Their parents made China the world's factory. Can the kids save the family business?

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When Steven Du took over his parents' factory producing temperature control systems in Shanghai, one of the first changes he made was to turn on the plant's heating in winter - something his frugal forebears were reluctant to do.

workforce and competition from Southeast Asia, India and elsewhere are making at least a third of China's industrial base - the low-end manufacturers - obsolete, Chinese academics say.

Reuters interviewed eight chang er dai for this report, who described their attempts to bring family businesses into the modern era with efficiency upgrades while facing challenges such as labour costs, shortages of workers and, in some cases, disagreements with relatives on the best way forward. Those skills would come in handy in a factory the Chinese state set up in 1951 and privatised in 2002.

He remodelled the factory floor to allow forklifts to drive around easily, grouping storage and production units differently to minimise physical effort for a workforce whose average age is around 50. A worker now walks 300 metres to complete the more complex tasks, down from one kilometre, and needs less than a third of the time to do it.

At Ruichang City Yixiang Agricultural Products, workers in green uniforms place duck eggs into cups attached to a conveyor belt that feeds a vacuum-packing machine. A new screen above the machine displays the speed at which the eggs are sealed and estimates average output per worker, as well as the time and manpower needed to pack 10,000 eggs.

 

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