I recently visited the Dalian plant of Leo Pump, a well-known pump manufacturer. The Dalian plant is a key base for Leo Pump in the petrochemical and chemical industries.
Let me introduce the Dalian base
LEO Dalian, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the LEO Group, is located in Dalian and specializes in the research, development, and manufacturing of pump products for the petrochemical industry. The base covers an area of 100,000 square meters. The Dalian base specializes in the research, development, and production of pumps for upstream oil and gas applications such as oilfield water injection, pipeline transportation, and storage, as well as downstream applications such as crude oil refining, heavy chemicals, fine chemicals, and coal chemical processing. The base possesses proprietary technologies for liquid transportation under harsh and extreme conditions, including ultra-low temperature, high temperature, high pressure, low cavitation, high corrosion, and energy recovery. The base is a qualified supplier to CNPC, Sinopec, CNOOC, and China Shenhua.
What are the characteristics of Leo Pump's independently developed hydraulic turbine equipment?
As we all know, the hydrocracking unit's hydroprocessing feed pumps and hydraulic turbines are among the most advanced in the chemical pump industry, representing cutting-edge design, manufacturing, and application requirements for harsh operating conditions. These include high temperatures, high pressures, flammable and explosive media, and harsh and complex gas-liquid-solid three-phase flows. The successful application of this equipment in this field demonstrates mastery of the industry's core design, manufacturing, and application technologies. As early as 2015, we achieved localization of a 1.7 million tons/year residue oil hydroprocessing hydraulic turbine for Sinopec Changling Refining and Chemical. This equipment was fully independently developed and manufactured, and has passed on-site evaluation by industry equipment experts. To date, this equipment has been in stable operation for 11 years, exceeding all performance indicators of existing equipment and reaching the internationally advanced level of similar products.
Faced with such demanding operating conditions, how does Leo Dalian prioritize pump quality to ensure long-term, reliable operation? This brings us to the core process of the factory—quality management.
As a design and manufacturing company focused on the customized market, the base builds its core business processes around customer needs. Across design and development, material procurement, production execution, quality planning, financial oversight, and safety assurance, the base continuously identifies blind spots and bottlenecks at all levels of the process, deepens optimization concepts like IPD and LTC, and continuously iterates and restructures processes. This management model maximizes the ability to meet personalized market demands, avoid excess inventory, and improve capital turnover, enabling the base to respond quickly in a rapidly changing market environment and enhance market competitiveness. Before raw materials enter storage, advanced equipment such as handheld spectrometers, portable hardness testers, and roughness testers conduct a comprehensive inspection of key indicators such as chemical composition, hardness, and roughness. Only raw materials that perfectly meet standards are assigned traceability identification, including WBS numbers, batch numbers, and material codes, before entering the production process. During the component assembly phase, each pump receives its own unique assembly quality tracking sheet, permanently recording the operators, assembly parameters, and inspection results for each process within the entire assembly process. During testing, the pump's flow rate, head, efficiency, NPSH, and other operating parameters are all subjected to performance testing under comprehensive digital instrumentation. Even the slightest deviation in any indicator will result in corrections and retesting until the product fully meets customer operating requirements. In 2024, the CNAS Testing Center at the LEO Dalian base successfully passed the review of the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment and received CNAS National Accredited Laboratory certification. The center has a maximum test flow rate of 12,000 m³/h and a test head of 3,500 m.
It is precisely through such rigorous, standardized, and orderly quality process management that the Dalian factory is able to continuously provide the market with high-quality domestically produced equipment, ensuring the reliable operation of industrial processes. At the same time, product delivery times are also of concern.
"LEO Dalian ensures product delivery cycles through three key approaches:
First, standardized management: a division of labor and collaboration between project managers and product managers, and the division of products into standardized and customized categories. Projects are clearly defined with milestones and component precision is strictly controlled, ensuring a 99.5% first-pass pass rate." Second, digital empowerment: the SAP system is used to automatically convert production orders, monitor materials in real time, and track progress. A digital procurement platform is established to enable online supplier management, automated matching, and delivery tracking. Using an intelligent selection system, operating conditions are automatically input to generate performance curves and quotations, reducing quote response times from three days to two hours. Third, supply chain optimization: supplier grading and monthly KPI assessments are implemented to eliminate those that fail to meet standards, resulting in an increase in the arrival rate of key raw materials from 85% to 95%. A quality-focused approach is adopted: procurement requests material reports and critical parts undergo re-inspection upon arrival. During production, parts precision is strictly controlled to ensure a 99.5% first-pass pass rate.
The Leo Dalian Technical Center is a petrochemical research branch affiliated with the Leo Group's national-level technical center. What achievements has it achieved so far?
The Leo Dalian Technical Center possesses Leo's independently developed core technology for energy recovery in gas-liquid two-phase flow conditions, which is leading both domestically and internationally. This technology has been used in a 1.1 million tons/year low-temperature methanol washing plant at Inner Mongolia Huineng, achieving energy savings of over 1,300 kWh per unit. Through the promotion of this core technology, the energy-saving equipment independently developed and manufactured in this field saves over 500 million kWh per hour, equivalent to reducing annual coal consumption by 140,000 tons and CO2 emissions by 220,000 tons. In the coal chemical industry, Leo's independently developed and innovative low-temperature methanol washing integrated turbine technology, with an installed capacity exceeding 40,000 kW/h, is an industry leader. The relevant technical specifications drafted by Leo also fill gaps in the industry. In addition, as the basic theoretical research institution of the Leo Group, it not only provides comprehensive technical support for petrochemical pump products for Leo Pump Industry, but also provides technical support in hydraulics, strength, vibration analysis and other aspects to each member unit within the group.
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