Academicians and Specialists “Take the Pulse” of Dalian Manufacturing
On May 10th, the activity “the consultation and study of advanced manufacturing industry development strategy and academicians’ travel in Dalian” held by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Association for Science and Technology for 3 days came to a successful conclusion. The academicians of consulting project team for “strategy and research for strong manufacturing country” led by the president of Chinese Academy of Engineering- Zhou Ji conducted investigation and survey to the major manufacturing enterprises in our city and put forward valuable suggestions for the transformation from “big manufacturing city” to “strong manufacturing city”.
Digitalization is the only route for manufacturing enterprises.
Digitalization should penetrate every link of the enterprise.
The president of Chinese Academy of Engineering- Zhou Ji puts forward: the western developed countries adopt a new way to revitalize manufacturing industry. With the network information technology and digital manufacturing technology application as the key point, they actively promote the deep fusion of the information technology and manufacturing technology and try to take over the high ground of international industrial competition and the initiative for the future development through relying on scientific and technological innovation. With “digital manufacturing” as the core, the third industrial revolution is the integration of digital manufacture and individual manufacture. The “digital and intelligent manufacturing”, which can bring the progress of product technology, manufacturing technology and management technology, not only makes the enterprise rapidly make responses to market demand, improve product quality, reduce cost, reduce resource and energy consumption, but also especially adapts to the rich varieties of customers in the global market to realize a co-ordinated new production mode which requires the remote customization, remote concurrent design and on-site production; it makes the product manufacturing model, the production organization pattern as well as the enterprise business model change fundamentally.
Tsinghua University Academician Liu Baicheng thinks that the manufacturing enterprises in Dalian have to greatly strengthen the research, development and application of intelligent digital technology. What’s more, now many enterprises have comprehending deviation for digital manufacture. In the digital manufacture, they have to highlight the digital design. A product innovation lies in the design. Digitalization can stay not only in manufacturing, research and development, but also in every production link to the whole life cycle. For example, either forging or welding processes has the digital simulation radiation in the technical process.
Beijing University of Chemical Technology Academician Gao Jinji suggests that the enterprise should employ Internet technology to promote the equipment manufacturing industry level. “There is certain gap between equipment manufacturing enterprises in Dalian and foreign countries. Through sensor cluster, Internet technology monitors the user's equipment to know performance and early fault alert, which will satisfy the customers. What’s more, the accumulation of failure or performance problems can further improve the technology. At the same time, it also can learn the user's actual situation to facilitate your integration. At present, a lot of industrial equipments are very old and do not match with the system, which causes problems easily. The energy saving effect is bad. The country can't always rely on expanding the scale of the equipment. How to improve the quality of existing equipment is very important from the perspective of nation and enterprise. Therefore, we put forward “remanufacturing equipment in service”, including the equipment of machine process technology. How to achieve intelligent transformation, how to control to ensure its energy saving and safe operation and upgrade problem are of great importance.”
Industry-university-research cooperation should begin from short-term cooperation to long-term technical support.
Academician Liu Baicheng is anxious about the present state that industry-university-research cooperation has not been formed in our country. He says: “there is this kind of circumstance: the enterprises complain that the university goes away after completing the task and taking the funds; the universities also complain that the enterprises always want quick return. Although there are many mechanisms promoting industry-university-research cooperation, for instance, only the project which has industry-university-research cooperation can be declared. In fact, it is actually a form."
For this situation, Academician Gao Jinji suggests that in the future, every enterprise who has problems can report to the municipal government. The government is responsible for bidding in universities. Any university who can do the job will get the opportunity. The final score right should belong to the enterprise. At the same time, they strive for the support from the government.
Dalian University of Technology Academician Guo Dongming says: “the present development of the enterprises attaches great importance to industry-university-research cooperation. If I have some problems, I find you and wish you to solve the problems immediately. From my point of view, if the enterprises want to join in the high-level competitions, they should establish lasting technology support out of the university. The scientific research teams in university which can really serve the enterprises need long-term development. The professors who study for a long time in the enterprise can truly become experts. Therefore, now the cooperation is supposed to go up to another level, namely, from the project cooperation to permanent cooperation with clear direction and the relatively fixed personnels.
Enterprises should learn the transformation from selling equipment to selling technology.
Academician Zhou Ji puts forward that in the future, on the basis of digital technology, with the support of the Internet, Internet of Things, cloud computing and big data, etc., the manufacturing industry mode will be under huge changes. Productive service industry will achieve comprehensive and rapid development. The large and medium-sized enterprises enter the "product + services" model from a product manufacturer to system integration and service providers. Dalian enterprises should complete the role transformation as soon as possible.
Academician Guo Dongming holds the point that the enterprise should pay more attention to product technology especially product application technology. What’s more, they should have such an idea: from selling equipment gradually to selling technology. The enterprises should sell the solution to the problems and sell technology which solves the users’ problems actually. In this case, the technology includes equipment which is used to solve these problems. This is what we should pay attention to. At this point, the domestic and foreign enterprises have obvious difference. Foreign firms are selling equipments with technology.
It is time for research and development of enterprises to look outside and have a long-term view.
Academician Guo Dongming purposely puts forward that at present, the enterprise investment in technology research and development sounds pretty good, but many companies ignore the question: how many investments on R&D out of the enterprise and let other people do research for us. Now most of the investments are limited in the internal enterprise research and development. There are only a few investments out of the enterprises. However, now the product research, development and technology are more and more integrated, and the enterprises tend to be stronger on the original technology. The cross technology and new technology are relatively weak. This is the leading cause of weak enterprise R&D capability. There are a lot of enterprises only paying attention to the present technology. They do not attach importance to the long-term technology. There is a lack of researches on new technology and cutting-edge technology. If you don't cooperate with scientific research institutes, you can't really cooperate and then establish a collaborative development system to achieve technological breakthroughs.
In addition, Guo Dongming mentions that our companies pay a lot of attention to buy technology from the outside, but we always can't absorb the technology. Sometimes, we only know the product. But we don’t know why and it is harder for us to evolve it into our own technology. Therefore, it is recommended that companies should consider the assistance from external power for the introduction, digestion, absorption and recreation of technology.
Even if the technology problems are solved, the rough craft will destroy the quality of the product.
In the last few days of research, some enterprises mentioned that their products had no difference compared with the most advanced product from appearance. However, it seemed that there was something wrong with the products. For this matter, Academician Guo Dongming said: “our enterprises don’t do well enough in the fining process. Normally speaking, the factories should be in accordance with the process strictly and meticulously to produce products. But they could have done better in this respect. For instance, the strictly enforcement of the bottom process is not enough. This leads to the fact that our product technology is able to solve, but the process execution is not careful or strict, which lead to the bad quality of the products. Once I came to Dalian to evaluate the problem of heat treatment. The rules regulate that heat treatment should achieve certain temperature and time so as to ensure the quality, but the products could have been put for 10 hours, the enterprise in order to save energy puts the products for five hours. In the end, the quality of the products must decline. About the process of fine management, I think now it is a major cause of unstable product quality. Of course, there also are management problems to some degree.”
If we want the manufacturing industry to become stronger, we have to increase the proportion of the quality sensitive industry.
Through a few days of research, State Department counselor Zhang Gang puts forward that Dalian enterprises’ understanding of the quality problem needs to be improved to a higher level. He further analyzed that: from the industrial structure, there is a certain type of industry which is called quality sensitive industry. This kind of industry particularly has high requirements for product quality. However, the higher the added value is, the larger the market share is. That is to say, you want to buy the more expensive one, such as automobile and medical instruments. In developed countries, the quality sensitive manufacturing industries account for a proportion of over 38%. The highest proportion is 45% in Germany, while China is less than 20%. If we want the manufacturing industry to become stronger, we have to increase the proportion of the quality sensitive industry. Most of Dalian enterprises in the visiting belong to sensitive industry. Therefore, we should stress and do better on quality elements.
In addition, the enterprises that have the pursuit of becoming bigger and stronger enterprise must have their own voice on the international standard and even dominant right. At present, our country is very poor at the formulation of leading standards. Up to now there are 25844 international standards, and China's dominant standards are only 116, which accounts for only 0.45%. In addition, now everybody has a consensus for manufacturing brands, that is, the quality is the first priority of the brand. Therefore, if Dalian enterprises want to be bigger and stronger, manufacturing is must have a location in terms of quality and indeed develop a quality priority development strategy. They can put forward specific requirement for standard development and bring out clear circuit diagram. We have to be clear about which standards are the industry standard, which standard are own standards and even which standards are likely to enter the international standard. Enterprises should hold promotion activities of quality comparison, including comparison between you and foreign enterprises. They use what kind of criteria, material, process, control method and monitor, etc. If the enterprises view the quality as the life, they can do better on the development of quality.
Enterprises cannot only focus on a large scale. The innovation system is more important.
CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd Academician Liu Youmei thinks that the current domestic locomotive production capacity is seriously surplus. The enterprise should not only try to expand blindly and preoccupy the market. In most cases, the burden of large-scale enterprise is heavier. The enterprises should first transform future technological innovation to green and intelligent direction. He thinks that the future development direction of rail transit is to get rid of “primary energy”. So people need more efforts in this respect.
Shipbuilding Industry Group 702 Research Institute Academician Wu Yousheng also thinks that Dalian Shipping Group should take advantage of the relocation, do a good job in planning and have a big improvement on the whole production process and the team organization after relocation. At the same time, during the whole shipping industry downturn, Dalian Shipping Group must strengthen independent research and make preparations for green ship design improvements.
Academician Zhou Ji thinks that: “to upgrade manufacturing and the enterprise, there must be some higher awareness: relying on the government leading, enterprise dominant and market orientation are right. But they need to rely on structural optimization, innovation, quality first and the green development. We all know the innovation-driven development, which must have a goal. However, if we want to realize the goal, we must have our own innovation system. The large enterprises have these considerations but it is not enough. A true understanding of innovation system and the layout is a very profound question. It is a revolution and a reform. The enterprises need more study.