Factory Z113, a defence, security enterprise of the General Department of Defence Industry, is tasked with manufacturing and repairing ammunition, guns and artillery of all types, and manufacturing ammunition and explosive for the military. At the same time, it also produces goods for civilian applications such as industrial explosives, mechanical and alloy products, rock and mineral drill bits, centrifugal concrete products, etc., to satisfy domestic demand and export.

In recent years, implementation of the Resolution No. 06-NQ/TW, dated 16 July 2011, of the Politburo (11th tenure) on building and developing the defence industry through 2020 and beyond, directly the defence industry’s mission to meet the requirement of building the People’s Army straight into a modern force, has placed higher requirements on the Factory. Meanwhile, the conditions of production remain difficult for the Factory as a result of downgraded facilities and old, obsolete, asynchronous technologies. The unstable annual defence production plans have significant influence on production, business plans. Nevertheless, given the perception that defence production is their key political mission, the Factory Party Committee and Board of Directors have followed requirements of building the People’s Army in the new situation closely to propose plans; implement synchronous solutions; mobilise all resources; optimise production management; invest in new technologies; preserve and develop the human resources; improve people’s working condition and life; bring into play comprehensive strength of all cadres and workers to enhance defence production capacity.

First of all, the Factory strengthens leadership of reforming and enhancing the effectiveness of management and organisation of production in a dynamic, flexible direction with focal aspects. Accordingly, the Factory closely combines the Board of Directors’ centralised management with devolution to raise collectives’ and individuals’ sense of autonomy, professionalism, and creativity, especially those of the corps of management cadres at all levels. Additionally, it proactively applies achievements of science and technology to management and organisation of production in connection with adopting the ISO 9001 – 2015 quality management system. Particularly, given the spirit of “change for development,” the Factory has invited consulting experts to instruct on implementation of the Kaizen – 5S Programme, building of digital offices, etc., since 2020, which contributes to enhanced management capacity, increased productivity, and labour’s better working environment. During the implementation process, the Factory has boldly put forward commitments between the Board of Directors and workers to leverage enthusiasm, responsibility, and creativity of all cadres and workers in the management and organisation of production. Importance has been attached to encouraging cadres and employees to propose innovative ideas or directly share problems with the Board of Directors and ways to address these problems in the production process. Thus, the way of thinking and doing, self-awareness, and responsibility of cadres and workers have witnessed radical changes. The working environment has become green, clean, and friendly. The technology lines have been arranged in a scientific, convenient way. The rate of damaged, low-quality products has decreased significantly.

A production line of the Factory

Moreover, the Factory steps up implementation of projects, technology transfer, and concentration of resources on critical infrastructure and technologies. Thanks to attention of the Party, State, and Ministry of National Defence (MND), recently, the Factory has been assigned with many major, important projects regarding establishing production lines, and researching and developing prototypes and new products with greater complexity and higher requirements. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the Factory to establish its technological basis to satisfy demands of defence production and development of the defence industry in the new situation. Under the motto of “being ahead of the time”, the Factory has proactively conducted study tours to learn about foreign technology, laying the foundation for selecting technology providers; actively mobilised resources for implementing projects on upgrading infrastructure, modernising equipment, and reforming technologies. In the 2011 – 2020 period, the Factory launched many major, important projects funded by its higher echelons or by itself. Given its high resolution and adoption of synchronous measures, the Factory has basically accomplished projects, ensuring requirements of quality and schedule; received and mastered technology to manufacture 18 types of ammunition used for infantry rifles, including six type of next generation ammunition, which makes a vital contribution to self-reliance on providing weapons for the People’s Army. The most prominent projects are investment in enhancing production capacity; improving artillery shell repair lines and high-quality emulsion explosive production lines; renovating facilities; upgrading hard alloy production lines, metal casting lines, corrugated carton production lines, industrial waste treatment system, etc., providing a solid foundation for promoting capacity for developing prototypes and new products, and protecting the environment.

Apart from investment in upgrading infrastructure and technology, the Factory concentrates on developing high-quality human resources. Lack of defence production missions in previous years had an enormous effect on selection, training, and preservation of human resources at the Factory, especially the high-quality ones. It is within this context that the Factory regularly reviews and correctly assesses its corps of cadres and employees; develops training plans periodically; and associates planning with training and using the human resources in accordance with qualification and competence of each cadre and employee. Also, the Factory actively proposes plans for the General Department of Defence Industry to recruit and receive engineers trained at home and abroad as well as technicians trained by joint education with colleges, academies, and centres inside and outside the military in majors suitable to its production missions such as mechanical engineering, chemical equipment, programming, automation, and so on. Additionally, the Factory successfully does ideological work and policy work; has policies on preferential treatment of each cadre and worker; actively advises the higher echelons to issue policies on preferential treatment of young worker and skilled workers who volunteer to serve in the People’s Army for a long time. It also seeks to establish a professional working environment, which serves to enable cadres and workers to develop and devote themselves to their careers; is ready to appoint young qualified cadres to important positions to retain the high-quality human resources. Besides, the Factory pays constant attention to on-site training with a view to improving its employees’ professional skills by many scientific, practical measures. The on-site training focuses on enabling cadres and workers to master production lines and repair lines, especially modern equipment, and technologies, in order to enhance production capacity and product quality. So far, the Factory has had a stable corps of comprehensively-developed cadres and skilled technicians, who have enough ability, experience, and knowledge to handle the production lines and apply new technologies to production and repair in order to enhance production capacity and product quality to meet both short- and long-term mission requirements.

In addition to the above-mentioned solutions, the Factory speeds up scientific research and leverage of technical innovation to elevate production capacity and introduction of new products. To do these, the Factory Party Committee and Board of Directors focus their efforts on research and development of new defence products; streamlining production processes; reforming technological processes and operational features of devices with the aim to increase labour productivity and product quality. Accordingly, the Factory requests its Department of Technology to work with functional offices to select qualified cadres and employees for setting up research groups; undertake projects with a focus on two main directions, namely development of new products and reform of production, repair lines and processes for traditional products. Over the past five years, the Factory has successfully carried out 35 projects and scientific research tasks as well as 832 technology innovation initiatives, saving nearly VND 22 billion. Many projects and tasks were appreciated by the appraisal council at various levels and assigned to manufactured at the Factory by the MND. Seven out of the projects and initiatives were given the Military Creative Youth Award. Two the projects were given prizes at the National Creative Youth Festival.

The Factory has worked with the Institute of Armament Technology, Institute of Technology, and the Institute of Propellants and Explosives to carry out projects and successfully develop many prototypes with high scientific and technological content; perfect documents related to technologies to manufacture new products, contributing to enhanced production capacity and quality of defence products, and safety for working people. Thanks to implementation of drastic, synchronous solutions, in the 2019 – 2021 period, the defence production capacity of the Factory witnessed breakthroughs, most notably the growth rate increasing from 20% to 35% annually and total turnover of VND 2,300 billion (the same as the 10 preceding years’ turnover).

On bringing into play outcomes and experience, and deeply grasping the Resolution No. 08-NQ/TW, dated 26 November 2021, of the Politburo on speeding up development of the defence industry through 2030 and beyond, in the time to come, the Factory Party Committee and Board of Directors concentrate their leadership on achieving two breakthroughs, including increasing the effectiveness of business management, organisational reform, workforce reshuffle, and quality of human resources and making every effort to improve capacity to carry out a major repair to artillery shells, quality of defence, economic products, and to develop new products. They also accelerate the progress of investment projects and actively start new projects on research and development of weapons and smart weapons in line with the goal of building a modern military by 2030, striving for becoming the leading business of the defence, security industry of Viet Nam.

Colonel TRAN CHI DUNG, Factory Director