Zhang Ruimin

Zhang Ruimin is a Chinese businessman who took over management of a struggling, near-bankrupt refrigerator factory in Qingdao in 1984 and rebuilt it into Haier, one of the world's largest home appliance manufacturers. He became known early in his tenure for a widely told episode in which he had employees publicly smash dozens of defective refrigerators with sledgehammers to enforce a quality standard, an event credited with reshaping the company's culture around manufacturing quality. Under his decades of leadership Haier expanded internationally through acquisitions including the appliance businesses of General Electric and Fisher and Paykel, and Zhang later promoted a management philosophy he called Rendanheyi, restructuring Haier into thousands of small, semi-autonomous entrepreneurial units.