Gu Ren, chairman of Changzhou Hongda Electric Co., Ltd., which was listed 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 more than 30 years, making significant contributions to the upgrading of textile printing and dyeing equipment and factory energy saving and emission reduction.

　　Gu Ren has a professional technical background. In addition to helming Changzhou Hongda, he also holds multiple positions, including vice chairman of the National Standardization Management Committee's National Industrial Machinery Electrical System Standardization Committee, president of the Printing and Dyeing Machinery Branch of the China Textile Machinery Association, expert of the China Textile Federation Environmental Protection Committee, etc. He has presided over and participated in the formulation of numerous national standards, completed multiple national science and technology support projects, and obtained more than 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 Printing and Dyeing Process Parameters," the first prize of the China Textile Federation 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 of the China Textile Industry Federation Patent Award in 2019 for "Automatic Fabric Whole Flower Method Based on Machine Vision," and the China Patent Excellent Award in 2020.

　　Innovation Driving Force
　　"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 studied hard from a young age and was admitted to Nantong University. During his university years, he majored in automation and ranked among the top in his major. In his spare time, he became fascinated with the American-published professional book "Circuits," which provided a profound and insightful explanation of automation. He loved it, studied it repeatedly, and benefited greatly.
　　After joining the workforce, Gu Ren increasingly felt that "one only realizes how little one knows when one puts knowledge to use." He systematically reviewed and consolidated the knowledge from his major, achieving a balance of reviewing past knowledge and learning through practice. Soon after graduation, he invented a snoring cessation device and won the East China Invention Award.
　　This boosted Gu Ren's confidence, and the seed of his ambition to serve the country began to sprout. He believed that even the greatest aspirations must be pursued with down-to-earth efforts 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. On one side of the building where his company rented space, he put up two lines of large characters as a declaration of his commitment to serving the country: Changzhou Hongda Control Technology, In Sync with the World!
　　In 2003, the new Changzhou Hongda factory area was put into production. Gu Ren put up another slogan in the office area, which also represents the mission of Changzhou Hongda Company and has become an important part of the company's cultural genes: Strive for innovation, work diligently, and take the revitalization of national industry as our responsibility, serving our great motherland!

　　Gu Ren carries a patriotic heart. He uses his name as the corporate brand, trademark GuRen. He admonishes himself on how to conduct himself and his work, emphasizing caring for others, righteousness, mutual support, and achievement; at the same time, he created the internationally renowned brand HawkVision. The original meaning is "eagle's eyes." This represents his lofty vision for technological service to the country.
　　With such a grand dream, after decades of hard work, Gu Ren's Changzhou Hongda Company has become a national high-tech enterprise, a two-in-one integration pilot demonstration enterprise of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a national research and development center for digital printing and dyeing systems, a recommended unit for water-saving technology, processes, and equipment of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a recommended unit for key energy-saving and low-carbon technologies of the National Development and Reform Commission, and a social practice base for doctoral students of Tsinghua University, among others.

　　Creating New Technologies
　　Gu Ren is a practitioner of technological innovation.
　　"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 possesses a forward-looking and unique perspective 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, are there new technologies and methods that can help companies improve product quality, reduce labor costs, lower material costs, and increase production efficiency...? Gu Ren often asks himself a series of questions!
　　When he saw in the production workshop that although the 74-type combined printing and dyeing equipment production line was more advanced than the 64-type single printing and dyeing equipment, it required workers at multiple workstations to hold the fabric and coordinate with each other to start up smoothly, and once started, it could not be easily stopped, this automation major graduate was determined to change this backward production technology. So he plunged into the workshop, conducted systematic research, and discovered that this combined printing and 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 shutting down 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 after so long? Can "DC separate power supply" be used? Another series of questions were before Gu Ren.
　　After research and calculation, Gu Ren determined that "DC separate power supply" could reduce a large amount of labor and energy consumption for printing and dyeing factories and could fully support the upgrading of production lines.
　　This was the first scientific research topic he proposed for the textile printing and dyeing industry, and he also made an important contribution. The process of developing the first "DC separate power supply" power control system is still vivid in his memory.

　　30 years ago, a printing and dyeing factory in Hunan found Gu Ren, hoping to upgrade their factory's "DC common power supply" to a "DC separate power supply" power control system. Gu Ren firmly 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. So, Gu Ren started a "technical training" class on the ship for the young people, explaining basic knowledge such as electrical principles, DC speed control power supplies, and wiring methods.
　　However, when they arrived at the printing and dyeing factory in the evening, the young people were stunned. The nearly 100-meter-long printing and dyeing workshop equipment was still in full production, and it had to be stopped before their "DC separate power supply" power control system could be installed. Gu Ren saw their hesitation and firmly said, "Cut!"
　　So, they began to cut the original power lines, remove the original common power supply equipment, and install the "DC separate power supply" power control system. This arduous task was completed in just three days. Since then, the production efficiency of that printing and dyeing factory in Hunan has been greatly improved.
　　After that, Gu Ren did not slack off in the slightest. He believed that merely achieving the intelligent upgrade of the power supply control system was far from enough to improve the entire dyeing process. Furthermore, regardless of whether it is DC power supply or the later AC frequency conversion technology, they will enter a red ocean over time and gradually lose their core competitive advantages.
　　Therefore, starting in 2000, Gu Ren began to plan the "online detection technology for dyeing process parameters." After 2003, the Changzhou Hongda Mercerizing Machine online alkali concentration detection and automatic alkali addition system, online PH value control system, and online moisture content control system were successively developed and won awards, opening up a new path.

　　Once, Gu Ren visited a dyeing company and saw workers punching holes in perfectly good fabrics, taking samples to weigh them to determine whether the fabric weight met the requirements. This method of obtaining fabric weight data in real-time directly resulted in a waste of 0.5-1 meter or even more of fabric at the punched holes. Gu Ren noticed this, and after a careful calculation, he found 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 fabrics is approximately 60 billion meters, resulting in enormous waste, and the indirect costs of energy consumption, pollution control, etc., are immeasurable.
　　This enormous waste pained Gu Ren. Is it possible to avoid this offline punching detection method that requires stopping the machine? Besides the low efficiency caused by the inability to continuously produce, the waste is too great.
　　Gu Ren once again made up his mind. Relying on his expertise, he conducted research on various aspects of the shaping process, technology, and equipment, and successfully developed the HV-GW200 intelligent online weight measuring instrument. This instrument achieves real-time, direct, and accurate online measurement of the actual weight during the production process, as well as online computer recording and storage, solving the fabric weight problems caused by manual punching and weighing. This significantly reduces fabric waste during production, ensures product quality stability, and improves product quality.
　　The AI-based intelligent image weft straightening machine, which recently made the "Science and Technology Innovation China" leading technology list, has over 8000 detection points for full-width scanning. It solves the problems that traditional photoelectric weft straightening cannot correct or identify, such as fabric pattern deformation, weft skew, weft bending, and the inability to detect non-light-transmitting fabrics. It is widely used in shaping machines, digital printing, pre-shrinking machine series, composite machine series, denim finishing, rotary screen printing machine series, and is suitable for various knitted and woven fabrics, including color-woven fabrics, printed fabrics, jacquard fabrics, suede fabrics, towel fabrics, and blackout curtain fabrics.

　　Through more than 30 years of efforts, Gu Ren's team has conquered online detection technology problems in various production process links in textile dyeing, equipping the entire textile dyeing production line with intelligent eyes and senses. This has resulted in a series of core technologies applied in six major areas: "online detection of dyeing process parameters," "AI-based intelligent dyeing machine system," "energy saving, emission reduction, and automation control system," "printing machine detection system," "new generation AI-based intelligent shaping machine system," and "new generation AI-based fabric inspection system." This achieves full-process digital online monitoring, supporting the energy-efficient, green, environmentally friendly, emission reduction, low-carbon, and sustainable healthy development of the textile dyeing industry.
　　Today, Changzhou Hongda possesses a national dyeing digital system technology research and development center, mastering cutting-edge technology and holding hundreds of patents. The company adheres to the value concept of "innovation, refinement, and excellence," leading the new era of intelligent dyeing manufacturing. Using the industrial internet, big data, and artificial intelligence to develop deep learning systems for dyeing processes, it provides strong support for the application and development of artificial intelligence technology in the dyeing industry.