The urban development and construction standards of the Ocean Empire are still relatively high, and if they belong to that level of urban construction, then in the early stage of planning and construction, the construction standards of which level will be implemented.

For example, the main roads of the city, what standards are for first-class cities, and what standards are for third-level cities have clear regulations, and they should be implemented accordingly.

How wide is the green belt, the central isolation belt, and the length and width of the main sewer channel in the main road of the first-class city? What is the height? There are standards for how deep the sewer is.

According to the status of Duke Wright, there can be a maximum of one second-level standard city on Leyte Island, and several third-, fourth, and fifth-level standard cities.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs also determines the allocation according to this scale, and then divides the allocation into 10 or 15 years, but this is not the entire amount of funds for construction, about 30% of the proportion, and the rest has to be raised by itself.

Therefore, the standard of the town to be built by the Duke of Wright is much higher than that of the new town in the Legazpi area, and the initial investment is naturally much higher, even if it is to introduce private capital, the pressure is also very great.

Needless to say, such a principle of construction must have been set by His Majesty, and no one can change it.

If you have money, you can build it beautifully, and if you don't have money, it will be simpler.

From here, it can also be seen that the ability and level of each prince are not materials for governing the country.

At the beginning of 1901, three major events occurred in the world.

On January 22, Queen Victoria, who had ruled the British Empire for 64 years, died in London, and the British Empire was plunged into deep grief.

The 50th and 60th anniversaries of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne were celebrated with unprecedented ceremonies in the British Empire, and how joyful it was, how sad it was, and how emperors, kings, dukes, princes and princesses from all over Europe gathered in London to pay a moment of silence to this great monarch.

Britain held a grand state funeral for him, which can be said to be a gathering of emperors, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, Governor General of Canada Campbell IX, King Gustav VI of Sweden, Queen Victoria of Spain, King George V of the United Kingdom, and the crown prince of the Ocean Kingdom.

February 5, 1901

Pierpont Morgan bought several iron ore mines owned by the Rockefeller family and all of Andrew Carnegie's steel business, merging to become Citigroup's largest steel company, with 65% of the country's steel production under its control.

The $1 billion acquisition was a watershed moment in the creation of an unprecedented trust monopoly in Citigroup's industrial sector.

The third thing is that in the Gengzi national disaster, the coalition forces of Europe and the United States proposed a huge compensation of 450 million taels of silver.

The beginning of the 20th century was not a quiet start, Eurasia and Africa were full of turmoil and war, the development of the industrial revolution stimulated the appetite of monopolies, and imperfect societies could not restrain the behemoths, and the trust enterprises that rose in Citi occupied monopoly profits.

DuPont in the chemical industry, Morgan Steel Consortium in the steel industry, Rockefeller Group in the petrochemical industry, and Citigroup General Electric in Nirvana, are all giant companies in the industry, accounting for more than half of the market share.

People don't realize that monopolies restrict market competition, limit technological progress, and obtain excess profits through monopolies.

There may be a small number of social elites who are aware of this serious problem, but they are not strong enough to prevent the birth of the trust enterprise, which is a painful stage that a capitalist society must go through.

However, there was no such problem in the Ocean Empire, where the royal family fund's participation in large enterprises actually played the role of a large state-owned enterprise, guiding the economic development of the empire, and operating relatively smoothly under the constraints of the board of directors, management and shareholders.

In the field of petrochemicals, the Ocean Empire has developed dozens of oil companies led by the three giants of United Oil Company, Kalimantan Petroleum Company, and Nanyang Oil Company.

In the tobacco industry, there are hundreds of cigarette factories and more cigarette brands, covering high, medium and low-grade cigarettes, and the market is fully competitive.

In the field of wool textile, it has formed a competitive pattern with Honghe Woolen General Factory as the leading enterprise and dozens of textile factories of all sizes, with many brands, strong selectivity and world-class competitiveness.

In the field of finance, with the Imperial Reserve Bank as the management institution, a pattern of hundreds of banks and financial institutions has been formed, led by the four kings of Huitong Bank, Shangri-La Bank, Wells Fargo Bank and Huiyuan Bank.

In the field of machinery and automobile manufacturing, a pattern of competition between many supporting machinery factories and more than a dozen automobile manufacturers has also been formed, which makes the market thriving and technological innovation continues to emerge.

The biggest bright spot in the field of automobile manufacturing came from a mechanical factory founded by German citizens called "Pegasus Steel Components", which was originally a company specializing in automobile chassis girders, supplying Foton and Xinghui automobile factories.

The owner of this company, Friedrich Schmidt, is a senior senior engineer, originally a German citizen living in Detroit, USA, with more than 20 years of experience, and later attracted by Australia's booming automobile industry, realized that this is an unprecedented development opportunity, so he came to Australia to open this car girder manufacturing company.

In order to obtain equal citizenship and avoid discrimination in tax and business aspects, Friedrich Schmidt abandoned Citigroup citizenship and chose to become a naturalized citizen of Ocean Empire.

in business operations

Transporting material synthetics often requires the use of heavy tractors to carry cargo, whether small 4-wheeled tractors or heavy tractors, which Mr. Friedrich Schmidt finds inconvenient.

Without him, these tractors belong to agricultural machinery in the final analysis, from the beginning of the design, not prepared for long-distance freight at all, and some of the problems in the tires are quite serious.

For example, the fuel consumption is large, the combustion is incomplete, the glass windshield for long-distance transportation is not considered, the man-machine function is poor, the driving environment is harsh, the parts are fragile and fragile, etc., and do not meet the requirements of use.

Every day, the tractor driver in the factory is greasy, his face is full of black and gray, his hands are always black, and long-distance transportation is even more sinful, and it is common to break down on the way.

Because of the design, the water tank equipped on the tractor is generally small, and the cooling capacity of the machine is poor, and the water tank basically needs to be added to run for one or two hours, otherwise it will cause the engine to overheat.

It's not a big deal on the farm, it's all on the doorstep anyway, and you can find ponds and streams at will.

But where can water be found everywhere in long-distance transportation?

It's simply not possible.

There is also poor dynamic capacity of the tractor, frequent braking in long-distance transportation, often resulting in scrapping of friction plates, this kind of problem has no room for improvement, only to prepare more spare parts replacement.

Normally, the use of tractors is not too frequent, generally used more when the farm is busy, and it is maintained when the farm is slack, and it is enough to be used as agricultural machinery.

However, it is used as a long-distance freight and does not stop all year round, and all kinds of problems emerge in an endless stream, making the head bigger.

Therefore, Mr. Friedrich Schmidt came up with the idea of designing a special truck, which should have a large market in terms of the needs of transporting social goods.

Considering the high cost of developing a wagon, in June 1898, Mr. Friedrich Schmidt applied for a project from the Imperial Research Support Fund in the name of "Pegasus Steel Components Company", and received a scientific research support fund of 35,000 gold oceans.

Friedrich Schmidt immediately set up a research and development team, began to work on the cargo car, and in 1899 and 1900, he received two additional research budgets, and successfully developed a 1.5-dwt car.

The project received strong support from the German community and was successfully funded by the Royal Family Fund for the purchase of equipment, the purchase of space and the expansion of the factory, and the first production truck was produced in early 1901.

"Pegasus Steel Components Company" was therefore renamed "BMW Motor Company", and the 1.5-ton BMW car was warmly welcomed by the market as soon as it was put on the market, and orders flew like snowflakes.

This new field has also attracted the attention of many other car manufacturers, who have invested in the development of their own cargo vehicles, which is a later story.

BMW uses a 1.6-liter inline 4-cylinder gasoline engine, an innovative large water tank, and a forced heat exchange through a water pump, which greatly reduces various failures caused by engine overheating, and has taken a great step forward in the field of automobile development.

The car is equipped with a small DC generator, which can generate electricity during the operation of the car to provide power for the two headlights of the car, which greatly enhances the safety of night driving, which is another innovative invention.

The most important thing is that the car completely separates the driving area from the cargo area, equipping the driver with a windshield and cabin, so that even if it rains, there is no need to worry about getting drenched. It is also equipped with a manual wiper that allows the driver to use his hands to scrape the rain back and forth, and can still drive on rainy days.

With all these advantages, the 1.5-ton BMW cargo car was widely welcomed at first glance, and various orders came in one after another, achieving great commercial success.

"Locks, how many cars can be produced this month?"

"Mr. Schmidt, the factory has been working overtime, and it is estimated that it will be able to produce 120 cars this month, no more than 123 units."

"Oh, how can you do it at such a speed? We have accumulated too many orders to digest them in three years. ”

"No way, sir, you have also seen, thousands of workers in the factory are busy, if you want to increase production, you can only increase manpower, equipment, and space, these Chinese are the best workers, as good as German workers."

"Alright then, Locks, I'll think of something else."

Looking at the back of the production supervisor Locks, Mr. Friedrich Schmidt shook his head irritably, and began to walk around the factory, touching here, looking there, and sometimes giving advice.

He is a rigorous German engineer, punctual and meticulous, who is extremely demanding in the quality of his products and is always praised by his partners.

Nowadays, there is no assembly line in this era, and there are many workers around the production of a car, and almost every production car is surrounded by about 10 workers, some are installing chassis accessories, some are installing leaf springs, some are hoisting cabs, and some are cleaning accessories, smeared with butter and ready for installation.

Everyone is busy, but assembling a car requires thousands of parts, and simply screwing all kinds of screws is a big project, and it is inefficient to rework if you make a mistake.

Mr. Friedrich Schmidt's BMW plant already has more than 2,700 people and is still actively recruiting employees, and more than 400 people are still being studied in the training courses, which is still not enough.

There are a lot of supporting truck parts, which cannot be purchased at all in the market, so there are also cab workshops, water tank workshops, special leaf spring workshops, wheel hub friction plate workshops, etc., as well as transportation teams, canteens, bathhouses and administrative personnel, a lot of them.

His BMW factory is not very large, the largest Australian General Machinery Company has 87,000 workers, Volkswagen has more than 50,000 workers, and Dongfanghong Machinery Company also has 4.3 workers, which are all well-known large enterprises at home and abroad.

What bothers Mr. Friedrich Schmidt is that the ramp-up is too slow, and now he has received orders for more than 4,200 trucks, which cannot be completed in three years according to the current production capacity.

Therefore, he no longer dares to take orders, he can only watch that a large amount of money cannot be earned, and this kind of happy troubles cannot be experienced by others, and he himself feels deeply.

The problem is that those large automobile manufacturers also fancy this market, if they switch to the production of freight cars, these large manufacturers have more advantages, after all, they have many skilled workers and equipment, and their production capacity is much larger than that of BMW Automobile Factory.

This thing is just a layer of window paper, and if you open it, there's no secret.

BMW has applied for patents for key technologies, such as forced heat transfer for engine water pumps, but this is not an insurmountable obstacle.

Mr. Friedrich Schmidt looked around the factory and meditated on ways to find practical ways to increase productivity, whether it was producing 10 more cars a month, which was a lot of money!

That...... Can you give the "Etruscan" method a try?

A thought flashed through Mr. Friedrich Schmidt's mind, and after thinking about it, he felt that there was a door, and immediately became excited, and immediately hurried back to the office.

He will convene a meeting of relevant administrative staff and technical personnel to study whether it is possible to finely decompose thousands of processes in automobile production to achieve an increase in production efficiency.

He was inspired by the Etruscan pottery factory .......

In 1769, the British businessman Josiah Wedgwood opened the Etruscan pottery factory, and he broke down the pottery process that was originally completed by one person into dozens of processes, which were completed by special personnel, which greatly improved production efficiency.

The factory is divided into special dredgers, porters, and masons, billet workers, painters, carvers, boiler workers, etc., to implement fine process decomposition, each worker focuses on their own work, and mistakes are greatly reduced.

Automobile production is much more complex than manufacturing production, and Mr. Friedrich Schmidt is not sure whether this idea can be realized, and it is necessary to work together to see if a feasible solution can be found.

As long as there is any way to improve production efficiency, no matter how difficult it is, he will try, hoping to seize this fleeting and precious business opportunity to make the BMW factory take off.