Innovation promotes the rapid development of the machine tool industry

The machine tool is the machine that manufactures the machine and is the "working machine" of the equipment manufacturing industry. The rise and fall of the machine tool industry is related to the promotion and development of the competitiveness of the country's strategic emerging industries. Its importance is self-evident.

Basic situation analysis

On the whole, at present, China's machine tool industry still faces severe challenges and pressures in terms of overall competitiveness and weak economic returns. On the one hand, due to the economic weakness at home and abroad, the lack of investment demand in the downstream industries of machine tools and the impact of product homogenization competition, most domestic machine tool companies rely on the survival and development of low-grade product market orders are significantly reduced, the company's income and profits have greatly decline. On the other hand, the total import value of machine tool products used to meet the high-end market has remained high, highlighting the contradiction between the product structure of China's machine tool industry and the incommensurability of high-end CNC machine tool R&D capabilities and market demand. What's more serious is that many overseas machine tool giants have taken the full advantage of China's high-end market while marching toward the mid-range market and seizing the traditional market of China's machine tool industry that already has a place.

In the semi-annual report of the listed company in 2013, Shenyang Machine Tool realized operating revenue of RMB 3.728 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 11.28%; shareholders' net profit of RMB 10.2535 million, a year-on-year decrease of 80.75%. The huge loss of East China CNC was RMB 29.177 million, and the loss continued to expand. The total amount of long-term loans and short-term borrowings of enterprises had reached 930 million yuan. In the first half of the year, only interest expenses reached 26.927 million yuan.

According to statistics, in the first half of 2013, China imported a total of about 53,000 machine tools, a year-on-year decrease of 16%; imports totaled US$5.7 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6%; and the average import price was US$107,000 per unit. Among them, the import value of CNC metal processing machine tools was US$4.25 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 17.9%; the average import price of CNC machine tools was US$3,460,000/set, a year-on-year increase of 16.4%.

In the same period, the total export value of China’s machine tool products was US$2.03 billion, a year-on-year slowdown; the average export price was only US$240. Among them, the export value of CNC metal processing machine tools was 510 million U.S. dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 2.8%.

The above analysis clearly shows that although China is currently the world's largest manufacturer, consumer, and importer of machine tools, it is still far from the world's largest machine tool builder; China's machine tool industry as a whole is still at the low end of the global value chain. To make China move from a machine tool manufacturing country to a machine tool manufacturing powerhouse, it still needs a long way to go. The key depends on the government's industrial development policy and the overall competitiveness of the machine tool industry.

R&D ability is not strong

At present, compared with the advanced enterprises in Germany, Japan, and the United States, China's machine tool companies use high-speed, high-precision, compound intelligence, environmental protection, high reliability, and high stability as the core technologies for high-end CNC machine tools and key functional components. There is still a clear gap in research, mastery, and application. In the deep integration of the two companies, brand image enhancement, market analysis and positioning, R&D concept creation, R&D model reorganization, perfect R&D system, high-end talent training, refined management, and deeper application of ERP and information integration, foreign companies also have a lot of innovative development concepts. And methods are worth learning and learning from. In addition, although some Chinese companies have developed medium-to-high-end CNC machine tools, most of them are assembled on the basis of the domestic machine tool manufacturing and importing key functional components, which does not fully indicate that we have mastered the mid-to-high-end CNC machine tools and key functional components. The overall R & D technology and manufacturing technology. After all, due to R&D capabilities, 80% of domestic high-end CNC systems, 90% of high-end CNC systems, and 85% of high-end CNC machines are dependent on imports from abroad.

According to statistics, in 2012, the CNC machine tool rate for metal cutting machines in China was 25.8%, and the numerical control rate for forming machine tools was 5.8%. This status is compared with the numerical control ratio of 60% to 70% of the output of the developed countries in Japan, the United States, and Germany, and the numerical control rate of the output value of 80% to 90% in the developed countries. The numerical control rate of the machine tools in China is still very low. Inevitably affect the processing accuracy and processing efficiency of downstream companies' products.

These gaps, on the one hand, have made China's machine tool industry a long-term, low-price, melee, low-price product competition. The competitiveness of mid-range products is not strong, and the status quo of high-grade products has basically failed to be fundamentally changed. On the other hand, it has also caused domestic companies to fundamentally lose their profitability. There is not enough capital to invest in research and development of high-end products, and many enterprises have fallen into the dilemma of survival or development.

More importantly, these gaps have once again reminded people that the competition between companies and enterprises in the world today, and the profitability and development of enterprises, are ultimately the competition of science and technology. Whoever has modern technology will have the ability to research and develop high-end products, and whoever has the motive force for corporate profits and future development.

Failed to merge deeply

In 2011, the assessment of the development level of the integration of the machine tool industry (71 companies participating in the evaluation) showed that only 54.2% of the enterprises applied the program management, 11.3% of the enterprises applied the ranking of key resource demand capabilities, and 67.6% of the enterprises applied the procurement management. 59.2% of enterprises applied sales management, 50.7% of enterprises applied budget management, 31.0% of enterprises applied customer relationship management, 15.5% of enterprises implemented business and financial integration applications, and 11.3% of enterprises implemented management systems and Automatic exchange of data between manufacturing execution systems. The evaluation results also show that currently the production methods and management concepts of China's machine tool industry enterprises are generally behind, and the level of integrated integration, coordination and innovation among information systems has yet to be improved.

The machine tool company is a typical multi-variety and small-batch production type enterprise, with complex product structure and production process, multiple parts and processing procedures, long process route and production cycle, and difficulty in compiling and regulating parts production operation plan and product assembly plan. Great features. In order to allow machine tool companies to maintain continuous and balanced production to the maximum extent, optimize the allocation of various types of resources, thereby realizing the business goals of quality delivery, cost reduction and profit improvement on a regular basis; enterprises can only use ERP and MES information systems for various machine tools during the planning period. The processing and assembly of all parts and components, as well as the complete assembly and commissioning of the entire machine tool, are organized and optimized, and real-time collection and processing of workshop production operations information are required to ensure the realization of the above goals.

Although the machine tool industry is one of the earliest industries in China to use ERP, the evaluation results tell us that only 38 of the 71 machine tool companies participated in the program management application, and in particular, only 8 enterprises have applied the ranking of key resource demand capabilities. Obviously, how can this level of application ensure the accuracy of production operations plans and assembly plans? How can we effectively improve the management efficiency and production efficiency of most enterprises? In addition, only 11 companies have realized the integration of business and financial applications. It can be seen that the information island phenomenon is still very serious. Obviously, how can this effectively support enterprise R&D, manufacturing, management, and service integration in all aspects of business and improve the overall level? It can be seen that the machine tool industry urgently needs to deepen the application of ERP, speed up the construction of information integration platform, and fully promote the integration of the two.

Innovative development ideas

In summary, the serious situation faced by China's machine tool industry is not only related to factors such as the world's macroeconomic environment, domestic industrial development policies, local protectionism, and short-sighted behavior of enterprises, but also the lack of clear strategic positioning of machine tool companies and blind expansion of low-grade product capacity. Lack of independent research and development system with original innovation and integrated innovation as well as research and advanced integrated application of advanced manufacturing technology, management technology, and information technology; and lack of effective management and innovative development capabilities. There are many factors that have a direct relationship.

To this end, both the government and the enterprise should make efforts to study and solve the following problems.

The first is that the relevant government departments should further innovate and improve the project establishment, inspection and evaluation system, and all-round, in various forms to increase project supervision, and effectively ensure that the national science and technology major project “high-end CNC machine tools and basic manufacturing equipment” is fully realized.

Secondly, the national research institutes and large-scale machine tool companies’ technical centers shall establish, perfect and adhere to the research and development that is characterized by exploration of a generation, pre-research generation, design generation, and manufacturing generation on the basis of optimizing and reconstructing the existing product R&D model and R&D system. The concept and R&D system will effectively enhance independent research and development capabilities and effectively support the innovative development of high-end CNC machine tools and key functional components.

The third is that the government and the machine tool industry should eliminate backward production capacity, adjust product mix, promote mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, and transformations and upgrades; strive to use a period of five or six years to effectively cultivate a group of independent innovation and development capabilities, with the overall technical level entering the international advanced ranks. Large-scale enterprise groups and "little giant" enterprises that are positioned in the middle-to-high end numerical control machine tools and key functional components markets.

The fourth is that machine tool companies should conduct comprehensive benchmarking analysis with world-leading companies and promote the research and integration of advanced concepts such as global industrial chain, intelligent manufacturing, lean production, collaborative commerce, strategy-model-process, deepened application ERP, and information integration. Based on innovation and development, we will effectively enhance the ability and level of deep integration of the two companies.

(The author is Jin Daren, executive director of the Management Engineering Branch of China Mechanical Engineering Society)