China's machine tool industry is fiercely competitive

“Difficulties in slowing demand, overcapacity, rising costs, and falling prices are unlikely to improve significantly in the short term. Although the industry has strengthened its efforts and made some progress in structural adjustment, promotion of upgrading, and strong management, the profit margin has not yet been reversed. The declining momentum. This grim reality warns us that the pace of industrial transformation and upgrading must be accelerated, and we must work harder to increase production efficiency and reduce resource consumption."

At the National Machinery Industry Economic Situation Report, Cai Weici, executive vice president of the China Federation of Machinery Industry, pointed out that since the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", the operational difficulties of the machinery industry have increased significantly, and the pressure to change the growth mode has increased rapidly. Many; but under the influence of the market's retreat mechanism, the industry restructuring and transformation and upgrading are accelerating.

He predicted that the machinery industry is expected to continue to maintain a relatively stable and relatively low growth momentum in the coming years. It is expected that the growth rate of production and sales will be roughly 10% to 15%, the profit growth will be roughly 10%, and the increase in export earnings will be estimated at 5%~ 10%.

Mid-range competition He pointed out that from the first three quarters of the industry's main business income and profit growth compared to the same period last year, it can be clearly seen that the development of consumption, information, automation and close to the industry faster than the typical investment product industry. It can be seen from this that the automotive industry with the largest proportion of total volume grows faster this year, which is the main industry that boosts the growth rate of the machinery industry; the growth rates of sub-sectors such as agricultural machinery, instrumentation, and basic components are also higher than the average growth of the machinery industry. speed.

Correspondingly, the typical investment product industries (such as construction machinery, machine tools, heavy machinery, power generation equipment, etc.) are generally in poor conditions; in some of these industries, output does not necessarily fall, but main business revenues decline and profits decline. It is even more obvious that "there is no shortage of living, and the efficiency has fallen sharply."

The reason for this is that the expansion of production capacity in these industries has been severely excessive. Once the market has cooled down, competition has become more intense and product prices have plummeted, leading to a substantial decline in efficiency.

Through interviews with several machine tool manufacturing companies, the reporter also learned that the decline in corporate profits is more important than the decline in the amount of machine orders and sales revenue.

From the analysis of the machine tool industry, the low profit of the low-end machine tool market is an indisputable fact, and the import value of high-end machine tools is still high.

Therefore, under the situation that the overall market demand of the industry is low, the machine tool companies are undergoing transformation and upgrading under the impetus of the market, while the mid-range market is the hot spot of competition.

Not only is the domestic scale company putting the market's focus on here, but some newly-entry industry upstarts have also targeted the breakthrough here. After all, mid-range machines are more likely to form batches and scale. At the same time, foreign brands have also accelerated the layout of the Chinese market.

Wilfried Schaefe, Executive Director of the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association, said that China is an important German exporter and accounted for nearly 30% of German exports in 2012. According to the data, the value of the German machine tool industry in the past year was approximately 8.3 billion euros, of which more than 2.4 billion euros were orders from China.

Although the export value of the German machine tool industry fell by 3% in the first half of this year, the value of exports to China increased by 6% or 27% of the total, making the German machine tool industry pay more attention to maintaining its market share in the Chinese market.

With the development of Chinese machine tool companies, German companies face strong competition from Chinese companies in the mid-end product market. Because the gap between the two countries' technological levels is relatively small in this area, the services provided by Chinese companies to customers are better.

According to a survey conducted by the German Association of Machine Tool Manufacturers, compared with German machine tool companies, Chinese companies usually set up service and distribution centers covering the mainland, guaranteeing that they can promise to promise to customers for 1 to 2 years warranty and full-life after-sales service. . Even on holidays, after-sales personnel from Chinese companies can reach their customers within 48 hours to provide customers with maintenance and spare parts, and at a lower cost. In contrast, the experience of the customer's after-sales service to the German machine tool is not ideal. This is mainly due to the gap between the response speed and the maintenance cost and the Chinese machine tool company.

Therefore, the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association called on German machine tool companies to properly localize products with small research and development and technology gaps, and to enter into the market through local production, reduce the gap in service with Chinese machine tool companies, and increase service flexibility and flexibility. Customer communication. However, it still maintains its import strategy in the area of ​​high-end products.

Recently, the increase in the number of Chinese factories in China and the call for localized product systems from time to time have undoubtedly demonstrated that companies are practicing this strategy.

It is not difficult to understand that the above reasons are actually difficult to achieve. However, it is critical to how to gain a firm foothold in this market competition and continue to obtain appropriate profits.

Not long ago, the enlarged meeting of the Council of the China Automobile Manufacturing Equipment Innovation Association (CIAME) was held in Shanghai. Representatives of some auto companies also attended the meeting.

As we all know, cars are big users of the machine tool industry. There is a saying that at least 50% of the customers of the Jinqi machine are from the automotive industry.

But sadly, domestic machine tool companies rarely enter key areas such as engine production lines. In China's auto factories, most of the equipment required for the four major processes needs to be imported.

Of course, what needs to be stated is that the reporter here does not mean the lack of a single high-end machine tool, but the lack of a large number of high-end machine tool industrialization, market-oriented and competitive products. In fact, through the display of major transformation achievements in recent years, we have indeed seen the emergence of a large number of outstanding results, and their single technical indicators are also worth noting. The only thing that is regrettable is the lack of marketization and industrialization. In other words, it is not enough.

If the mid-range market cannot form a certain amount, it will be difficult for the market to be convincing. This is the only way for the mid-range products to go upwards.

The representatives of auto companies attending the meeting also frankly stated that in recent years, China's machine tool manufacturing industry has made considerable progress, and the economic scale has achieved rapid growth from "small to large", especially in the mid-to-high end product areas. With breakthroughs, the major specifications of mid-to-high-end machine tool products can basically be covered, and a group of companies with strong market competitiveness are beginning to emerge.

But there is still a big gap between what can be done and what can be done. It can only mean that there is the ability to make products, but to do a good job is to recognize the ability of the company from the perspective of the customer and is willing to pay for the purchase of the corresponding product.

Therefore, the reporter believes that it is the key to whether China's machine tool manufacturers can gain a firm foothold in the mid-range market.

Not long ago, he watched a documentary film entitled “The Great Power of China” produced by the China Industry Press Association. Due to the emphasis on reporting, the reporter paid special attention to reports on machine tool companies and was more impressed with the Jinan Second Machine Tool.

In the middle of the year, Jinan No. 2 Machine Tool announced that after winning orders from all five large-scale press lines in Ford Motors' two factories in Kansas and Detroit in 2011, the company won another large-scale press line project for the Ford Motor Company's Kentucky factory.

It is reported that the factory has been using two stamping production lines made in Germany. This time, Ford Motor Company chose to make in China.

In fact, in the face of the competition of international machine tool counterparts, China's domestic CNC machine tools are clearly "underwater", which greatly weakened the company's cost-effective advantages in the high-end machine tool market.

Here, the connotation of performance not only refers to technology alone, but actually it has breakthroughs in all fields of high-end CNC machine tools. For example, five-axis linkage and other technical difficulties that were difficult to achieve in the past have now been grasped by many companies, and they are derived from the bottom up. In the machine tool market, the problem will not be too great.

But what is important is craft, just as reporters feel when they look at documentaries. The spirit of excellence or the formation of customary professional practices is the most valuable.

Therefore, as long as the manufacturing process is still short, even the best technology will be discounted. In this way, major illnesses will not be committed and minor illnesses will inevitably continue. The direct result of this is that the reliability of the machine tool products has become unreliable. When the user is only a cheap map to buy a domestic high-end CNC machine tools, then look forward to high-end but not high-quality domestic CNC machine tools to completely replace imports, can only become a luxury.

Therefore, it is not easy to do well. However, domestic machine tools should stand firm in the mid-end machine tool market, and win the victory in the entire industry transformation and upgrading, not only to quickly obtain performance improvement in the forced time, but also to ring the alarm of product reliability.