On 26 December, the Domex-E documentary "The Path of Innovation Driven by Responsibility" premiered on CCTV. It tells the story of an entrepreneur from Zhejiang University who has witnessed the dramatic transformation of Chinese industry. He led Domex-E from becoming the only system packager for Siemens Energy air separation compressors to reinventing the service model with a "spare parts warehouse", and from using AI and digital technology to predict equipment failures to setting up the industry's first university textbook fund. Every breakthrough is rooted in a commitment to responsibility; every step forward comes from the pursuit of innovation.
TV channels
China Media Group
Aired on the CCTV New Film Old Stories channel
Simulcast on CCTV Mobile TV
Online platforms
Host
Yao Xuesong currently hosts several programmes on CCTV's finance channel, including Economic Information Broadcast, First Time, On-Time Finance and World Finance. He has hosted CCTV's 3·15 Gala and is one of CCTV's outstanding hosts.
The story at its core
This documentary records not only the growth of a company but also the original aspiration and practice of a group of people who answer the questions of their time with craftsmanship and commitment.
The industry's problem
"We are still on the road, with sweat and tears; there will be everything. But Domex-E has always kept a fairly positive attitude: whatever we run into, the sky won't fall; we solve it. Just as the last page of my PPT is always 'responsibility'. Standing in the customer's position and in my industry's position, we look at what we can do, and then we do it. That is actually our greatest contribution to our country."
— Yang Xin, Chairman and General Manager of Domex-E
In the landscape of modern industry, air separation equipment is the heart of industry, continuously supplying key gases to steel, chemicals, energy and other sectors and sustaining the lifeline of economic development. As the world's largest industrial manufacturer, China pursues efficient production while having to face the reality of heavy capital tie-up and high operation and maintenance risks.
Driven by its "spare parts warehouse + AI digitalization" approach, Domex-E has become a game-changer in the industry, helping the air separation compressor industry leave behind the dilemma of "high cost, long lead times and unplanned shutdowns" and redefining the service standards and technical boundaries of Chinese industry.
Why he founded the company
"For a full sixteen years I saw so much pain. With foreign companies, everything had to be repaired by them and every spare part had to be bought from them; we were tied down by them. So I founded Domex-E in 2009. In 2014 we began working with Siemens, with the aim of making one plus one greater than two and empowering users."
— Yang Xin, Chairman and General Manager of Domex-E
Yang Xin, the founder of Domex-E, began his career in 1994 at a Fortune Global 500 foreign compressor company. Over sixteen years he grew from an ordinary salesman into a global sales champion, yet he could never shake off one question.
As a world-leading technology company, Siemens has long dominated the industrial control market. Faced with the pain points of the Siemens brand, strong but expensive, with long delivery times and slow response, Domex-E set out on a profound exploration. The road to innovation is never smooth. Domex-E kept its feet on the ground and, through service delivered again and again with sincerity, gradually won its customers' hearts.
An innovative model
"In fact, fifteen years ago a very new idea came out, and it is still very new today: we call it 'joint stocking and joint reserve'. But so far not a single case has appeared in the industry. We saw what this industry needs and what pains it: could Domex-E stock everything? By the end of 2022 we had stocked all the spare parts, rotor spares included, for every Siemens electric-driven main air compressor below the 60,000 [Nm³/h] class. We did what this industry had wanted to do for a lifetime but never achieved: zero spare-parts inventory. Could we make delivery even faster? That is why we were also actively pushing digitalization at the time."
— Yang Xin, Chairman and General Manager of Domex-E
Domex-E's innovative model has not only strengthened Siemens's competitive advantage but also brought real value to customers. Yet Yang Xin knew that the industry's real pain lay in customers' worries about spare-parts stocks and unplanned shutdowns.
Industrial compressors are complex energy-conversion machines with thousands of parts, and their fault signatures are hard to identify from any single parameter. Data silos also delay fault warnings. These challenges made Domex-E's goal of breaking the deadlock of unplanned shutdowns seem out of reach, but Yang Xin has always been someone who dares to act on his ideas. Even so, Domex-E's road to breakthroughs in digitalization was once full of loneliness and challenges.
Steady support
"With every step I take, I think about how we can do better in this industry. We can see that the international political and economic environment is becoming more and more challenging, and in future we may face being 'choked'. That is why the country now stresses that we must be domestically self-reliant and controllable."
— Yang Xin, Chairman and General Manager of Domex-E
With keen market insight and an unremitting pursuit of customer value, and building on lifecycle services and solutions, Domex-E has built a moat in market competition. To date, Domex-E has provided customers with more than 200 Siemens compressor packages and related field services, giving important support to the efficient and stable operation of Chinese industry.
In 2024, Domex-E and Zhejiang University jointly established the first textbook fund for the process equipment and control engineering major in Chinese universities.
Forging ahead
"The industry is developing. We are now working together with Air Liquide and with Siemens on some compressors that need skids. We are also doing some joint R&D with Siemens. We will keep putting our energy into the industry."
— Yang Xin, Chairman and General Manager of Domex-E
With industrialization accelerating and the modern coal chemical industry growing rapidly, China's demand for air separation equipment keeps rising. Today Domex-E is actively pursuing three strategic directions, technological self-reliance, a service ecosystem and industry standardization, and forging ahead toward bigger goals.
From a lonely explorer to a game-changer in the industry, from traditional chemical machinery to a smart industrial future, Yang Xin has woven his personal conviction into the company's mission and led Domex-E down a road no one had taken before. This road has no end, only footprints that keep moving forward.
First published in Chinese on the Domex-E WeChat official account (28 December 2025). Read the original