China's large-scale infrastructure construction and the centralized outbreak of 5g and other advanced technologies have provided large-scale application scenarios for construction machinery, thus cultivating a strong industry. China's construction machinery industry began an unprecedented rapid catch-up and squeezed into the lineup of world construction machinery powers. Although there are still many "neck sticking" problems to be solved, under the background of the fourth industrial revolution, the huge Chinese construction machinery industry has ushered in the historical task of reconstructing industrial interconnection while developing.
Solving the "neck sticking" problem of Chinese construction machinery
Construction machinery is a business card of "made in China". Many equipment can be described as "heavy weapons of a large country", and the problem of "neck sticking" of its key parts has always attracted much attention. The reporter learned from interviews in Changsha, the "capital of construction machinery", that in recent years, the localization rate of key parts in the domestic construction machinery industry has been increasing and can "top", but some high-end parts still rely on imports, and there is still a gap between domestic parts and "good use". With the acceleration of intelligent and digital transformation of the industry, technical problems such as controllers and sensors are placed in front of enterprises, which need to be solved urgently.
Domestic parts "top"
Sany Heavy Industry's "plant 18", located in Changsha Economic Development Zone, Hunan Province, is a busy production scene. The prominent position of the workshop shows not the honor obtained by the enterprise, but various key parts such as engine, motor, bearing and hydraulic parts. The staff said that these key parts were designed and manufactured by SANY and have been fully applied.
This is an epitome of the industry to crack the bottleneck of key parts. In fact, there has been a "neck sticking" problem in the construction machinery industry for a long time. So before 2010, the number of excavators produced in the Chinese market was decided by foreign oil cylinder enterprises, because at that time, the domestic oil cylinder had poor sealing and was easy to leak oil, and the oil cylinder required by the excavator could only be imported.
The novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic in 2020 is spreading all over the world. Some domestic construction machinery enterprises are facing the severe situation that overseas parts suppliers are shutting down and reducing. This once again sounded the alarm for supply chain safety. The person in charge of an enterprise told reporters that in June last year, the supply of a foreign brand of automobile chassis was cut off, and the main engine factory had to quickly find alternative products in China.
However, this crisis has not really stuck the neck of the domestic construction machinery industry. In the view of insiders, this is due to the continuous increase of R & D investment in the whole industry in recent years, promoting the localization of key parts, and domestic parts can "stand up" at the critical moment.
According to the analysis of China Machinery Industry Federation, under the guidance of the national "strong foundation" project and driven by market demand, a number of key parts with independent intellectual property rights have achieved major breakthroughs in technology and scale application, and the problem of "neck sticking" of some core parts has been alleviated.
Taking XCMG as an example, 20% of the key technologies broken by this enterprise during the 13th Five Year Plan period are "neck" technologies. Today, XCMG's cranes, excavators and other main engines have realized full spectrum systematic supporting, and the self-made rate of hydraulic parts, transmission parts and electrical parts has increased rapidly.
"Key parts are a field with large investment and difficult to achieve results in the short term. Once they are 'stuck', it's hard to feel." Wang Min, chairman of XCMG Construction Machinery Co., Ltd., said that today, many domestic R & D achievements have reached the international advanced level, and many independent and controllable hard core technologies are in their own hands.
Since 2005, Sany Heavy Industry has established more than 10 parts companies to carry out R & D and industrialization of key parts through independent innovation and collaborative innovation. This host enterprise has many "loud" key parts. For example, Sany ZTE has become one of the largest and most diverse hydraulic cylinder production bases in China. Sany's self-produced engines and chassis have been applied to construction machinery and heavy trucks.
Xiang Wenbo, President of Sany Heavy Industry, believes that if key parts are too dependent on foreign countries, the industrial chain will be very fragile, which is not only a safety problem, but also a cost problem. After several years of efforts, Sany's domestic allocation rate has been continuously improved, which has improved the overall competitiveness of the enterprise.
Hold high to the "last 10%"
The reporter learned that although construction machinery parts have made great progress, there are still problems of "lack of high-end products and homogenization of medium and low-end products". The import volume of high-end hydraulic parts, high-end chassis, large tonnage engine and other parts is large, facing constraints such as high price, long cycle and unstable supply.
Sun Changjun, vice president of Zoomlion, believes that in the field of medium and low-end equipment, parts are gradually replaced by domestic ones, but some high-end key parts still rely on imports from Europe, America, Japan and other places. At present, China's leading construction machinery host enterprises have been in the first camp of the global industry. Once enterprises enter the stage of "high-end competition" and "high-quality competition", they may be "stuck".
The reporter learned that due to the gap in materials, design and manufacturing technology, the stability, reliability and durability of some domestic key parts are lacking, which makes customers dare not try and the main engine factory dare not use them. For example, the hoisting of nuclear power plants requires extra large tonnage cranes, and customers have "no bottom" for domestic key parts, so they still have to use foreign products. Excavator is known as the "pearl on the crown of construction machinery". Due to its high performance requirements, a large number of engines are foreign brands.
In addition, there is a lack of innovation in domestic key parts, and some parts remain in the stage of imitating foreign products. In particular, cutting-edge products lag behind people. For example, the "single engine" engine of truck crane is first launched by German enterprises, and domestic enterprises will follow up and learn.
Wang Min believes that China's construction machinery industry has solved 90% of the problems, but the key is to overcome the last 10%, which is like climbing the last few hundred meters of Mount Everest. In order to make progress towards "high-tech, excellent and independent", the core parts of China's construction machinery industry must "focus on high-end and fight high".
On the one hand, we should pay attention to basic innovation. He Qinghua, chairman of Shanhe intelligence, said that to break through the design "threshold" of high-end key parts, it is not something that can be solved by "sports and throwing money", but intensive cultivation and hard work, and encourage enterprises with unique skills in a certain aspect to sink into research and development. For the problems of too much investment, too small market and uneconomical R & D parts of a single main engine plant, we can focus on building and supporting high-end core parts enterprises through the fund guidance of the main engine plant to participate in the investment, and finally radiate the whole industry.
On the other hand, some insiders suggested that on the demand side, learn from the support policies for new energy vehicles, subsidize end users, guide and encourage the use of domestic key parts, and truly cultivate the market, so as to solve the problem that domestic products were not accepted and there was no way to improve and iterate in the past.
Explore new topics of intelligent transformation
At present, the construction machinery industry has accelerated its intelligent and digital transformation. Major enterprises are laying out intelligent manufacturing plants, and new equipment such as 5g remote-controlled excavator, unmanned crane, unmanned roller and unmanned mixer truck emerge one after another. The reporter learned that traditional manufacturing enterprises have a weak foundation in the field of intelligence and digitization, and face some new "neck" problems from R & D and design to production and service.
The relevant person in charge of the equipment industry department of Hunan Provincial Department of industry and information technology said that the original "neck" of the manufacturing industry is mainly in a certain core component, such as engine and hydraulic parts. With the intelligent upgrading, the more important "neck" problem is the manufacturing equipment involving high-end precision machining.
The reporter saw in the intelligent manufacturing workshop of a construction machinery enterprise that there are hundreds of industrial robots in the whole workshop. Technicians frankly said that at the hardware level, many "tools" for intelligent production lines and industrial robots need to be imported from Japan and other countries; At the software level, digitization and intellectualization are inseparable from "algorithms", and most of the algorithms used now are foreign algorithms.
Not only that, industrial software such as simulation analysis required by the construction machinery industry, controllers known as the "brain" of construction machinery and sensors everywhere on the equipment also need to be imported. The R & D personnel of a construction machinery enterprise said that the controller has high requirements for reliability, while foreign enterprises do not open the "bottom layer" of the controller (that is, the driver matched with the hardware is equivalent to the Android system of the mobile phone). Domestic enterprises are controlled by others and can only program small applications on their platform.
The person in charge of the above industry and information technology department suggested that we should vigorously promote the research of short board equipment, and guide enterprises to make full use of digital and network technology to develop intelligent equipment products. Put the improvement of intelligent manufacturing supply capacity in a more prominent position, accelerate the breakthrough of intelligent manufacturing core equipment and industrial software system, and supplement the short boards such as key equipment, basic parts and system software as soon as possible.
Insiders pointed out that to solve the new "neck sticking" problem, traditional manufacturing enterprises should not fight alone, but integrate industry resources to form an industrial ecosystem with complementary capabilities, benefit sharing and risk sharing. The reporter learned that some enterprises have been "going hand in hand" with domestic suppliers to explore and build a collaborative innovation model in the intelligent and digital era.