193: Chapter 193 Turning Money into Productivity

The previous afternoon, Jiang Lin was still at Tsinghua University's Sixth Teaching Building, putting away that failed manuscript on the third-order number field.

That evening, Xu Man sent a photo of the factory building.

Four machines withdrawn from Qingya Tunnel occupied the entire disassembly and inspection area, PG-P06 lay horizontally across the final assembly station, and the mobile gantry crane arriving the next day didn't even have a place to unload.

Jiang Lin left the [Unit Distance Counterexample] in the task queue for [After November 1st] and took the evening high-speed rail back to Jiangcheng.

Low Entropy Workshop's Jiangcheng manufacturing node.

The rolling shutter door of the unloading area stuttered as it rose halfway, its chain emitting a dry, grating sound.

The heavy flatbed truck outside grew impatient, its rough pneumatic horn blaring unhindered into the factory building and shaking the dust off the doorframe down in a cascade.

The driver stuck half his body out of the cab and shouted into the workshop, which was filled with the sound of metal cutting, "Where should I unload the gantry crane? Make it snappy, I have two more trucks waiting in line to enter the industrial park behind me."

Inside the workshop, however, no one had the time to spare to pay attention to him.

The originally spacious main aisle was now squeezed by various equipment and parts, leaving a gap of less than one meter.

On the left was PG-P01, with half of its outer shell freshly removed. Its body still retained the grayish-white scuff marks from Qingya Tunnel, and its six mechanical legs were each mounted on support platforms.

PG-P02 and PG-P03 occupied the two disassembly and inspection positions in the back.

Complex orange high-voltage wire harnesses, core joint modules, and mission cabins were densely laid out according to material numbers, surrounded at the outermost perimeter by eye-catching red and white isolation tape.

PG-P05 had only barely finished surface cleaning last night; if one looked closely, dry, hard yellow mud could still be scraped out from the gaps in the foot-end buffer pads.

The four machines withdrawn from Qingya Tunnel had pushed the isolation zone, which was originally designed to accommodate only one rework machine, right up to the edge of the aisle.

Five yellow status boards hung by the wall.

[PG-P01: Withdrawn from commercial delivery, under disassembly and inspection]

[PG-P02: Withdrawn from commercial delivery, under disassembly and inspection]

[PG-P03: Withdrawn from commercial delivery, pending load-bearing review]

[PG-P04: Detained in Qingya Tunnel, pending obstacle clearance and recovery]

[PG-P05: Withdrawn from commercial delivery, pending disassembly and inspection]

Outside media called them the five heroic machines, but on the status board managed by Xu Man, no special sentimental column was reserved for heroes.

The right side of the aisle was equally jammed.

PG-P06's central load-bearing frame lay horizontally across the final assembly workstation.

Two assembly personnel were squatting next to the front-right leg, struggling; one was sweating profusely as he supported the heavy reducer, while the other was tightening the flange with a torque wrench.

The tool cart was squeezed outside the yellow-and-black safety line, and behind it, three unopened motor boxes were stacked like a game of arhats.

A forklift drove over from the other end of the aisle, its yellow warning light flashing and its buzzer beeping anxiously twice.

"Make way, let me through first," the driver shouted.

The person supporting the reducer had both hands occupied bearing the weight and simply couldn't free them up.

The person holding the wrench nearby could only take a deep breath, pick up the toolbox on the ground, and sidle up tightly against the frame to yield half a meter of space.

Just as the forklift brushed past their work clothes, the door to the testing area opened again.

Chen Yan walked out holding a data terminal with a tightly knitted brow, "Who re-tied the power line for the front-right foot of Machine Number Six?"

"It was tidied up once yesterday afternoon according to the test sheet," the assembly worker replied.

"At full stroke, it will rub against the outer shell. Take it apart and do it again."

The assembly worker responsible for that leg jerked his head up and wiped the sweat from his face, "Yesterday you told us to pull it inward, and today you tell us to let it outward. Can your testing team give us a definite answer?"

"What was pulled inward yesterday was the sensor line."

"What about the label?"

"It got stained with cleaning agent, and the text rubbed off."

"Couldn't you have replaced it since it rubbed off?"

The idling sound of an electric grinding tool suddenly pierced through from behind at a high frequency, chopping off the assembly worker's last half-sentence into mere fading echoes.

Xu Man took long strides across the red-and-white isolation tape from the isolation zone and reached out to turn off that grating tool.

"Take apart the front-right leg and re-separate the power line and sensor line into different slots. Replace all existing labels with oil-resistant materials. Whoever took apart the wire harness is responsible for restoring it and signing off." She pointed at the toolbox on the ground, "Take your things back inside the yellow line. If you block the aisle one more time, don't assemble this machine today."

The few people exchanged glances, swallowed their anger, and moved apart to get to work.

Xu Man turned around and walked to the rolling shutter door, glancing outside.

That newly bought mobile gantry crane was a full six meters long with brand-new baked paint. Its support legs and crossbeams were bundled into three groups, taking up most of the truck bed.

This was originally heavy weaponry prepared for the new final assembly workstation, but now that the truck had driven to the door, not a single patch of open space could be found in the workshop for the crane boom to turn around.

"Don't unload it yet," she shouted to the driver. "Give me half an hour."

"I can wait twenty minutes at most."

The driver irritably retracted into the cab, and the diesel engine continued to rumble lowly outside the door.

When Jiang Lin came in through the side door, Xu Man was wiping the new markings on the floor.

The blue line drawn yesterday had been crushed open by truck wheels for a section, and the wire harness workstation and temporary material area had stuck together again.

She scrubbed hard twice and failed to clean it, so she simply tossed the rag into the cleaning bucket.

"You can see for yourself, our warehouse is bursting at the seams," Xu Man stood up and pointed at the flatbed truck outside. "If we forcefully unload this rack today, tomorrow we'll have to hire another truck to drag it back out."

Jiang Lin didn't speak; he walked inward along the aisle.

On the material clipboard behind PG-P06, fifteen new machine serial numbers had been lined up in order.

PG-P06 to PG-P10, to make up for the original five units in the pipe corridor.

PG-P11 to PG-P14, corresponding to the four additionally requested units.

PG-P15 to PG-P20, for delivery to Chongyue Mining.

Next to the last row was a bold note that Xu Man had just written in red pen.

[New production capacity unverified, not counted toward delivery commitments]

The original five units in the pipe corridor had already received an advance payment of 2.16 million yuan.

That money turned into PG-P01 through PG-P05 and went along with the five machines to Qingya.

The newly arrived 4.32 million yuan came from the six units for Chongyue and the four additional units for the pipe corridor.

Although fifteen new serial numbers were lined up on the clipboard, this money belonged only to the latter ten units.

Chen Zhi came down from the second floor holding a tablet and a stack of printed payment milestone tables.

"It's all here."

She handed the tablet to Jiang Lin, and the screen displayed the whereabouts of every single penny.

"First-year rent, deposit, and basic renovation for Workshop No. 3, 490,000 yuan. The second set of joint calibration, full-machine load-bearing, and electrical testing equipment, 1.28 million yuan. Advance payment for the first batch of components for ten units, 1.96 million yuan. The remaining 590,000 yuan is reserved for new personnel, consumables, and delay buffer."

At the very top of the tablet, the available project funds were displayed: 4,320,000.00 yuan.

Four lines of numbers split it up precisely.

"The remanufacturing costs for the original five units are listed separately," Chen Zhi pulled out another table clipped in the back. "The equipment withdrawal and delay costs caused by the Qingya rescue shall be borne by Low Entropy Workshop and cannot be stuffed into the material accounts of the new ten units. If the Beijing experience store is also opened now, don't buy the second set of testing equipment."

Liang Zhixia followed behind her downstairs, carrying a bunch of brass keys in her hand.

The Beijing brand experience store was a commercial plan she had first proposed.

After the Qingya Tunnel rescue incident was exposed, individual purchase applications for Low Entropy had exceeded 3,000.

Although fewer than forty hardcore customers truly possessed the conditions for use, storage locations, and maintenance plans, media outlets, procurement agents, and various visit applications had turned the doorbell of the Beijing R&D Center into a hotline.

She had originally made an appointment to go to Beijing on Monday to look at the second round of interior design plans.

At this moment, Liang Zhixia took out her phone and, right in front of everyone, directly cancelled that meeting.

Liang Zhixia took out her phone and cancelled that meeting in front of several people.

"Beijing will retain online screening and appointment reception for now, and the physical store plan will be postponed. The Jiangcheng industrial experience site will be directly merged into the new factory's testing area; we won't carve out a separate space for vanity projects." She neatly put away her phone. "From now on, whoever comes to look at the machines must first watch them finish the load-bearing cycle tests. If they still want to buy after seeing that, they can enter the scenario review."

Xu Man looked at her, took the bunch of keys, and weighed them in her palm: "From Workshop No. 3 next door?"

"The landlord just sent them over this morning. The contract has been revised for two rounds, and the fire protection, electricity, and roof maintenance records have all been obtained," Liang Zhixia said. "If you go look at it now and it's usable, sign it on the spot; if it's not usable, I'll return it and look for another one."

Outside the door, the flatbed truck driver honked his long horn again.

He rested his arm on the car window and made a gesture toward the inside.

"Thirteen minutes left." Xu Man glanced at her watch and walked straight outside with the keys.

Everyone walked through the side courtyard of the existing factory building.

Less than a hundred meters away stood an old auto parts workshop that had been vacant for more than two years.

The white paint on the outer wall had developed gray spots, and a half-section of a recruitment red banner faded by wind and rain still hung below the second-floor glass windows.

Xu Man opened the rusted U-lock on the main door.

As the rolling shutter door rose with a clatter, a smell mixed with rust, aged engine oil, and dust rushed toward them.

Sunlight slanted through the high lighting windows into the empty workshop, illuminating rows of unremoved expansion bolts on the ground.

After the old equipment was moved away, the dark outlines left by engine oil seeping into the concrete were still there, resembling a huge workstation map that nobody had finished wiping clean.

This place was more than twice as large as the existing workshop.

Xu Man first checked the door width, then squatted down to inspect several equipment foundation pits.

She scraped away the floating dust with the sole of her shoe, revealing the concrete floor underneath.

"It can barely be used after grinding, the foundation pits need to be backfilled, and the load-bearing capacity must be tested once more."

The industrial park head had been waiting inside. Hearing this, he quickly stepped forward to reply: "The former tenant made heavy automobile parts, so the ground load-bearing capacity is definitely not a problem. There is also a set of 500 kVA power distribution left behind in the back, which will be convenient for your subsequent capacity expansion."

Liang Zhixia flipped open the due diligence records in her hand and ignored his polite remarks: "Last year your roof leaked three times and was repaired once. Which two points are still seeping water now?"

The smile on the industrial park head's face paused for a moment; he took out his phone and walked aside to call the property management for verification.

Xu Man ignored them and continued walking inward along the mottled eastern wall, her brain already beginning to construct the production line.

"Put final assembly in the middle and make four workstations first. The mission cabin and wiring harnesses should be close to the west side, so they don't squeeze together with the powertrain assembly to eat dust anymore. Leave two test channels on the east side—one for continuous load running, and one for terrain and fault reproduction. The muddy water area must be placed outside, and the drainage ditch has to be redone."

Chen Yan was behind, holding a laser rangefinder to measure the distance from the network cabinet to the test area: "Put the data terminal here, and the test network and office network must be separated in Physics. Faulty machines should enter the isolation zone separately from the south side, and stop passing through the final assembly channel to contaminate new machines."

He raised his hand and pointed to the darker area at the very back of the workshop: "That area is enough to hold four units pending inspection."

Xu Man turned her head and glanced at him: "According to the amount of repairs coming down from Qingya over the past few days, reserve space for six units first."

Chen Yan crossed out the numbers he had just measured on the terminal and retreated back by two column spans.

Currently, there wasn't even a torque wrench in the empty workshop, but after walking a circle along the pillars and old anchor bolts, several people relied on experience to clearly demarcate the four major areas of final assembly, calibration, under-test, and fault isolation out of the dust-covered ground.

Jiang Lin walked to the end of the workshop.

There was a sealed logistics rolling shutter door, behind which faced the side courtyard of the existing factory building.

A worker tried to pull the manual chain, and the rolling shutter door struggled to rise a dozen centimeters before getting stuck, emitting a teeth-gritting friction sound from the guide rail.

"Stop pulling." Xu Man squatted down and glanced at the extent of the rail deformation. "The scroll is already skewed. If you pull it hard again, the whole set will have to be replaced."

The worker hurriedly released the chain.

Through the dozen-centimeter gap at the bottom of the door, Jiang Lin could just see the old factory building operating next door.

The central load-bearing frame of the PG-P06 still lay across the final assembly station, and that carrier flashing warning lights squeezed through the narrow aisle once again.

"The original factory building will retain R&D, repairs, and special mission cabin assembly." Xu Man stood up and patted the dust off her hands. "All standard platforms will be transferred here. If personnel and suppliers keep up, the first stage capacity is six units per month. To raise it further, add test equipment first, not people."

"Can the capacity of existing suppliers keep up?" Jiang Lin asked.

"The reducer company can expand production, on the condition of confirming a fixed production scheduling plan of more than half a year, and Low Entropy will bear a portion of the new tooling costs. A second supplier can be found for the foot pressure array, and bearings and motors can also add alternatives."

"How long will it take for the alternative suppliers' samples to finish testing?"

"Two months at the fastest."

"Chongyue and the utility tunnel will not change sources for the first batch. The original suppliers will expand production according to the frozen technical version, and the second source will be verified in parallel. We will never use the customer's first batch of orders as an experiment."

Xu Man nodded and wrote this resolution into her portable logbook.

Liang Zhixia's cell phone rang at this critical juncture.

She answered the phone, listened to the other party speaking eagerly, walked over to the lighting window, and opened another scenario registration form.

"The complete materials for Mountain Power have arrived." She covered the microphone and reported to Jiang Lin and Xu Man, "The first batch demands eight units—four for material transport and four for inspection. They are wealthy and willing to pay the scenario verification fee in advance. The contract advance payment can be raised to forty percent, but they strictly require four units to be delivered before the end of January next year."

Across half of the empty workshop, Xu Man directly replied without any room for negotiation: "The delivery date cannot be agreed upon."

Liang Zhixia nodded and resumed business calmness toward the phone: "The materials will enter the second-sequence technical evaluation today. But the delivery time must wait for on-site verification and the construction progress of our second delivery unit. Right now, January delivery cannot be written into the contract."

The person on the other end of the line was obviously anxious and threw out a series of conditions again.

Liang Zhixia used a pen to jot down the key points on the registration form: "Raising the advance payment ratio is negotiable, but the production scheduling order remains unchanged. Even if you are willing to bear our upstream production expansion costs, it must wait until our newly added equipment passes strict verification before it can be counted into capacity. Low Entropy does not sell futures."

This time, the other party negotiated for even longer.

Outside the door, the flatbed truck driver's countdown phone call happened to ring on Xu Man's cell phone.

Xu Man glanced at the caller ID, simply pushed open the side door, and shouted outward: "Drive in and unload at the neighboring factory building!"

The driver cursed on the other end of the phone, and then the diesel engine erupted into a roar again.

By the time Liang Zhixia ended the call, the flatbed truck had clumsily detoured from the old factory entrance.

"Mountain Power ultimately accepts doing scenario verification first, with the delivery date left blank." She finished writing the last line on the registration form, "The eight units will not enter the formal production scheduling sequence for now."

"Pause the projects that have already passed the preliminary screening at the audit stage." Jiang Lin looked at the trucks driving into the new factory area, "Before the second delivery unit stabilizes, we will no longer accept any formal advance payments exceeding our existing delivery capacity. We cannot be pushed along by funds."

"That way, the business side will have a lot fewer nice-looking book figures."

"Take a look next door; the workshop can no longer fit any nice-looking figures." Xu Man pointed at the flatbed truck struggling to back up and directed outward: "To the left, further left, don't crush those anchor bolts."

The heavy truck's reversing buzzer bounced back and forth in the empty workshop, deafeningly loud.

Chen Zhi placed the tablet on an abandoned empty wooden box and pulled up the final funding arrangement of 4.32 million yuan.

"As long as the contract is signed today, 490,000 can be disbursed immediately. The quotations and delivery dates of the three equipment suppliers have been verified; 1.28 million will be paid in three installments based on installation, no-load, and load-bearing acceptance. For ten sets of parts, 1.96 million will be paid first, and we cannot move it forward anymore to keep sufficient cash flow."

"Nine production positions will be posted today." Liang Zhixia quickly got into character, "Incoming quality inspection, assembly, wiring harness, testing, and warehouse management must be recruited separately. The second unit will draw two veterans from the existing team to lead, and newcomers will only do basic operations and data recording for the first two months."

Xu Man was making fluorescent marks for the unloading position. Hearing the last sentence, she suddenly turned her head and added: "The testing release authority must remain with me and Chen Yan. Don't recruit nine blockheads who only know how to fill out forms according to templates for me."

Liang Zhixia dialed Qiu Yue's phone on the spot.

"Add nine more positions to the recruitment page, explicitly requiring priority for those who have done assembly, inspection, and equipment maintenance, and they must be able to accept dirty testing and nighttime fault reproduction. Those with only office drawing-reading experience should not squeeze into the production experience."

The other end of the phone asked about the progress.

She looked at the flatbed truck that had just parked steadily and was preparing to unload: "Yes, the second delivery unit is set. Post it today, and start screening resumes in the afternoon."

Chen Zhi pushed the electronic payment application in front of Jiang Lin.

"I will lock the remaining 590,000 in the account, and new personnel, consumables, and extensions will all come from here. If any experience activity takes up testing work hours, it must be established as a separate project and accounted for financially. No one is allowed to dismantle this life-saving money."

After reviewing the payment nodes, Jiang Lin decisively signed on the 490,000-yuan factory building payment and the three equipment orders.

When the person in charge of the industrial park arrived panting with the formal lease contract, the flatbed truck's pneumatic outriggers had heavily dropped, stabilizing the vehicle body.

In the contract annex, the repair deadlines for two water seepage points on the roof, the division of responsibility for logistics door repairs, the cooperation for power capacity expansion, and the hard indicators for re-testing ground load-bearing capacity had been clearly added.

Liang Zhixia checked page by page to ensure there were no errors, and Chen Zhi aligned the rent payment nodes with the annex numbers.

At 4:16 PM, both parties signed and sealed.

The mobile gantry crane became the first set of heavy equipment unloaded in the second delivery unit.

The heavy steel crossbeam temporarily landed on the wooden cushion blocks, and the outriggers lined up in two neat rows against the wall.

Xu Man fetched an engineering chalk line box, stained with ink, and pulled out the first straight blue line from the center of the workshop.

"Four final assembly stations, starting from here."

The thin line tightened in the air, and then with a snap, it fell heavily onto the dusty concrete floor, leaving a clear mark.

Along the blue line, Chen Yan measured eastward to find the future test channels.

Liang Zhixia quickly pulled the property management, fire protection, power, and equipment suppliers into the same construction coordination group, while Chen Zhi neatly submitted the first payment of 490,000 yuan to the bank for review.

Full-scale construction still had to wait for the load-bearing re-test and the re-verification of water leakage points.

The construction team decided to make a ground sample in the northwest corner first.

When the heavy grinding machine was pushed into the workshop, the sky had already grown dark.

The construction supervisor looked above the empty main entrance and turned to ask: "President Jiang, where should we hang our new signboard? Let's make the bracket together so we don't have to bother erecting scaffolding later."

Jiang Lin lowered his head to glance at the four blue lines of the final assembly workstations just popped on the ground, his tone calm: "The signboard comes later."

"Then what shall we do today?"

"Flatten the ground first."

The construction supervisor acknowledged and turned back to loudly call the workers to connect the power supply.

The stuck old logistics door next door was pushed up half a meter high.

The incandescent light from the existing factory building leaked in from the bottom of the door. The newly disassembled right front leg of the PG-P06 happened to stop right in that bright spot, and the power line and sensor line had already been neatly divided into two wire troughs.

On the side of the new factory building, the floor grinder emitted a low roar, pressing onto the two-meter-square sample area.

The alloy cutter head rotated at high speed, and the stubborn oil stains and floating dust on the topmost layer of the old concrete were peeled off bit by bit, sucked into the vacuum tube.

The mobile gantry crane quietly leaned against the wall, and the factory serial number on the crossbeam was still wrapped in a transparent protective film.

Amidst the flying dust and vibrations, the second delivery unit emitted the first roar of machinery belonging to it.