Gu Ren, chairman of Changzhou Hongda Company, which was on the 2021 "Science and Technology Innovation China" New Star List, is not a newcomer to innovation and entrepreneurship. He has been silently working in the textile printing and dyeing industry for over 30 years, making significant contributions to the upgrading of production equipment and energy saving and emission reduction in the textile printing and dyeing industry. Today, he has become a world-class expert in dyeing numerical control, mastering a number of core technologies that are ahead of international standards, supporting the new era of intelligent manufacturing in the global textile industry.
　　He comes from a professional technical background. In addition to leading Changzhou Hongda Technology (Group), he also holds multiple positions, including vice chairman of the National Standardization Management Committee's National Industrial Mechanical and Electrical System Standardization Committee, president of the Printing and Dyeing Machinery Branch of the China Textile Machinery Association, and expert of the China National Textile and Apparel Council's Environmental Protection Committee. He has presided over and participated in the formulation of numerous national standards, completed many national science and technology support projects, and holds over 100 patents. He has won numerous awards, including the first prize of the Hong Kong Sangma Textile Technology Award in 2005 for "Online Detection of Dyeing Process Parameters," the first prize of the China National Textile and Apparel Council Science and Technology Progress Award in 2017 for "Intelligent Image Whole Flower and Whole Weft Machine Technology," which was identified as internationally leading, the Gold Award for Patents from the China Textile Industry Federation in 2019 for "Automatic Fabric Whole Flower Method Based on Machine Vision," and the China Patent Excellent Award in 2020.

　　"To study for the rise of China" was the grand ambition set by Premier Zhou Enlai in his youth, reflecting his sense of responsibility and mission to fight for the country and nation throughout his life.
　　Similarly, Gu Ren had an ambition to serve the country since childhood, studied hard, and was admitted to Nantong University. During his university years, he majored in automation, achieving top marks in his major, and in his spare time, he became fascinated with the American-published professional book "Circuits." The book's in-depth and broad explanation of automation was very ingenious. He loved it, studied it repeatedly, and benefited greatly.
　　After Gu Ren started working, he increasingly felt that "one only realizes how little one knows when one puts knowledge to use." Therefore, he systematically reviewed and consolidated the knowledge of his major, achieving a renewal of knowledge through review, learning in practice, and practicing in learning. Soon after graduation, he invented a snoring cessation device and won the East China Invention Award.
　　This gave Gu Ren great confidence, and the seed of his ambition to serve the country began to sprout. He thought that even the greatest aspirations must be pursued down-to-earth to truly realize the ideal of serving the country.
　　Therefore, after careful consideration, he decided to resign from his job in a state-owned unit, use his expertise, and establish Hongda Company to provide technological support for the automation of the textile printing and dyeing industry. He put two lines of large characters on the side of the building where the company rented its office, as a declaration of his vow to serve the country:
　　Changzhou Hongda Control Technology, in sync with the world!
　　In 2003, Hongda's new factory area was put into production. Gu Ren put up a slogan in the office area that expressed his dedication to the country, which also became the mission of Hongda Company and an important part of its cultural genes: Strive for innovation, work diligently, and take the revitalization of national industry as its responsibility, serving our great motherland!

　　Gu Ren, with a patriotic heart, is broad-minded and magnanimous. He uses his name as the corporate brand, trademark GuRen. This is his way of reminding himself how to behave and act, to care for others, to be righteous, to support and achieve each other; Gu Ren, with a passionate ambition to serve the country, he stands taller, strategizes, abandons the practice of simply adopting existing technologies, constantly innovates, and independently created the internationally renowned brand Hawk Vision. The original meaning is "eagle's eyes." This represents his lofty vision for serving the country through science and technology.
　　It is this high level of vision and dreams that has allowed him to silently guard and develop in the field of technological innovation for decades. Now, the Hongda Technology (Group) he founded has become a national high-tech enterprise, a national Ministry of Industry and Information Technology demonstration enterprise for the integration of industrialization and informatization, a national research and development center for digital dyeing systems, a recommended unit for water-saving technologies, processes, and equipment by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a recommended unit for key energy-saving and low-carbon technologies by the National Development and Reform Commission, and a social practice base for doctoral students from Tsinghua University.

　　Chairman Gu Ren is a true innovator. In the textile printing and dyeing industry, his words are well-known: "Online detection technology for dyeing is synonymous with Changzhou Hongda; if you have a problem, contact Changzhou Hongda!"
　　"The world is not short of beauty, but of eyes that can discover beauty." This is also true for technological innovation. Invention is based on discovery; first comes discovery, then invention. Gu Ren has an innate advantage in discovering market value, customer needs, objective laws in the R&D process, and the essence of things.
　　In the textile printing and dyeing industry, where manufacturing levels are relatively traditional, are there new technologies and methods that can help enterprises improve product quality, reduce labor costs, lower material costs, and improve production efficiency? He often asks himself a series of questions!
　　When he saw in the production workshop that although the 74-type combined dyeing equipment production line in the dyeing plant was more advanced than the 64-type single dyeing equipment, it required workers at multiple workstations to hold the fabric and coordinate with each other to start the machine smoothly, and once started, it could not be easily stopped, he, a university graduate majoring in automation, was determined to change this backward production technology.

　　So he plunged into the workshop and conducted systematic research, discovering that this combined dyeing equipment, which had been used for decades, used a DC common power supply, with dozens of machines sharing one power supply. The drawback was that there would be a time difference during startup, resulting in insufficient voltage, causing the front and rear equipment of the production line to be unable to start synchronously. Therefore, starting and stopping the production line required dozens of people to stand in different places and coordinate with each other.
　　What to do? Since the "DC common power supply" has problems, why hasn't anyone proposed improvements in decades? Is it possible to use a "DC distributed power supply"? Another series of questions confronted Gu Ren.
　　After research and calculation, Gu Ren determined that the "DC distributed power supply" could significantly reduce labor and energy consumption for dyeing plants and fully support the upgrading of production lines.
　　This was the first scientific research topic he proposed for China's textile printing and dyeing industry, and he also made a huge contribution. The development of the first "DC distributed power supply" power control system is still vivid in his memory.
　　30 years ago, a dyeing plant in Hunan found Gu Ren, hoping to upgrade their plant's "DC common power supply" to a "DC distributed power supply" power control system. Gu Ren patted his chest and said, "No problem!"
　　Several young people, along with a batch of electrical cabinets, set off with Gu Ren. They traveled by ship to Wuhan and then transferred to Hunan, which took several days. This transformation of the power control system was unprecedented, and there were no professional personnel. So, on the ship, Gu Ren started a "technical training" class for several interns. He explained basic knowledge such as electrical principles, DC speed control power supplies, and wiring methods.
　　However, when they arrived at the dyeing plant in the evening, the young people were dumbfounded. The nearly 100-meter-long dyeing workshop equipment was still in full production; it had to be stopped before their "DC distributed power supply" power control system could be installed.
　　“Don't worry, trust our technical capabilities!” Gu Ren saw their concerns; after all, they were the first to try this, and there couldn't be any mistakes. Otherwise, it would cause significant economic losses for the dyeing factory. However, Gu Ren was confident. He firmly said, “Cut!”
　　So, they began cutting the existing power lines, removing the original common power supply equipment, and replacing it with a "DC distributed power supply" power control system. They completed this arduous task in just three days. Since then, the production efficiency of that dyeing factory in Hunan has significantly improved.
　　This unprecedented innovation became an instant success, causing a sensation in the industry, with dyeing factories lining up to seek their services. However, Gu Ren did not slacken in the slightest. He believed that simply achieving the intelligent upgrade of the power control system was far from enough to improve the entire dyeing process. Furthermore, whether it's the DC distributed power supply or the later AC variable frequency technology, as time goes by, they will enter a saturated market and gradually lose their core competitive advantage.

　　Therefore, starting in 2000, Gu Ren began planning for "online detection technology for dyeing process parameters." After 2003, the Changzhou Hongda Mercerizing Machine Alkali Concentration Online Detection and Automatic Alkalization System, PH online monitoring and control system, and moisture content online monitoring and control system were successively developed and won major awards, opening up a new path.
　　By 2004, as he had predicted, the common power supply control system market rapidly declined, and the strategic layout of a few years earlier laid an important and solid foundation for Hongda's sustainable development.
　　On another occasion, Gu Ren visited a dyeing company and saw workers punching holes in perfectly good fabric, taking samples to weigh them to determine if the fabric weight met the requirements. This method of obtaining fabric weight data in real-time directly resulted in 0.5-1 meter or even more waste at the punched holes. However, this method of obtaining weight has been used domestically and internationally until now, and everyone has become blind to it and taken it for granted. But Gu Ren saw it and felt the pain. He calculated that each shift wasted nearly hundreds of meters of fabric every day. Considering China's position as a major textile producer, the annual waste of dyeing and finishing fabrics is approximately 60 billion meters, with enormous waste, and the indirect energy consumption, pollution control, and other costs are immeasurable.