Yuwell Medical Equipment Inc. (B): The Innovation Engine

2013: five years since Yuwell went public in 2008. Over a decade, Yuwell had experienced remarkable expansion, seeing its revenue quadruple and achieving a six-fold increase in net profits. Yuwell has filed almost 100 product patents to date, and its systematic innovations streamlined 273 complicated manufacturing processes into just 69 simplified processes, which facilitated the creation of the fastest production line in the world for making desktop sphygmomanometers. Using this production line, it now takes Yuwell only 3.3 seconds to produce a sphygmomanometer. And by relying a combination of manual labor and automation, Yuwell developed the world’s longest production line for live line testing of oxygen generators. This case mainly focuses on the following questions: How were these innovations developed? What were the characteristics of the strategy for promoting innovation at Yuwell? And what would be the possible roles of innovation in the future development of the company?