What do you think of the smart manufacturing in 2025, which was very popular before, and the depression of mechanical automation industry in recent years?

In the past two years, I visited 100 enterprises, from automobiles and auto parts, from furniture to household appliances, from machine tools to agricultural machinery, and even some mold factories in Huangyan. My opinion is:

First, the direction of "Made in China 2025" and the key smart manufacturing projects advocated by the government are right, and actions are necessary. It is the spontaneous behavior of some leading enterprises, and the industrial policy just follows the trend.

You can pay attention to the pilot demonstration project of intelligent manufacturing, comprehensive standardized test and verification of intelligent manufacturing, new model of intelligent manufacturing and champion enterprises of manufacturing demonstration (cultivation) of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and you will find that the enterprises selected for the project are all head enterprises in various industries and places, and they all have some characteristics: there is a large room for industrial growth, the products belong to the category of industrial upgrading encouraged by the state, the operating conditions are stable, the market share of products reaches a certain level, and they have certain driving force in the industrial chain.

Even without "Made in China 2025" and "Intelligent Manufacturing", these enterprises must speed up the process of internal automation, digitalization, networking and intelligence for their own development, so as to maintain their dominant position in the fiercely competitive domestic and international markets and form stronger core competitiveness. At the same time, these enterprises will actively promote the follow-up and upgrading of upstream and downstream industrial chains. If they don't follow or fail to keep up, they will be marginalized or even eliminated.

Why? Because after these advantageous enterprises develop to a certain scale, they have to face not only the competition in the domestic market, but also the competition from international rivals.

Construction machinery enterprises such as Sany Heavy Industry, Zoomlion, Xugong and Liugong, in addition to competing with each other behind closed doors, are facing strong enemies such as Komatsu and Caterpillar in the international market. If they want to have a full meal and eat a good meal, they must have a level of information and automation similar to or even stronger than those of international enterprises such as R&D, including production, logistics and services.

Therefore, not all enterprises have an urgent need for intelligent manufacturing, but enterprises that have achieved the top spot in the domestic industry will definitely invest in intelligent manufacturing. If you don't invest now, your dominant position may be lost in a few years.

In addition, it is too difficult to find workers now, and the cost is high. In this case, there is almost no room for turning around, and it will be more difficult and more expensive in the future. Therefore, automation and digitalization have become one of the means to replace manpower. Visiting a factory in Beijing, a production line has 35 stations, which will be reduced to 30 in 20 18 and 20 by the end of 20 19, and the number of manual stations will continue to be reduced in 2020. Automation equipment and robots are a little more expensive, but the product quality is more stable and the production line works faster, so the cost can be recovered in about two years.

Second, made in China 2025, intelligent manufacturing, industrial interconnection, etc. They are icing on the cake, not a timely help, and cannot quickly solve the problem of weak demand in the global economic environment.

Conversely, I have seen traditional workshop-style factories in Gansu, Zhejiang and Guangdong. Small production scale, simple business model, stable counterpart enterprises, narrow market structure, no technological advantages, no right to speak in the industrial chain, and actually no higher-level competition. It is nothing more than the high cost of materials and labor, and the profit margin is constantly squeezed and diluted.

Only when such enterprises are passively taken away by large and medium-sized enterprises in the industrial chain, and the industrial chain cannot be moved, will the survival of the fittest be eliminated and eliminated naturally. Intelligent manufacturing is completely unattractive to such enterprises, because for these enterprises, the investment in intelligent manufacturing is unaffordable, or the input-output ratio is too low, or even a waste of time. It is better to run more orders, drink more wine and bargain with the last one.

Intelligent manufacturing can't help such enterprises. What they need are cheaper materials and more orders, which are influenced by the economic environment and industrial upgrading policies.

Industrial upgrading is not a joke, but it is actually quite cruel. Those who can't keep up will be eliminated, and even some backward production capacity and products will leave China in the form of transfer, but no one wants to admit that their enterprises are backward in production capacity.

This problem exists in China, Japan, Germany and the United States. Traditional small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises that have no technological advantages and can't stand it are gradually withdrawing, but it has little to do with Made in China 2025, Industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing. It is a problem of insufficient global economic development momentum and overall industrial upgrading.