In recent years, Huang Xiyi, born in the post-95 generation, has acquired a new title — "factory girl." In the past, she dealt with all kinds of fashionable art items; now she can talk about the industrial internet and mechanical equipment with great familiarity.

This is the fourth year since she "took over the factory."

In the early 1980s, Huang Xiyi's grandfather, an engineer, started a business after retirement and opened a factory producing mechanical equipment in Foshan, Guangdong. When the factory passed into her father's hands, its products began selling around the world, and the business grew ever larger.

Although she "initially had no concept of mechanical equipment at all," Huang Xiyi nonetheless resigned from her overseas job in 2020 and returned to China to take up the "baton," targeting the industrial internet and industrial software design and R&D to "radically overhaul" traditional manufacturing. She also founded the "Factory Second Generation GOGOGO" community, which has now attracted more than 3,000 "factory second generations."

The traditional manufacturing factories scattered across China have underpinned China's rise to become a **major manufacturing power in the world. Most of these factories were founded in the 1980s and 1990s; they came through the arduous pioneering days of the older generation of entrepreneurs and made the name of "Made in China" known. In recent years, the heavy responsibility of "taking over the factory" has been passed on one after another to the "factory second generations" and even "factory third generations."

However, in taking over the businesses their parents built up through decades of struggle, most "factory second generations" and "factory third generations" have also been handed new "exam questions" of the era.

At a time when traditional manufacturing is undergoing transformation and upgrading, beyond merely preserving the family business, what growth and change will they bring to traditional manufacturing?

Taking over has been a stumbling journey

Four years ago, Huang Xiyi **set foot in a factory workshop, utterly bewildered about taking over the business. So she spent more than half a year learning at the factory.

"Everything was learned from scratch, and it may be very difficult, but I was still willing to try, to keep the enterprise's vitality going." Huang Xiyi told a reporter from China Youth Daily · China Youth Network that during that period she toured the factory at 8:30 every morning, took part in customer communication and cooperation negotiations, and gradually came to understand the factory's business.

Just as many traditional manufacturing factories face digital transformation, how to explore an effective transformation path suited to oneself has become a major problem. Huang Xiyi also found that traditional factories face the problems of an aging workforce and being unable to recruit young new employees.

What to do? After her father spent more than half a year explaining the concept of the industrial internet of things to her, she began trying factory sub-projects and developing industrial software. The factory is located in the suburbs and cannot attract young people, so they moved the industrial IoT subsidiary to the city center, letting young technical engineers work there and set out at any time when they need to go into the factory for debugging.

"All our equipment data is uploaded — won't it all be seen?" When they brought the product prototype to the factory, veteran employees who had never used industrial software would ask them this question. Huang Xiyi told a reporter from China Youth Daily · China Youth Network: "The employees originally responsible for sales at the factory know how to sell a machine you can see and touch, but they don't know how to sell a system you can't touch; many factory employees don't even have a digital mindset."

Huang Xiyi admitted that going from a brand-new concept to industrial software truly adapted to their own factory's equipment, "we took many detours, consumed a great deal of manpower, materials, financial resources and time costs; it sounds simple, but in fact it is a huge undertaking, and may even require cultivating the market and waiting for market recognition."

Real life is no "feel-good drama." In film and television works, the "successors" are glamorous and effortlessly sign big orders, but back in reality it is a stumbling journey all the way. These "factory second generations" and "factory third generations" have received a good education and broadened their international horizons, but the hurdles before them are also numerous.

In her **year of taking over the factory, Liang Yuqi "disappeared" from her original social circle.

Based in Chaozhou, Guangdong, and focused on plastic film production and manufacturing, her family's enterprise has passed through three generations and reached annual sales of 4 billion yuan. Having previously worked in M&A and equity financing, Liang Yuqi, who had hit a bottleneck, decided to return home to take over the business.

"When I took over, I was very uncomfortable, because the factory's business was completely different from my professional background." Liang Yuqi told a reporter from China Youth Daily · China Youth Network that her previous work environment was full of people her own age, but at the factory she dealt with her parents' generation, "two generations older."

She went to the workshop to learn from veteran technicians for several months, handling production-line problems together with them and learning the detailed information in her factory's product list. "I worked during the day, continued learning product knowledge at night, and didn't stop on weekends; I had to devote myself entirely to the work."

"Sometimes receiving a customer complaint is something that makes me relatively happy." Liang Yuqi said with a smile that ordinarily it is just theorizing on paper; only when actual production problems arise can one truly learn.

Once, a customer's factory had a problem when using their conventional product, and more than 10 tons of product were returned and refunded all at once. "We thought a routine adjustment would solve the problem, but in fact it was not easy to adjust; only after repeated communication and going into the customer's factory production workshop did we discover that it was a detailed issue of film tightness adjustment caused by a change in the customer's lifting method." Liang Yuqi said that in production a small detail often affects the result, and finding that detail requires constant on-site exploration and debugging.

In the past two years, she has risen from a marketing manager at the Dongguan production base to company vice president and group director. "With the help of my parents' generation and the support of the company, my own growth has been relatively fast."

Letting the "fragrance of good wine" drift out of the "deep alley"

In Liang Yuqi's view, her enterprise belongs to the upstream bulk suppliers of the packaging industry supply chain. Although digital transformation is not urgent at present, foreign trade exports face new challenges.

"We need to expand into new overseas markets." She told a reporter from China Youth Daily · China Youth Network that her parents' generation always believed that "good wine needs no bush," and that "many traditional manufacturing factories do no promotional work at all, and don't even have brochures or official websites — but without these, how can potential overseas customers learn about us?"

So Liang Yuqi found a highly experienced third-party company to formulate a marketing plan and invited the elders to listen together. When the staff used new terms, she had to explain them to the elders in a "down-to-earth" way. After hearing the plan, the elders decided to put up the money for her to try.

"At first they didn't have much hope and thought it was just 'paying tuition,' but the marketing project has now been running for a year and a half and has indeed received very good feedback, winning customers in the UK, Dubai and South Korea, among which the UK and Dubai are countries and regions we had never set foot in before." Liang Yuqi said.

Having joined the "Factory Second Generation GOGOGO" community, Liang Yuqi also found that most young "factory second generations'" family factories are relatively small in scale; facing a rapidly developing market, they are working hard to preserve the business and persevere — "if you don't move forward, you're falling behind."

Zhao Yili's family factory is in Tonglu, Zhejiang. Her father started out young with a single machine in his own home, then built a factory, moving from producing plastic parts to focusing on toilet seat manufacturing, and through good product reputation grew all the way to today's national leader.

To take over the business, Zhao Yili went abroad to study and relearned brand marketing. She found that many traditional factories like theirs have no brand of their own. "Ten years ago, the factory began making toilet seats as an OEM for a big European company. I'm now also thinking that even if we do OEM work, we must have a brand." In the past two years, they have begun independently developing toilet seats.

"The core of a toilet seat product lies in the damper fitting; only by mastering the manufacture of the core fitting can you control product quality." What gave Zhao Yili a headache was that when learning about the products the factory makes, there was not much digital material for her to consult. "Many manufacturers have detailed digital descriptions and specification lists for their products; we had nothing."

She began creating a new "calling card" for the old factory. "What styles and models of products we make all need to be described anew; this is the **step in promotion, and only after we've sorted it all out can we move into foreign trade."

In the past two years, Zhao Yili has taken charge of the foreign trade segment. What moved her was that "even though my father doesn't have a foreign trade mindset, he still supports me as always. Finding new customers is indeed very difficult, but having made contact with potential customers through exhibitions and other means is already very good; the rest can come slowly."

Huang Xiyi feels that the industrial software system she has built is like the "Apple Store," while what her parents' generation does is the production of Apple phones — "the two complement each other yet are relatively independent, just like the 'factory second generation' and the 'factory first generation': although their ideas differ greatly, they also need to find a common balance point."

Running the community at the same time makes her feel she is no longer alone. "After taking over, most 'factory second generations' move from big cities to the second- and third-tier cities or towns where their factories are located; there is a psychological gap, and also confusion about taking over." In her view, unlike "second-generation entrepreneurs" and "second-generation restaurateurs," "factory second generations," while responsible for company operations and product marketing, must also understand production — and production in traditional factories is very "heavy industry," making taking over even harder.

They often hold sharing events to discuss foreign trade, e-commerce, innovation and other difficulties everyone must face. But while "huddling together for warmth," cooperation is also constantly developing among "factory second generations."

"Is there a supplier who has done surface treatment solutions using the zinc-nickel alloy process?" "Yes"... Huang Xiyi showed the reporter the community chat records. "Requests like this being posted and taken up happen every day."

What delighted Liang Yuqi was that last year she hosted a small visit and exchange by "factory second generations" at her own factory, and early this year a "factory second generation" had already signed a contract with her for 100 tons of product. "Cooperation like this also gives us confidence; we can report back to our parents and families that everyone along the upstream and downstream industrial chain can support and help one another and achieve win-win cooperation."