High-end automation: competitive weapon for equipment manufacturing

If a worker wants to do good, he must first sharpen his tools. During the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" period, China's equipment manufacturing industry has made considerable progress, but there is still a big gap between the high-end equipment manufacturing industry's capabilities and strength and the developed countries. Therefore, during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, we should speed up the development of China's high-end equipment manufacturing industry, and use a more clarified market strategy, product strategy, and competitive strategy to support high-end manufacturing development strategies. And to complete the historical mission of China's traditional equipment manufacturing industry transformation and upgrading, vigorously develop high-end automation equipment is a weapon.

"In the 12th Five-Year Plan period, one of the directions for the revitalization and development of China's equipment manufacturing industry is to strive to improve the level of equipment automation," said Xu Xiaolan, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the vice president of the China Electronics Corporation's Information Industry Development Institute (0.88-1.12%). In fact, during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, automation equipment will also be destined to become an attractive "cake." “Under the backdrop of shifting extensive industrial growth to refined control, the country’s demand for energy-saving emission reduction and automatic control systems has increased steadily. It is expected that the market capacity in 2011 will be close to 15 billion yuan, and the compound annual growth rate in the domestic market will reach 15%. Luo Baihui, an invited researcher at the China International Economic Development Research Center, said in an interview with a reporter from the "China Sankei Shimbun".

However, it is worrying that China's equipment automation level is still lagging behind the developed countries. Sun Youxian, a member of the National Engineering Research Center for Industrial Automation at Zhejiang University and the academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has publicly stated that in recent years, it has made remarkable achievements in equipment automation, and breakthroughs have been made in power generation, petrochemicals, metallurgy, and light industry. However, the disadvantages such as low self-innovation capability, difficulty in entering major projects, the “middle strength of the control system, weak ends”, and the backwardness of the large-scale equipment automation control system for public works are still not solved.

These drawbacks are particularly noticeable in high-end industries. “The development of high-end industries puts ever-higher technical and quality requirements on the level of automation equipment manufacturing. Because many wind power generation equipment in China have intermittent characteristics, they need to use variable-frequency inverter equipment when they are connected to the grid. The core technology of the equipment is power electronics and automation control technology, which has always been our weak point.” Luo Baihui said.

Luo Baihui pointed out that for a long time, most of the development of China's automation equipment manufacturing industry still stays at the low end of the industrial chain, and it mainly produces low value-added products. The front-end R&D design and the back-end sales links are all subject to human beings, and they rely excessively on investment growth and independence. The ability to innovate is weak. Domestic manufacturers are not enough to directly compete with foreign manufacturers and can only compete with domestic counterparts to adopt low-price strategies.

"With the rapid development of automation equipment, if you do not master the core technology, you will easily fall into the vicious cycle of introduction, backwardness, re-introduction, and backwardness." Xu Xiaolan said with concern.

Independent innovation is a magic weapon for the revitalization of national industry. If we want to turn over, we must further improve the institutional mechanisms that promote the development of equipment automation. “Government level should strengthen policy guidance, pay attention to the digestion and absorption of imported technology, upgrade and innovation, and innovation and development. Based on this, establish a sound independent innovation system, increase investment in research and development, and clarify a number of automation related to the long-term development of equipment manufacturing industry. The key direction of technology research and development.” Xu Xiaolan suggested.

“The choice of supporting priorities may be linked to strategic emerging industries. The development of emerging industries such as aviation equipment, satellites and their application industries, rail transportation equipment, marine engineering equipment, new generation information technology, biology, new energy, etc. cannot be separated. The support of automated equipment. Moreover, these industries have the characteristics of technology-intensive, high added value and strong driving force." Luo Baihui said.

In an interview with a reporter from the China Sankei Shimbun, He Zaihua, a senior research fellow at China Investment Consulting Group, pointed out that at the enterprise level, market competition should be the driving force, and product innovation should be pursued in the design of the product. It is oriented and at the same time pays attention to the harmonious development with the natural environment; in the weak link, we must focus on key technological breakthroughs, strengthen the integration of production and research, improve product quality as a short-term goal, lay a solid foundation, and pave the way for follow-up industrial upgrading. Large-scale enterprises should take industrial development as their own responsibility, and use their own hinges to drive related companies to cooperate closely to form a cohesive R&D team. They break through the difficulties in the process of industry development, such as strong sets, high technical difficulty, long cycle, and large capital investment.