In the decade since the beginning of the new century, China's major sectors of the national economy have maintained sustained and rapid development, creating a favorable environment for the development of the domestic heavy machine tool industry. Heavy machine tool manufacturing enterprises have been strongly driven by market demand, and their product technology and manufacturing capabilities have been rapidly improved. They have successively developed and manufactured a number of major technical equipment urgently needed for major engineering projects in key fields such as energy, shipbuilding, aerospace, national defense and military, transportation, etc. Some of these products have reached or approached the international advanced level, and the technical level of some products has entered the world's advanced ranks.

 

1. Domestic heavy-duty machine tools have entered the international advanced level

Affected by the sluggish global machine tool market and financial crisis, foreign manufacturing industries are undergoing re industrialization, aiming to revive the manufacturing industry and lead the world manufacturing industry with advanced manufacturing. And China's heavy-duty machine tool enterprises and market are in a period of growth and upward trend. Many world-renowned enterprises have invested in building factories, joint ventures or cooperating in production in China, further promoting the rapid development of domestic heavy-duty machine tools and becoming the world's most complete producer of door-to-door products.

At present, China's national economy is in a critical stage of transformation and upgrading. Industries such as aerospace, national defense and military industry, energy, rail transportation, shipbuilding, and engineering machinery all require a large number of mid to high end heavy and ultra heavy machine tools, providing a huge market space for the sustainable development of China's heavy machine tool industry and bringing development opportunities for transformation and upgrading. The domestic manufacturing industry will enter a new development period. In recent years, under the guidance of the national major science and technology project "High end CNC Machine Tools and Basic Manufacturing Equipment", a large number of mid to high end CNC heavy-duty machine tools with independent intellectual property rights have been developed. Except for a few high-end high-precision heavy-duty machine tool products that cannot be produced domestically, they can basically meet market needs, and the technical level of the products has approached or reached the international advanced level. Therefore, domestic heavy-duty machine tools have initially established the foundation and conditions to compete with international advanced product levels.

 

2.China's heavy-duty machine tools have entered a period of transformation and development

At present, the economic development environment and growth factors in China have undergone profound changes. The overall tone of the country's macroeconomic development is to seek progress while maintaining stability. The national economy has entered a period of comprehensive deepening reform and deep adjustment, and various policies and measures have been formulated around promoting and facilitating the optimization and adjustment of industrial structure and the transformation of economic development mode. Its characteristics are rational growth rate and comprehensive transformation and upgrading. The country has determined the future economic development mode of our country, which is mainly based on the connotative quality and efficiency oriented economic growth mode. The economic development model of blindly pursuing scale development, relying on fixed assets investment and low-cost expansion has gone forever. To this end, we must completely change our mindset, abandon all unrealistic fantasies or wait-and-see practices, seize the current market adjustment period, further emancipate our minds, transform our concepts, and actively realize the transformation of our development mode. Guided by the market, adjust the development strategy of enterprises, adjust product structure and market operation mode, effectively solve the problems of reliability and stability of domestic heavy-duty machine tools, innovate new management mechanisms, create excellent corporate culture and quality brands, enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of enterprises, and accelerate the competitiveness of domestic CNC heavy-duty machine tools in the international market.

 

3.Main gaps and existing problems

After nearly a decade of rapid development, China's heavy-duty machine tool industry has made significant progress in both production capacity and product technology level. However, overall in the industry, there is still a significant gap between China's heavy-duty machine tool products and the international advanced level, and they are still at the middle and low end of the international division of labor and industrial chain. Due to the weak market competitiveness of mid to high end heavy-duty machine tool products, they are currently unable to compete with international advanced products. The gap between domestically produced heavy-duty machine tools and internationally advanced products is mainly reflected in the low reliability and stability of the machine tools, the lack of overall manufacturing technology and quality, the need to improve the technical level of core operating components, and the insufficient ability to provide comprehensive solutions. This has become one of the main reasons why domestically produced heavy-duty machine tools have been in a passive position in market competition for a long time.

1)The ability for independent innovation is weak, and key core technologies constrain the development level of the industry. At present, China's heavy machine tool industry can basically meet the domestic market's demand for various types of medium and high-end heavy and ultra heavy machine tools, but there is still no "world-renowned brand" enterprise with international market competitiveness. This is because China's heavy machine tool industry has long lacked independent innovation and research on basic common technologies, key core technologies, and forward-looking technologies.

2)The imbalance of production capacity structure and prominent supply-demand contradictions. Since entering the new century, due to the rapid development of the heavy-duty machine tool market, enterprises or other investors who did not originally produce heavy-duty machine tools have entered this field one after another. The products they produce basically cover all categories and varieties of heavy-duty machine tool products, but the vast majority are general-purpose and mid to low end products. However, the high-end CNC heavy-duty machine tools and services required by key user areas in China, especially specialized products for high-end segmented markets, lack sufficient supply capacity and have to rely on imports.

3) There is still a significant gap between the reliability, stability, and manufacturing technology level of machine tools and the world's advanced level. The average trouble free working time of domestically produced mid to high end heavy-duty machine tools is not more than 300 hours, while imported high-end products mostly have a time of over 2000 hours (international standard is 800 hours), and the accuracy and stability are very high.

4)Lack of original innovation and high-quality technical talents and workers. Due to historical reasons, China's heavy machine tool enterprises still face the problem of "emphasizing hard over soft", that is, "emphasizing technological transformation over process, design over foundation, and short-term over long-term". At the same time, there is a lack of original innovation and high-quality technical talents, industrial technical workers, and a corporate culture that pursues perfect manufacturing quality in the industry.

 

4. The successful experience and enlightenment of foreign machine tool development

Learning and drawing on the successful experiences and lessons of developed countries in the development of heavy-duty machine tools plays an important role in enhancing the market competitiveness of China's heavy-duty machine tools.

From the development history of German machine tools, "Made in Germany" and "German machine tools" have many similarities with today's "Made in China" and "Chinese machine tools" more than 100 years ago, and are also latecomers in catching up. Today, 'Made in Germany' has become synonymous with global 'quality and reputation'. Even after entering the new century, when other industrialized countries are more focused on the service industry and competing to develop financial innovation, Germany still focuses mainly on improving the product quality and technological level of the manufacturing industry.

The prominent feature of "Made in Germany" is the "specialization", "precision", and "uniqueness" of its products, which have gained enormous market value as a result. German companies attach great importance to leveraging their own characteristics and are willing to spend energy and time learning and creating, striving to find more solutions to occupy the high-end professional niche market. Focus is an important factor for them to win success in the niche field. In terms of product quality. Germany actively intervenes in industrial products through the Standardization Committee (DIN). By establishing standards for unified planning of industry products, we aim to enhance the international market competitiveness of German products as a whole.

 

5. Strengthen innovation capacity building and enhance market competitiveness

1) Establish a technology innovation system with enterprises as the main body and close integration of industry, academia, research and application as soon as possible. Based on China's national conditions, fully leverage the role of enterprises as innovative entities, and take the integration of various resources and the mobilization of scientific research personnel as the starting point to explore the construction of heavy-duty machine tool industry research and development institutions or institutes that are suitable for China's national conditions, and establish a complete heavy-duty machine tool research and development innovation and testing system. We should encourage enterprises to increase innovation investment and quickly change the current situation of weak or missing technological research and development capabilities in China's heavy-duty machine tool industry.

2) Enterprises should develop towards differentiation, specialization, and customization. Enterprises should make real efforts in adapting their product structure to the market and improving product quality based on their own characteristics, and formulate development strategies and directions that are in line with the market structure. They should do something and not do anything, focus on producing lean and distinctive products, form a differentiated development pattern, and achieve sustainable development.

3) Optimize resource allocation through the market. The country or industry should take necessary measures and formulate relevant policies, regulations, and market rules to establish a sound social credit system, create a fair competition platform, and build a good market economy and order in China. According to international conventions, a "blacklist" system for enterprises can be established to provide no breeding ground and space for malicious competitors and behaviors that harm consumer rights.

4) Comprehensively improve the reliability and stability of medium to high-end heavy-duty machine tools. This is a systematic project that involves numerous internal and external aspects of the enterprise, including research and development, testing, design, manufacturing, assembly, procurement of components, materials, services, and users. Enterprises should first take the market as the starting point, increase investment in independent innovation, build a complete R&D innovation, testing, and inspection system, start from the factors that affect the reliability and stability of machine tools, strengthen the testing and research of basic technologies, and strive to break through the bottleneck of key core technologies.

5) Improve the ability to provide users with complete solutions. After entering the new century, enterprises not only need to produce high-quality heavy-duty machine tools, but also have the ability to provide complete solutions and services for users. It covers users' machining processes, tool selection, fixtures, software programming, measurement and testing, equipment maintenance and use, remote diagnosis, and many other contents. Improving comprehensive and high-quality services characterized by overall solution service capabilities has become an inevitable trend in the development of China's heavy-duty machine tool industry.

6) We will focus on promoting the high-end extension of traditional processing and manufacturing to the value chain. There are two main ways to achieve the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry from low-end to high-end. One is to develop towards the high-end of the global manufacturing industry chain, that is, towards the high value-added, high-tech equipment industry and emerging industries; The second is the upgrading of the manufacturing industry chain, which relies on the existing equipment manufacturing foundation to promote the high-end extension of traditional processing and manufacturing to the value chain.

7) Strengthen the construction of talent team. We should actively cultivate a large number of high-quality frontline engineering and technical personnel and industrial technical workers. Firstly, it is necessary to advocate a social atmosphere that respects industrial technicians and skilled workers in terms of ideology. At the same time, efforts should be made to change the current situation of frontline employees in the industry, improve their social status and treatment, perfect the social security system, and ensure that frontline employees in the industry can have a decent life. This will help China's equipment manufacturing industry to rebuild its quality oriented demographic dividend advantage.

 

6. Outlook

The output value of the heavy-duty machine tool industry has continuously declined significantly in 2012 and 2013, and the situation it faces is not optimistic. The current difficulty is not simply a lack of market demand, but rather the need for transformation and upgrading, product structure adjustment, and the swift elimination of the passive situation of overcapacity.

From the characteristics of domestic and international market demand, it can be seen that in the future, the market will compete around high-end CNC machine tools, and countries around the world are transforming and upgrading to rebuild the equipment manufacturing industry with advanced technology. The heavy machine tool industry should adapt to this new trend, strengthen its comprehensive competitiveness in design and development, manufacturing, service, and application, comprehensively enhance its market competitiveness, make full preparations for participating in international competition, and create a new situation for the development of heavy machine tools.