoming a pioneer in construction machinery industry and winning recognition of a great many industrial customers.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of product quality, the survey shows self-owned brands still need to improve their products in design, maneuverability and comfortableness. The self-owned brands should learn from the foreign brands in these aspects since they have great advantages during long period of development.

According to Mr Jiang Zhichun, Deputy General Manager of Sany Group, product quality is fundamental to the survival and development of a corporation. The key to long-tem development of a corporation is to constantly improve technological and R&D capability as well as to ceaselessly decrease or eliminate the product repair rate after satisfying the demand of customers and market.

Appendix: customer satisfaction scores of the best two self-owned brands and foreign brands

At the press conference of the customer satisfaction survey of construction machinery industry in 2011

SANY’s representative Jiang Zhichun (third from left) and other participants