Abstract
Wanhua Chemical’s managers like to talk about how their company entered the polyurethane business. It’s a good story. Back in 1978, when five-year plans still ruled China’s economy, the government ordered the state-owned firm, which then made synthetic leather, to start producing methylene diphenyl diisocyanate. Also known as MDI, it’s one of the key components of polyurethanes and a material China did not make at the time. The technology for making MDI is tightly held. After some research, Wanhua managers licensed a process from Nippon Polyurethane Industry Co., now part of Tosoh. But the licensing contract was mostly for equipment and help building a 10,000-metric-ton-per-year plant in Yantai, China; it didn’t commit the Japanese side to much operational support. As a result, the plant that opened in 1983 didn’t start to produce at full capacity until 1995. It took that long for Wanhua’s engineers to make the small facility run
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