Guardian of a smooth, efficient Metro system
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EDITOR’S note: Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions launched a project last year to single out 1,000 front-line workers whose expertise, professionalism and spirit are helping the city achieve its goal of becoming a hub of innovation and a center for the “Made in China 2025” campaign.
The names of the first 88 “Shanghai Standouts” include a skyscraper crane operator, a Metro operations technician, a horticulturist researching cauliflower cultivars, a peasant art painter, a star chef and a craftsman making stringed instruments.
The selected workers have an average 29 years of work experience and have shown a strong capacity for pioneering new ideas. A third of them hold invention patents. They are eligible for cash awards from a 20 million yuan (US$2.94 million) fund set up by the union.
Shanghai Daily has interviewed some of these modern-day role models.
In 1994, after graduating from vocational school, Yan Rujue, 46, joined the city’s Metro operator, Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, as a facility inspector. It was a year before the first subway line came into operation.
She has seen phenomenal transit progress in the ensuing 23 years. The Metro system has expanded to the world’s largest in length, with 15 lines stretching 617 kilometers.
By the end of this year, another three lines will come into operation, and by the end of 2020, the Metro network will exceed 800 kilometers with more than 500 stations.
In such a massive system, Yan might seem like a small cog. But she has proven to be a serious asset, achieving distinction as one of Shanghai’s best technicians. She is one of only eight women in the first 88 “Shanghai Standouts.”
In the beginning, Yan’s main job was to patrol Metro stations to inspect facilities and ensure smooth operations. She won her first major promotion in only four years. In more recent times, she has been put in charge of repair, operations and upgrading projects for Metro’s fire alarm systems, firefighting system and electromechanical equipment.
Two of her inventions to improve systems have won national patents and another three applications are pending approval.
“During the first few years, I was familiar with the timetables of all overnight buses that connected with Metro stations,” she says.
Since her work often required her to go from one station to the next after subway service ended for the day, she frequently had to take buses.
“Overnight buses had very long intervals, so if I missed one bus, I would go to another bus station to hop on a different route,” she says. “Otherwise, the waiting could be unbearable, particularly in winter.”
Nowadays important Metro staff are given transport subsidies for overnight shifts. Some have their own cars.
“My first four years on the job laid a very good foundation for my maintenance work because I became familiar with all the facilities,” she says.
Although there are few female technicians in the company, Yan says she never thought her gender inhibited her career.
“It’s true that males have advantages when it comes to things like stamina,” she says, “but I am very competitive, so my gender wasn’t a disadvantage. Men and women working for Metro are equally qualified and perform equally well.”
Yan has applied her knack for innovative thinking to find ways to improve work systems and support staff in other departments.
During an exchange trip in Singapore in 2014, Yan discovered that the city’s Mass Rapid Transit System had automatic doors controlled by remote. That was in contrast to Shanghai, where staff had to manually close rolling doors at stations one by one.
“For big stations like People’s Square, operations staff typically had to spend an hour closing all the exits by hand,” she says.
Upon her return to Shanghai, Yan designed an automatic rolling door system for Metro stations. It went into trial operation in the New Jiangwan Town Station on Line 10. Though the system has not been expanded citywide yet, that is expected to happen in the near future.
“For us, innovation means making the work of front-line staff more efficient,” she says.
In 2013, she designed a fire alarm telephone solution for a garage in Minhang District. By upgrading modules instead of replacing the existing system’s wires, her solution saved the company from spending 400,000 yuan (US$58,800) to outsource the project.
Yan also has helped write training manuals for rail transit maintenance and set up a studio where young workers were encouraged to exchange ideas and talk through problems.
“When we came to work here, we had no idea what Metro was,” Yan says. “But now many of young staffers have graduated in related majors. They’ve learnt theory but now they need to apply that to real-time experience.”
Yan often tells young protégées not to be afraid of making mistakes.
“On the way to becoming a good technician, it’s inevitable there is a ‘tuition fee’ to pay,” she says. “At first, they are intimated by the challenge, but soon they learn how to handle situations and they become more confident.”
Yan loves to travel around the world with her husband. Over the past few years, she has visited the shrines of Japan, the rustic villages of Europe, Yellowstone National Park in the United States and the savannahs of East Africa.
“Work hard and play hard,” Yan says of her motto in life. “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time off and I can’t leave during national holidays when transit traffic is at its heaviest.”
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