Machine tool industry finds its way to high end

After experiencing rapid growth for 10 consecutive years, China's machine tool industry began to show a downward trend in the second half of 2011, and the growth rate slowed down. And 10 years ago, our industry goal was mid-range growth, and now we are targeting high-end. The changes in the objectives show that we have reached a big stage. At the press conference of the 12th China International Machine Tool & Tool Exhibition held recently, Yang Xuetong, vice president of the China Machinery Industry Federation, said that in 2013, the machine tool industry accounted for machinery. The main business income of the industry is about 2.2%. This proportion has not changed for many years. The growth of CNC machine tool production has shifted from high speed to low speed.

The industry believes that as China is gradually leaping from a “world processing factory” to a “world manufacturing center,” the growth factors that have developed rapidly in the past more than 10 years have undergone profound changes. The outstanding features of the machine tool industry are manifested in two aspects: Significant reduction in total demand and accelerated demand structure upgrades. “Overweighting” has become an important way out. The deep transformation and upgrading of the machine tool industry is even more pressing.

Growth rate mitigation structural imbalance

From the statistical data over the years, China's machine tool industry experienced a rapid growth for 10 consecutive years. It began to show a downward trend in the second half of 2011, and the growth rate slowed down. In the three years of 2005, 2008 and 2013, the output of CNC machine tools in China was 58.5 thousand units, 137,700 units and 200,000 units respectively. From a numerical point of view, the output growth rate has slowed down significantly. “From the standpoint of CNC machine tools, economic models accounted for 85% in 2005, and economic models accounted for only 20% in 2013. Our goal for the past 10 years was to achieve mid-range growth. Now our goal is high-end, and the changes in our objectives indicate that we have already A big step," Yang Xuetong said.

Chen Huiren, executive vice chairman of China Machine Tool Industry Association, summed up the achievements of the machine tool industry in the past ten years and said: “The first is the rapid growth of the economy scale, and it has been ranked first in the world in 2009, which is from small to large. Secondly, at the middle-to-high end product level, we basically achieved the upgrading and leapfrogging that could not be done. This was a progress from scratch. Third, the overall quality of the industry enterprises was generally improved, and a number of early emerged. Excellent enterprises with market competitiveness are starting from weak to strong."

Chen Huiren believes that the current status of China's machine tool industry companies is that the total amount of demand has substantially decreased, and the demand structure has been accelerated. Affected by this, China's machine tool industry's major economic indicators have been reduced. At the same time, the industry's inherent imbalance in production capacity structure is even more pronounced. The already severe homogenization market competition is further aggravated.

Low-end melee high-end fall

From February 24 to 28 this year, more than 900 machine tool and tool manufacturers from home and abroad competed on the same platform at the 8th CNC machine tool exhibition hosted by the China Machine Tool Industry Association. A new CNC horizontal lathe exhibited by Dalian Machine Tool Group is an intelligent manufacturing island composed of a machining center and a robot. According to the staff, in the past, a worker could only take care of a machine tool. Now a worker can take care of 8 to 10 intelligent manufacturing islands.

Speaking of the participants’ experience, a representative of the exhibitors from Heilongjiang said, “In the face of the new market situation, the machine tool industry must take the initiative to accelerate the adjustment of the industrial structure and take the initiative to eliminate low-value-added backward products. Enterprises should also continue to improve the high-end products. As one of the core goals of the transformation and upgrading, the market competitiveness has accelerated the breakthrough of core technologies, and has made the product's accuracy truly recognized by users in terms of maintainability, stability and reliability.”

As the "engine" and "heart" of industry and the national economy, machine tool manufacturing is a concrete embodiment of a country's overall national strength. At present, China is a world leader in machine tool production and demand. However, most of the domestic machine tools are mainly machine tools, and the coverage rate of CNC is low. Among CNC machine tools, low-end and middle-end products occupy the main force, and high-end CNC machine tools are still short boards.

At the same time, in recent years, the market has gradually increased its demand for high-end products. In 2013, China's imported machine tools accounted for about 11 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 23.62%; imports of 102,532 units, a year-on-year decrease of 33.34%; average price of imported machine tools 107,304.22 US dollars, an increase of 14.57%. The overall trend is to reduce prices, reflecting the continuous improvement in the demand structure in the Chinese market and the increasing demand for mid- to high-end machine tools; on the other hand, we can see that the high-end machine tools produced in China are in product quality and technology. Indicators, technological level, user services, etc. cannot effectively meet the needs of customers.

“Because of the R&D capabilities, 80% of domestic high-end CNC systems, 90% of high-end CNC systems, and 85% of high-end CNC machine tools rely on imports from abroad,” said Luo Baihui, chief analyst of Jinmo Steel, with Germany. Compared with advanced enterprises in Japan and the United States, China's machine tool companies still have a certain gap.

Innovation and transformation make up the short board

“The primary task faced by industry companies is to promote the transformation and upgrading of the industry and expand the application level in the high-end areas,” said Yang Xuetong.

"The increase in output of CNC machine tools in China is not a key factor. Optimizing the output composition of domestic CNC machine tools and vigorously improving the overall development quality of domestic CNC machine tools can promote the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry." Luo Baihui said in the introduction of the status quo of the industry, China's machine tools The industry has a wide range of products, numerous specifications, relatively low industrial concentration, and serious homogeneity.

At present, the downstream industries of China's machine tool industry can be mainly classified into four major industries: the automotive industry, the traditional machinery industry, the military industry (including aerospace, weapons, ships, nuclear industries, etc.) and high-tech industries represented by electronic information technology. . The demand of these downstream industries is mostly concentrated on large-scale, heavy-duty, and high-precision CNC machine tools, which determine that the future of the machine tool industry will continue to be “high-speed, precision, intelligence, and compound”. Multi-axis linkage machining centers, high-speed precision CNC machine tools and other products are also It will continue to be the focus of the industry's future development.

At present, China's machine tool manufacturing companies are enhancing their independent research and development capabilities through the introduction and reference of international advanced and core machine tool design, manufacturing concepts and technologies, and strive to meet the growing needs of domestic and international customers. Luo Baihui said that the current traditional development model is rapidly losing its foothold. The machine tool industry has to make "upgrading" choices, and the purpose of the transformation and upgrading is to become high-quality, high-efficiency and high-end, as soon as possible to make up for high-end CNC machine tools. Block maximum short board.