Nine Causes and Strategies of China's Die and Mould Industry's Backwardness

The mold is the basic process equipment for industrial production and is called "the mother of industry". 75% of rough-processing industrial parts and 50% of finished parts are molded by molds, and most plastic products are also molded by molds. As the basic industry of the national economy, molds cover a wide range of industries, including machinery, automobiles, light industry, electronics, chemical industry, metallurgy, and building materials. According to Luo Baihui, managing director of the International Die & Metals and Plastics Industry Suppliers Association, the mold industry is an important area of ​​high-tech industrialization. In recent years, China's mold industry has developed rapidly, and the mold industry has moved from an accessory industry that relied on imports in the past to an independent new industry. . The world mold production center is also being transferred to China. China has become a big country in mold production and consumption. In the new investment of mold enterprises, the investment in processing equipment accounts for 80%. According to statistics, in 2010 China's total mold sales reached about 112 billion yuan, an increase of more than 14% over the previous year, and the country's mold equipment market has exceeded 4 billion yuan, and it is still growing at a rate of about 20% each year. This shows that China's mold industry in the post-crisis period has achieved a good recovery of growth, the growth rate has re-advanced to a double digit.

Although China's total mold production has ranked first in the world, with many mold enterprises. According to China's industrial census data in 2008, there are about 30,000 mold manufacturing companies (plants, factories) nationwide, and nearly 1 million employees, including mold manufacturing. There are more than 2,800 enterprises in the industry with a total income of over 5 million yuan, and more than 400,000 employees. However, the level of mold design and manufacturing is generally lower than that of Germany and the United States. The concrete manifestations are: molds with low technological content have been oversupply, while high-tech molds with medium and high-grade molds are far from meeting the needs of national economic development, such as Precision and complex stamping dies and plastic molds, car cover molds, electronic connectors and other electronic products molds and other high-end molds are still a large part of imports. Mr. Liu Depu, Vice President and Secretary-General of the Shanghai Mould Industry Association, also pointed out nine reasons for the backwardness of China's molds in his article “The Current Situation and Development of China's Mould Industry”.

First, the total supply is in short supply, and there is a lack of high-grade molds;

Second, the organizational structure, product structure, technical structure, and import and export structure of the company are not reasonable;

Third, the level of mold products is lower than the international level, but the production cycle is higher than the international level;

Fourth, poor development capability and poor economic efficiency;

Fifth, the state's policy support for the mold industry needs to be strengthened;

Sixth, there is a serious shortage of talents, and too little research and development and technological research is invested.

Seventh, the level of technological equipment is not high, the matching is not good, and the utilization rate is low;

Eighth, the degree of specialization, standardization, commercialization is low, and the coordination ability is poor;

Nine is the backward technology of mold materials and molds.

In the face of problems and inadequacies, Wang Jinling, deputy secretary-general of the International Mould and Hardware and Plastics Industry Suppliers Association, believes that China's mold enterprises should unite, work together, share resources, and achieve a leap in technology. She said that if enterprises have a clear division of labor, implementation of industry self-regulation and the establishment of a price system for fair competition, rather than lower prices and vicious competition, they can concentrate on solving problems in a certain area, which can increase work efficiency and reduce the difficulty of product development. . If companies can share R&D results, they will reduce huge investments, and the speed of R&D will also increase.

It is not too early for China's mold manufacturing to start as an industry, but after more than 20 years of rapid development, it is now beginning to take shape, and some competitive mold manufacturing enterprises have emerged. The relevant information shows that the current Pearl River Delta in Guangdong The area has become China's most advanced mold industry, the highest scientific and technological content of the region.

The mold is the basic process equipment for industrial production and is called "the mother of industry". 75% of rough-processing industrial parts and 50% of finished parts are molded by molds, and most plastic products are also molded by molds. As the basic industry of the national economy, molds cover a wide range of industries, including machinery, automobiles, light industry, electronics, chemical industry, metallurgy, and building materials. According to Luo Baihui, managing director of the International Die & Metals and Plastics Industry Suppliers Association, the mold industry is an important area of ​​high-tech industrialization. In recent years, China's mold industry has developed rapidly, and the mold industry has moved from an accessory industry that relied on imports in the past to an independent new industry. . The world mold production center is also being transferred to China. China has become a big country in mold production and consumption. In the new investment of mold enterprises, the investment in processing equipment accounts for 80%. According to statistics, in 2010 China's total mold sales reached about 112 billion yuan, an increase of more than 14% over the previous year, and the country's mold equipment market has exceeded 4 billion yuan, and it is still growing at a rate of about 20% each year. This shows that China's mold industry in the post-crisis period has achieved a good recovery of growth, the growth rate has re-advanced to a double digit.

It is not too early for China's mold manufacturing to start as an industry, but after more than 20 years of rapid development, it is now beginning to take shape, and some competitive mold manufacturing enterprises have emerged. The relevant information shows that the current Pearl River Delta in Guangdong The area has become China's most advanced mold industry, the highest scientific and technological content of the region.

Experts predict that with the acceleration of the global processing industry's center of gravity to China, this region may develop into a global mold production center within 10 years. However, it is undeniable that for the entire Chinese mold manufacturing industry, the opportunity for the rapid rise of the Chinese mold industry should be fully utilized to provide resources and support each other by providing related services. Only in this way can the mold industry get out of the current disadvantage.

To develop the industry, molds must go first. Qin Ke, deputy secretary-general of the China Die and Mould Industry Association, said that the mold is an extremely important and indispensable special basic process equipment in industrial production. As the mold production process integrates precision manufacturing, computer technology, intelligent control and green manufacturing, it is both a high-tech carrier and a high-tech product. Due to the high production efficiency, high consistency, low energy consumption and high energy consumption of the parts produced in batch using moulds, as well as their high precision and complexity, they have been increasingly valued by the industrial production departments of the national economy.

Most of the molds are produced for specific users. Therefore, compared with general industrial products, the mold enterprises have a large quantity and small scale, and are mostly small and medium enterprises. The technical content of mold products is high, the ratio of activated labor is high, the value-added rate is high, and the production cycle is long. Therefore, the mold manufacturing industry has a technology-intensive and capital-intensive, balanced production and enterprise management difficulty, and has a special dependence on specific users. , VAT load, slow accumulation of corporate funds, and long investment recovery period. Due to the wide variety of mold products, the great disparity in size, and the different requirements, the development of mold enterprises is suitable for “small and fine, small and specialized, small and special”; the development of the industry is suitable for agglomeration and cluster development to build strong Collaborative supporting system. This is one of the important features of the mold industry. Qin Ke said that in the past, the production and processing of molds relied mainly on fitters or extensive workshop-type production management models centering on fitters. Now it is gradually being replaced by an integrated, modern production management model that relies on technology and is designed to be the center. The traditional concept of mold products is also being replaced by the concept of high-tech products such as smart molds.

Since the 10th Five-Year Plan, under the support and guidance of state policies, the mold industry has invested a lot, the level and strength of the company's equipment have greatly improved, production technology has made great progress, CAD/CAM technology has become widespread, and hot runner technology and multiplexing Progressive stamping technology has been better promoted; digital technologies such as CAE, CAPP, PLM, and ERP have been adopted by some companies and have received good results; high-speed processing, concurrent engineering, reverse engineering, virtual manufacturing, and non-map production. Standardized production has been implemented in some key enterprises.

Advances in technology have led to a significant increase in the level of mold products in recent years, and the trend towards high-end development is more pronounced. Some mold products have reached or approached the world's advanced level, among which are representative giant molds with a single set of mold weight up to 120 tons, ultra-precision molds with machining accuracy of 0.3-0.5 μm and a service life of 300-400 million times. Long-life molds, high-speed precision stamping dies that can be matched with high-speed punches of 2500 beats per minute, multi-material, multi-process forming multi-functional composite molds, intelligent molds capable of intelligent control, etc.

However, from the point of view of mold production and demand, the middle and low-end molds have been oversupply, and the high-tech mold self-sufficiency rate represented mainly by large-scale, sophisticated, complex, long-life molds is still low, only about 60%, and a large part still depends on it. import. At present, the total mold sales account for the largest proportion of plastic molds, accounting for about 45%; stamping molds account for about 37%; casting molds account for about 9%; and other types of molds total about 9%.

The operating characteristics of the mold industry in 2010 indicate that the industrial restructuring of the industry over the past five years has achieved results. From the understanding of the Association, it can be clearly seen that the proportion of medium-to-high-grade molds represented by large-scale, precision, high-efficiency, and high-performance molds continues. Rising, the product level has greatly improved. At the 13th International Mould Technology and Equipment Exhibition in 2010, there were 181 molds that received the “premier mold” award, including 55 first-prizes and 64 second-class molds, not only a larger increase in quantity than before. Moreover, the level has also been greatly improved. More and more projects have reached the international level, innovation is evident, and patents have increased.

The gap between the average price of imports and exports of moulds is continuously shrinking, which also reflects the improvement of the general level of the mold industry in China and the progress of science and technology.

In 2010, China’s per capita plastic consumption was about 46 kg, which was only 1/3 of that in developed countries. This indicates that China’s plastic products industry will continue to develop rapidly during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period; Under the inevitable trend of plastic and wood, the engineering plastics industry is expected to maintain an average annual growth rate of 15% during the 12th Five-Year Plan period. From this it can be imagined that the plastic molds with the highest proportion of the total mold will also develop at a relatively high growth rate during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period.

In addition, as the automotive industry with the largest amount of molds, it is expected that during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, it will grow at an average annual growth rate of about 10%, plus China’s huge motor vehicle ownership (the end of 2009 was 186 million vehicles, of which 7619.3 The maintenance spare parts market and export market driven by 10,000 vehicles and 94.53 million motorcycles will also maintain a high growth rate for China's auto parts and components on the basis of a huge market of 1.5 trillion yuan. During the period, the average annual growth rate of automotive molds will not be less than 10%, and the average annual growth rate of rubber molds, including automobile tire molds, will reach more than 10%.

The electronic and information industry is also a large user of the mold. The “12th Five-Year Plan” is expected to have an average annual growth rate of around 20%.

Rail transit, aerospace, new energy, medical equipment, building materials and other industries will also bring huge market for molds. For example, medical devices currently account for only 2% of the world's share. The consumption ratio of drugs and medical devices is only 2.5:1, while that of developed countries is 1:1. The per capita annual consumption of medical plastics in the United States is US$300, and China only has 30 yuan, showing the potential for development.

In the international market, due to the continuous increase in labor costs in industrialized countries, they are forced to transfer molds to developing countries, especially developing countries like China, which have a relatively good technological foundation, in order to reduce production costs. The trend of multinational companies coming to China to purchase molds is still in development, and the development of international emerging markets is also promising. However, the market demands more and more molds in development. For example, emerging industries such as automobile lightweighting, intelligent shaping, and new energy, aerospace, biomedicine, rail transit, and smart grid are the key development priorities of the country during the “12th Five-Year Plan”. The molds needed to focus on these priorities are also natural to the mold industry. Many of these development priorities require new development, and many technologies require breakthroughs. This should be used as a breakthrough to drive the overall level of the industry.

China's mold life is low (fine die life is generally only about 1/3 of the advanced level of foreign countries), long production cycle, poor quality reliability and stability and other problems that have long plagued the industry development need to be resolved next. At the same time, China still has a large gap in research and development capabilities, personnel quality, research on the basic theory and technology of mold design and manufacturing, etc., resulting in slower development of new mold areas and new product development, and high technology. The proportion of mold content is much lower than that of foreign countries (about 60% in foreign countries and less than 40% in China).

Die exports exceeded 100 million U.S. dollars. We spent more than 10 years, from US$100 million to US$1 billion in seven years, and now exports have approached two billion U.S. dollars. It can be said that China’s mold industry already has a considerable foundation. However, the base figure is large. To achieve the goal of doubling exports in the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period, we must actively cultivate export bases and key export enterprises. Of course, the expansion of foreign trade and the development of exports are not only aimed at reaching the export target of 4 billion U.S. dollars. What is more important is to achieve the integration with the international market through the completion of this task, so as to promote the improvement of China's mold technology and comprehensive industry level. .