In the past few days, the entire "industrial mother machine" plate has set off a rising tide. Huachen equipment 4 days of continuous growth of more than 65%, Huazhong CNC 4 days of continuous growth of nearly 45%, Genesis 4 days of continuous growth of more than 30%, Haitian Seiko 4 days of continuous growth of nearly 30%,ST Shen machine 4 days of continuous growth of nearly 20%... Many machine tool stocks have been continuously trading!

This should be a good policy! On August 19, SASAC held an enlarged meeting, which stressed:It is necessary to put scientific and technological innovation in a more prominent position, promote central enterprises to actively integrate into the national basic research and applied basic research innovation system, and strengthen key core technology research in the fields of industrial mother machines, high-end chips, new materials, and new energy vehicles.

The SASAC meeting put the industrial mother machine in the first place, ranking before high-end chips, new materials, and new energy vehicles, reflecting its important position.
The development of industrial mother machines has evolved with the continuous development and growth of China's manufacturing industry, and the SASAC put it directly in the first place at this meeting, even before high-end chips, new materials and new energy vehicles. it is enough to highlight the important position occupied by the independence of the manufacturing industry.
The research and development of CNC machine tool technology in my country started not too late. In 1958, Tsinghua University and Beijing No. 1 Machine Tool Factory cooperated to develop China's first CNC lifting table milling machine (using separation component technology), which was no more than the world's first CNC machine tool. Six years later. However, in the following 20 years, the technological progress of CNC machine tools in China was very slow.
At present, from the perspective of production and consumption, the scale of China's machine tools is the world's well-deserved first, but what is sad is that we are facing the embarrassing situation of "big but not strong.
All machine tool companies are wrapped together, we are the largest, but no company can fight in the international market.
According to Wind and Sadie consultant data, among the top ten machine tool enterprises in the world in 2019, there are 4 Japanese enterprises, 4 Germany and 2 in the United States. Among them, Japan's leading machine tool enterprise Yamazaki Mazak's operating income in 2019 is 35.904 billion yuan, while the total operating income of China's top 10 machine tool enterprises in 2019 is only 11.254 billion yuan, which is 31.34 of Yamazaki Mazak's operating income. The profitability of China's machine tool enterprises is far lower than that of overseas giants.
From the price point of view, the contrast is also quite significant. In 2019, the average import price of my country's metal processing machine tools was US $123900, and the average import price of CNC machine tools was US $283800, while the average price of my country's exported metal processing machine tools was only US $326.45. There is a huge gap between the two.
This is the difference between "low end" and "high end. The actual state of competition in the Chinese machine tool market in the past ten years can be summarized as: low-end civil war, mid-end contention, and high-end loss.
From the data point of view, the localization rate of low-end CNC machine tools has reached nearly 90%, and the middle-end products have also reached more than 60%, but the localization rate of high-end products is still less than 10%.
The classification of machine tool products is a relative and dynamic concept for a specific market, and there is no clear definition of standards. Nevertheless, people are accustomed to using high, medium and low-end three categories to roughly distinguish the grades of machine tool products.
Generally speaking, high-end CNC machine tools need to achieve higher precision, high complexity, high efficiency and high dynamic processing, mainly used in aerospace, precision molds, military, electronics, shipbuilding and other high-end industrial fields.
For a long time, the competitive situation of China's machine tools in the low-end and high-end fields has not changed significantly.
The low-end field has always been the competition of local enterprises. In the high-end field, due to the wide gap, domestic machine tools basically do not have market competitiveness.
The mid-market field has always been the main battlefield for domestic machine tools and imported machine tools, and it is also an area that we have been on the verge of total loss. Competing for market share in this field has been the main direction of most machine tool companies for a long time.
It can be said that every part of the CNC machine tool has a significant impact on the final product production, and any link that is not sophisticated will cause a decline in production efficiency and production quality.
From the comparison at home and abroad, in the field of relatively low value, such as tool magazine, knife tower, tool, the level of domestic manufacturers is close to the international level.

However, in the fields of high-end machine tools, spindles and CNC systems, they can only reach foreign mid-range products at most, and they are still a short distance from the high-end. The added value of low-end product trade is low, and high value-added areas have higher requirements for CNC machine tools. For example, core high-end demand sectors such as military industry cannot tolerate inaccurate and unstable production, but at the same time, these are the core areas of national security and cannot and should not be used by others.
Taking the numerical control system as an example, it has made progress under the special support of numerical control machine tools in 2016. The specially developed high-grade numerical control system has sold more than 1000 sets, and the domestic market share has increased from less than 1% before the special launch to about 5%. The mid-range CNC system has achieved mass production, and the domestic market share has increased from 10% to 25%.
However, other key components of the five-axis linkage CNC machine tools have a "stuck neck" situation, the machining accuracy and reliability of some core key components are insufficient, and the functions of the CNC system are relatively backward.
The technology gap is only the result, and the common problems faced by the domestic machine tool industry for a long time are the real reasons. The problems include supply chain problems, R & D system problems and path dependence.
In the first period of time, "introduction and cooperation" and "tracking and imitation" were the main technical routes. It is true that this is fast, low risk and low cost, which is in line with the general law. But at the same time, negative path dependence also appears, weakening the consciousness of active innovation.
The impetuous mentality and the despised industrial structure are also important reasons.
Since China put forward the "China intelligent manufacturing 2025" in 2015, high-end CNC machine tools have appeared in various national policies for many times. At least from the policy level, the upgrading and localization of CNC machine tools have finally become a clear direction.
In the era of China's planned economy, there used to be 18 state-owned machine tool factories, which can be called eighteen arhats, which played a decisive role in the machine tool industry. But it is clear that the state-run road did not come out in the end.
The advent of reform and opening up to the private enterprises ushered in a new development opportunities.
Today, among private manufacturers, the top revenue companies include Genesis, Haitian Seiko, Zhejiang Haideman, Guosheng Zhike and other companies, although the international ranking is not yet leading, but in the domestic sub-sectors have been ranked in the head position.
State-owned enterprises have not stopped. In April and December 2019, China General Technology Group successively reorganized Dalian Machine Tool Group and Shenyang Machine Tool Group, marking that the curtain of accelerated integration of the domestic machine tool industry has been opened.
Perhaps we should also note that in this passage at the enlarged meeting of the SASAC mentioned at the beginning of the article, it is also emphasized that "central enterprises actively integrate", which also shows the continuity of the reorganization of state-owned machine tool enterprises.
Therefore, the future of the domestic machine tool industry is expected to present a three-part world pattern:
1) Foreign brands represented by Yamazaki Mazak. In the short term, it will still dominate the domestic high-end machine tool field, and the pattern of its high market share will not change significantly;
2) State-owned enterprises represented by China General Technology Group. Shenyang Machine Tool and Dalian Machine Tool were acquired by the central enterprise China General Motors, reflecting the country's unabated support for the machine tool industry. With the development of the merger and reorganization process of the whole industry, the competition pattern of the domestic machine tool industry will be gradually optimized;
3) Private enterprises represented by Haitian Seiko. Will continue to benefit from the restructuring process of state-owned machine tool enterprises.
Made in China is facing a century of great changes.
For China's machine tool industry, which has experienced decades of development but has not walked out of an effective path, it is very important to be raised to the height of "industrial mother machine" by the SASAC meeting at this moment.
However, the policy attention is not enough, and the independent innovation consciousness is not enough.
China's machine tool industry investment cycle is long, business performance is difficult to achieve short-term. If such an industry is viewed with a short-sighted vision, it is difficult to grow a truly outstanding enterprise.
This is an industry that needs to be slow and fine.
In the current China, if we want to truly realize the autonomy of industrial mother machines, we need a complete set of development strategies, public research soil and shared R & D system, rather than letting isolated enterprises fight alone.
After all, on top of the industrial mother machine, it carries the star sea of China's manufacturing industry.

Source: All Weather

Author: Chen Chen