Founded in Beijing in 2013, Utmost is a technology-based company with the goal of "replacing imports" and has continued to develop new products and technologies over the years, especially in the field of control valves with high technical barriers, unlocking new scenarios and achieving new breakthroughs. Ltd. was established in Jining, with the long-term goal of creating a full industrial chain for industrial automation and building a modern digital factory with internationally advanced processes covering casting, forging, constant temperature machining workshops, assembly, surface treatment, material treatment, special degreasing processes, etc.
We focus on product development, while not stopping there," said Yang Quan, the company's founder and general manager. The goal of utmost's development has always been not only to provide valve products, but also to focus on the ability to create a full set of industrial valve solutions, the core of which is to create higher value for the user, the industry and, of course, for the company itself. More than twenty years of accumulation of imported product technology and perfection for localized needs have established our mature technology and brand advantages, and the cooperation with Jinengfa Group has injected strong and reliable strength for utmost to layout the whole industrial valve chain and achieve scale and leapfrog development!"
In the past year or two, the epidemic has affected some of the interviews completed through online platforms, but for this interview with utmost, the editorial team of Valve World Asia is grateful to be able to visit its new factory in Jining, Shandong Province, to feel the experience of its entire team in plant design, layout, equipment, operation and other aspects of thinking and investment, as well as its long-term goal of building a full industrial automation chain and comprehensive strength.

Accumulation of Strength: Replacing Imports with Products and Surpassing with Services

Utmost Flow Control Technology Ltd was established in November 2013. The founders of the company's core team all have over 20 years of experience in the valve industry - since around 2000 they have been responsible for the design, process and workshop management of famous foreign valve brands' products, as well as sales, maintenance and spare parts in the Chinese market. During this process, Mr. Yang and his start-up team not only gained a deep and comprehensive understanding and mastery of product technology and market demand, but also gained a clear insight into the shortcomings exposed by foreign brands in serving the domestic market. As a result, the team members gradually developed their own industrial dream - to set up their own brand and realise the domestic quality products instead of the original imports. As a result, from its establishment in 2013 to 2019, the company spent seven years creating and branding its own domestic brand, focusing on technology as its forerunner, constantly improving its innovative R&D capabilities and consolidating its core competitiveness. utmost invests a lot of money in R&D every year, has applied for many patents, obtained various authoritative qualifications and certifications, and keeps rising year by year. More than 60% of the company's performance has achieved the goal of replacing original imports and competing with first-tier brands in Europe, the United States and Japan.

With "control valves" at its core and the goal of "replacing imports", utmost must retain sufficient strength in its products and continue to make breakthroughs. Therefore, the company has positioned itself as a "technology-based enterprise", based on the absolute advantages of its predecessor's more than ten years of cooperation and joint venture with a well-known European control valve company, and its application performance in various types of harsh conditions, using the existing mature technology and brand advantages as well as the excellent sales channels and experience of utmost valves in China, for the Chinese domestic market The company offers "specialised + differentiated" high-end control valves for the coal chemical, petroleum, chemical and power industries, as well as for the Asia-Pacific market.
With the persistence and commitment to the goal, the development so far, in the market competition dominated by imported brands, utmost, as one of the few domestic brands, has gathered a lot of successful performance and service experience in the field of valves such as oxygen ball valves and oxygen control valves, low temperature deep cooling control valves, bellow control valves, compressor anti-surge control valves, intelligent positioners, coal chemical special ball and butterfly valves; its products in oxygen, nitrogen, cryogenic media in Nitrogen, low-temperature media applications have been in the forefront of the industry, product size and pressure range covering the main imports, joint venture brand supply range; while widely used in coal chemical, metallurgy, fine chemical, pharmaceutical chemical, power (including nuclear power), petrochemical, polysilicon and other industries. With the increasing scale of production, utmost has cooperated with many national key enterprises such as Sinopec, Shandong Energy, Yanchang Petroleum, Shenhua Group, Dongfang Hope, Xinjiang Zhongtai, Lihuyi Group, Erdos, Baofeng Energy, etc. in the past two years, and has gained high evaluation and recognition from the owners for the quality, price, service and stability of the products. In addition, utmost focuses on technology research and development, and has mature technology reserves in many promising new energy fields, which have great potential in responding to future market demand trends of customers.

Mr. Yang said: "The 'replacement of imports' is not the final goal, but the utmost team has improved the product through years of accumulation of imported product technology and based on it, the product has been greatly improved according to the local needs of Chinese customers. After continuous verification in various working conditions, our products are already comparable to international first-tier brands and even surpass them in some fields. For example, our oxygen control valves, which can achieve 0.1% precision control, are widely used in large and medium-sized enterprises in China - nearly 300 oxygen control units are operating on site without a single accident. It is particularly worth mentioning that utmost oxygen regulating valves and other products do not get orders because of lower prices than imported brands, but mainly due to its attention to the needs of domestic users, solving problems that have long been unsolved by imported brands (such as oxygen fluctuations in gasifiers, valve vibrations, packing leaks and other problems that plague owners)."
On the basis of "domestic products instead of imported ones", utmost pays more attention to the quality and responsiveness of its "service". It has also set up marketing and service offices in more than 20 major cities in China and international cities to increase customer benefits and stickiness through fast and professional maintenance, and has built up a global marketing and service network to provide customers with comprehensive and convenient product application services. In addition to this, utmost plans to establish and has already started to establish 18 "Rapid Response Centres" in areas with a high concentration of chemical parks across the country, each with a standard of 1,000 square metres and fully equipped, stocked and professional teams to Each centre has a standard of 1,000 square metres and is fully equipped, stocked and staffed by a team of professionals to serve the needs of customers for warranty, overhaul, spare parts and technical improvements and measures, breaking through the 24-hour response time and getting close to customers in all aspects. Not only that, utmost grasps the digital trend and focuses on the "whole life cycle" of the product - through the valve positioner package, it can realize the field operation and mobile phone or computer connection, direct valve fault diagnosis, aiming to obtain big data through remote The aim is to further improve the positioning accuracy of the valve through remote access to big data, to change the "passive demand" into "active service", to provide customers with instant access to valve operation and to reduce unnecessary losses.

Strength Upgrade: Digital Factory Synergy Whole Industry Chain Layout, Full Set of Valve Solution Capability Continues to Grow

Undoubtedly, to improve product accuracy and industry coverage, improve engineering support capabilities, reduce support costs and provide customers with a total solution, is not only the urgent needs of users, but also the development goals of many valve manufacturing enterprises. However, it is also undeniable that in order to achieve this goal, we cannot rely solely on quality products and services; forward-looking layout arrangements, sufficient resource advantages and strong financial strength are all necessary conditions for the achievement of the goal. It is clear that the cooperation between utmost and Jining Energy Development Group is an imperative. After the establishment of the joint venture, utmost has set up a new, modern factory in Jining, Shandong Province, to achieve large-scale production.

Yang is very proud of the new factory, but also full of emotions: "Having worked in the valve industry for more than 20 years, my team and I have been committed to building a dream factory. We have visited the factories of famous international brands in Europe, America and Japan and have been impressed by their fine management and automation. Therefore, in the planning of the new factory, we have not only combined the advantages of advanced factories, but also further upgraded them on this basis, adopting the concept of modernisation and automation, applying the most advanced technology and equipment to the entire design and layout of our factory, which is at least five years ahead of industry, laying a strong foundation for the subsequent development of the company."
The highlights of the new factory are numerous. The 5,000 square metre machining workshop has been turned into a constant temperature workshop to minimise the impact of external temperature changes on material accuracy and quality stability and to ensure product quality from every detail. The new factory is equipped with more than 80 per cent of imported advanced equipment, and also introduces the Niigata automated production line from Japan, which runs 24 hours a day and can replace 30 traditional machines, and can be fully automated from one inch to 12 inches. In addition, the factory is designed with energy consumption in mind, using solar energy, and is not affected by power restrictions and other factors. Of course, the flow laboratory, which covers an area of about 3,000 square metres, is also one of the highlights of the new utmost factory, with a flow flow resistance test area of about 1,600 square metres, a low temperature deep cooling test and inspection area of about 500 square metres, a comprehensive R&D test area of about 600 square metres and a quality inspection area of about 300 square metres. The flow flow resistance test platform, consisting of a reservoir, pump and frequency control system, pump sink, distributor, flow measurement meter and pipeline, valve test pipeline, back pressure adjustment control, adjustment console, data acquisition system, etc., is fully equipped with devices. All pipes and flanges are made of stainless steel, while the pumps are selected from the famous domestic brand - Kaiquan, which can be operated as a single pump or in combination, with stable flow and high testing accuracy, and can also meet different flow needs. At present, it can test the flow characteristics and regulation characteristics of valves of nominal size DN15-DN800 as well as flow meters, filters and other related fluid products. In addition, Mr. Yang also introduced us to utmost's clean workshop: 1200 square meters of workshop, equipped with human cargo air shower room, clean changing room, air purification equipment, etc., the clean level reaches 300,000, supporting a large automatic ultrasonic cleaning machine, to achieve the special control valve from rough washing, degreasing, fine washing, rinsing, drying the whole process of degreasing, scale and technical level in the forefront of domestic counterparts.

Utmost builds digital factories from 8 dimensions, including safety, people, quality, production, cost, new products, new technology and environment. The company combined with CRM and MES system on line operation, will achieve digital transformation, making all equipment linked together, truly achieve unhindered flow of information, reduce human intervention, let the system drive the production process, and ultimately achieve the organic combination of scale and customised production, making the maximum efficiency; while introducing follow-up service extension, truly create a digital era of valves. Together with FANUC, the world's largest professional CNC system manufacturer, utmost customises a unique system for the valve production process to build a digital factory of utmost's own, to promote the production business with a smooth equipment IOT system, to establish a resource management system, to contact customers and suppliers, to react quickly and to build a manufacturing ecosystem. Mr Yang said, "Digitalisation is a global trend in manufacturing, and utmost will be committed to promoting this system across the industry."
In order to link up the upstream and downstream industry chain, further ensure product quality, improve delivery and service level, in 2020, utmost invested in upstream supporting projects and established utmost Alloy Company, which can support high-end precision metal materials for utmost, including titanium alloy, nickel-based alloy, duplex steel and austenitic stainless steel, martensitic stainless steel, etc. As the first casting capacity replacement project in Shandong Province and even in China, utmost Alloy has a capacity replacement of 7,484 tonnes, with an annual production capacity of 3,600 tonnes of medium temperature wax silica sol investment casting line and 1,800 tonnes of alkali phenolic resin sand casting line in Phase I. The project is supported by the construction of a plant, a 4Mev flaw detection room and a complete testing laboratory. Its project products have mature process technology and short product development cycle. The company took the lead in promoting full process automation and intelligent manufacturing, industrial big data management, paperless production, 3D printing and the establishment of a casting engineering application R&D innovation centre in the domestic precision casting industry, with the process capability index increased to over 133. Pioneered the implementation of horizontal substitution of valve component manufacturing processes in the precision casting industry, realising precision casting instead of sand casting, precision casting instead of forging, precision casting instead of stamping, precision casting instead of machining, precision casting instead of welding, precision casting instead of assembly, etc., controlling manufacturing costs more than 10% lower than other processes. We have complete design and verification capabilities for precision casting, and use our proprietary technology to achieve a complete solution for partial replacement of forging, sand casting, stamping, welding, machining, assembly and other six processes, providing customers with differentiated value-added services to reduce weight, lower cost, shorten delivery time and improve quality. When the casting plant is put into operation, it will significantly improve the product quality level and delivery quality of the company, and help the company to leapfrog forward. In addition, utmost is also actively working on the layout of instrumentation and forgings, etc., to continuously improve and integrate the upstream and downstream, and move towards the whole industrial chain of industrial automation.

Empowerment from the Beginning: Strength to Identify the Beginning and the Future to Paint with the Beginning

From specialising in control valve products, to integrating a team of professionals in the offset category to complete full category coverage, from a technology-based company to a high-end valve production base focusing on a full set of solutions, and then preparing to go public to create a full industrial chain of automation, the changes that utmost has achieved so far are impressive. As the leader and witness of the company along the way, founder and general manager Yang Quan said: "Admittedly, the development stage is different and our goals have changed. But 'domestic products instead of imports' is a philosophy we have always adhered to and never wavered from. Whether it's high-end customised products or regular mass production, we carry the original intention of making 'high quality' through to every product."
Strictly speaking, last year was the first year that utmost Fluid Control Technology (Shandong) Co., Ltd. was established, but it was also the year that utmost was approved to enter the Sinopec framework, which is undoubtedly a strong recognition for valve manufacturers, and even more so for a "new plant" like utmost. In this regard, Mr. Yang said: "To enter the Sinopec framework in the first year is in itself a great recognition for us, which is more convincing than any performance. In addition, our full range of control valves has been used in a large local refinery project in Shandong. All this reflects the customer's recognition of our positioning, size, equipment, quality control system and all other aspects."
UTMOST® is synonymous with high quality work, high quality products, the courage to explore and the pursuit of excellence. Together) also forms the core of the company's philosophy. This philosophy is not only embedded in utmost's products and services, but also in its teams. When asked about the way we employ people, Mr. Yang said, "We look at the capabilities of our employees, but we also look at their inner desires and needs. Like the products we are committed to - using valves as a carrier to deliver higher value to users and the industry!"