CNQP&KT - Ho Chi Minh's thought on practicing thrift is a practical content that defense industry enterprises need to thoroughly understand and apply to improve production capacity, successfully carry out military and defense goals and tasks, contribute to building a modern army and promoting the country's industrialization and modernization.
HO CHI MINH'S THOUGHT ON PRACTICING SAVINGS
Ho Chi Minh's thought on practicing thrift is a broad category, mentioned in many fields. According to Ho Chi Minh, thrift is "not extravagant, not wasteful, not indiscriminate". Thrift is not stingy, but things that are beneficial to the people, to the Fatherland, no matter how much effort or money is spent, are happy. "Saving is not forcing soldiers, cadres and people to fast and wear little. On the contrary, saving is to help increase production, and increasing production is to gradually improve the living standards of soldiers, cadres and people. Scientifically speaking, saving is positive, not negative"1.
In the conditions of both resistance and nation building, Ho Chi Minh affirmed: "The goal of saving is to serve the resistance and nation building. To increase capital for nation building. This is even more important when our country is a people's democracy, it is impossible to accumulate capital in the colonial and imperialist style by looting colonies, exploiting workers, farmers, and borrowing from foreign countries. At the same time, to quickly bring our country out of the state of poverty and backwardness, the consequence of 80 years of domination and plunder by French imperialism and then Japanese fascism"2.
According to Ho Chi Minh, the content of saving is: First, saving labor. That is, we must organize and arrange skillfully, and must improve labor productivity. Second, saving time: "Time is money"; "An inch of shadow is a meter of gold". "Whoever throws away gold and silver is crazy. Whoever throws away time is foolish" 3. Saving your own time and saving the time of others. Third, saving money. We must save the money of the State, the people and ourselves. This is related to saving human resources and saving time.
When talking about the subjects who must practice thrift, Ho Chi Minh affirmed: Everyone must be thrifty. First of all, agencies, soldiers, and enterprises. The content of thrift must be specific and practical right in one's working position. Soldiers and soldiers should save bullets, military supplies, spoils of war...; administrative agency officials should save time, paper, ink...; judicial officials should save time for the people when quickly implementing work...
President Ho Chi Minh visited Garment Factory 10, he gave advice on how to cut and sew quickly, economically, and ensure quality (1959) Photo: TL
PRACTICE OF SAVINGS IN DEFENSE ENTERPRISES
Currently, building and developing a modern, dual-purpose Vietnamese defense industry that meets the requirements and tasks of protecting the Fatherland and developing the economy and society is an important content and strategic solution identified in the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress. To achieve that goal, it requires efforts and promotion of the combined strength of the entire Party, the entire people, and the entire army, in which the defense industry is the core. After nearly 80 years of accompanying the nation in the cause of building and defending the Fatherland, the Vietnamese defense industry has gone through many stages of development and is growing continuously; the capacity of core defense industry establishments has strongly developed in both technical infrastructure and human resource quality.
The system of defense industry enterprises is a place to research, manufacture, produce, repair weapons and equipment and participate in socio-economic development, hunger eradication and poverty reduction in strategic areas, contributing to preserving national defense potential. Among them, many dynamic and creative defense industry enterprises apply advanced science and technology, achieve dual-use goals in production and have captured domestic and foreign markets. The activities of the defense industry enterprise system are implemented synchronously in two directions: First, promoting areas with strengths of the defense industry to participate in socio-economic development, contributing to the industrialization and modernization of the country, building an independent and self-reliant economy. Second, maximizing the production capacity and technology of the industrial and civilian economic sectors for defense industry activities. With great efforts, Vietnam's defense industry has achieved many outstanding results such as: Basically completing the goals of researching and producing weapons and technical equipment (VKTBKT) for the army and making an important contribution to the modernization of the forces: navy, air defense - air force, communications, electronic warfare, technical reconnaissance, intelligence, cyber warfare... helping to reduce imports and save the state budget. The defense industry has also mastered a number of core technologies; researched, designed, manufactured, and produced many new and modern VKTBKT. In particular, it has mastered the design and manufacture of a number of types of high-tech weapons and modern radars. Along with that, the defense industry has proactively participated in the production and repair of equipment, support tools, and boats for the People's Public Security and law enforcement forces at sea, along with many economic products for the people and for export with good quality, equivalent to foreign products.
To achieve the above results, on the one hand, defense industry enterprises have proactively built production strategies, developed human resources and technology; on the other hand, enterprises have implemented good savings in production and business. However, our country's defense industry still faces certain difficulties when the country is facing certain changes in mechanisms and laws to promote international integration in defense and security. Meanwhile, there are still many enterprises that have not made good use of factors for production and business development, especially saving input factors and costs both in production and outside production.
"We must save money from the State, the people and ourselves. This involves saving manpower and saving time."
(President HO CHI MINH)
It can be said that, along with the implementation of the core national defense task, the issue of competition to survive and develop in the market economy, in the context of international integration is a necessary factor for each defense industry enterprise. Therefore, saving in production is both a factor promoting national traditions and implementing President Ho Chi Minh's teachings on practicing saving; at the same time, it is a comparative advantage of defense industry enterprises. In particular, for defense industry enterprises, practicing saving in production means saving in labor, time, capital, means of production... Saving in production is to mobilize to the maximum and make optimal use of production potential, bringing production and business efficiency to the enterprise. Nowadays, when businesses of all economic sectors are strongly affected by market laws: price laws, competition laws, supply and demand laws... defense industry businesses must also take profit as their goal to not only complete military and defense tasks but also survive and develop further.
To achieve development directions and goals, defense industry enterprises need to study, thoroughly understand and apply Ho Chi Minh's thoughts on practicing thrift in the following basic contents:
Firstly, savings must be implemented on the basis of constantly promoting production and business associated with sustainable development. Accordingly, investment resources need to be focused on jobs that have practical benefits for production and business, bring high economic efficiency, and on key basic construction projects according to military and defense goals and tasks.
Saving in production is both a factor promoting national traditions and implementing President Ho Chi Minh's teachings on practicing savings; at the same time, it is a comparative advantage of defense industry enterprises.
Second, savings must be based on continuous technical improvement, application of science and technology, innovation in management, increasing labor productivity, improving quality and reducing product costs; reducing production costs, moving towards a green economy and a circular economy.
Third, savings must be implemented in both direct and indirect production and business sectors. Regulations on savings must be voluntarily implemented by all cadres, workers, and employees. Therefore, it is necessary to regularly educate cadres, workers, and employees on the spirit of overcoming difficulties to promote production and practice savings.
Fourth, savings in production include:
Saving labor: Effectively utilize the labor force based on scientific production planning, minimizing labor interruption time. Regularly conduct training and retraining, supplementary training of knowledge and skills, thereby creating a solid foundation for improving labor productivity.
Saving on raw material costs: During the production process, it is necessary to prepare and use raw materials reasonably, not to let the shortage of raw materials happen, causing production to stagnate. At the same time, not to let the surplus of raw materials happen, "waiting" for production for too long, which will increase the cost of preservation, storage...
Save on labor materials, machinery, equipment, and factories: Organize continuous production to reduce invisible wear and tear of fixed assets. In addition, have a regular inspection and maintenance regime for machinery, equipment, and factories to reduce visible wear and tear of fixed assets.
Capital saving: Mobilizing and using capital reasonably, quick capital turnover, especially working capital.
Improve the level of production and business management staff: Actively research, innovate, and rationalize the production process. Eliminate unnecessary stages and labor operations. Review and synchronously innovate stages and steps of the production process, avoiding "bottlenecks" caused by lack of synchronization in the production line. Assign and monitor savings results in departments and have a reward system for departments that save costs below the norm and punish departments that use more than the norm.
It can be affirmed that effectively applying Ho Chi Minh's thought on practicing thrift will help defense industry enterprises improve their production and business capacity, successfully complete key political tasks, thereby contributing to building a proactive, self-reliant, self-reliant, dual-purpose and modern Vietnamese defense industry in the new era./.
Colonel, Dr. PHAM VAN QUOC Nguyen Hue University - Ministry of National Defense
