China's large-scale infrastructure construction and the concentrated explosion of advanced technologies such as 5G have given construction machinery a large-scale application scenario, thus fostering a powerful industry. China's construction machinery industry has begun an unprecedented fast catch-up, and squeezed into the world's construction machinery power lineup. Although there are still many "stuck neck" problems unsolved, in the context of the turbulent fourth industrial revolution, the huge Chinese construction machinery industry has ushered in the historical task of reconstructing industrial interconnection while developing.
Chinese construction machinery solves the "stuck neck" problem
Construction machinery is a business card of "Made in China", and many equipment can be described as "big country heavy equipment". The problem of "neck stuck" in its key parts has always been a concern. The reporter learned in Changsha, the "city of construction machinery" and other places, that in recent years, the localization rate of key parts and components in the domestic construction machinery industry has continued to increase, and can be "topped", but some high-end parts and components still rely on imports. There is still a gap between "good use". And as the industry accelerates its intelligent and digital transformation, technical problems such as controllers and sensors are now in front of enterprises and urgently need to be solved.
Domestically-made parts and components are "topper"
Sany Heavy Industry "No. 18 Factory" located in Changsha Economic Development Zone, Hunan, is a busy production scene. The prominent position of the workshop displays not the honors obtained by the enterprise, but various key components such as engines, motors, bearings, and hydraulic parts. The staff said that these key components are all designed and manufactured by Sany, and they have been fully applied.
This is a microcosm of the industry's breaking the bottleneck of key components. In fact, the construction machinery industry has a "stuck neck" problem for a long time. As a result, the number of excavators produced in the Chinese market before 2010 was determined by foreign cylinder companies. At that time, domestic cylinders had poor sealing performance and were prone to oil leakage, and the cylinders needed for excavators could only be imported.
In 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic will spread globally, and some domestic construction machinery companies are facing the severe situation of the suspension and reduction of overseas parts suppliers, which once again sounded the alarm for the safety of the supply chain. A person in charge of an enterprise told reporters that in June last year, the supply of a certain foreign brand of automobile chassis was cut off, and the OEM had to quickly look for alternative products in China.
However, this crisis has not really caught the neck of the domestic construction machinery industry. In the view of industry insiders, this has benefited from the continuous increase in R&D investment in the entire industry in recent years and the promotion of the localization of key parts and components, and domestic parts and components can be "beatable" at critical moments.
According to the analysis of the China Machinery Industry Federation, under the guidance of the national "strong base" project and the pull of market demand, a group of key components with independent intellectual property rights have achieved major breakthroughs in technology and large-scale applications. Some core components " The problem of "stuck neck" has been alleviated.
Take XCMG as an example. Of the key technologies that this company broke through during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, 20% were "stuck neck" technologies. Nowadays, XCMG cranes, excavators and other mainframes have realized full-spectrum systematic matching, and the self-made rate of hydraulic parts, transmission parts, and electrical parts has increased rapidly.
"Key components are an area where investment is large and hard to be effective in a short period of time. Once they are'stucked', it will be uncomfortable." said Wang Min, chairman of Xugong Group Construction Machinery Co., Ltd.. Nowadays, there are many domestic research and development activities. The results 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 component companies to conduct R&D and industrialization of key components through independent innovation and collaborative innovation. This host company has a lot of key components that are "sounding". For example, Sany ZTE has become one of the largest and most diverse hydraulic cylinder production bases in China, and Sany's self-produced engines and chassis have begun to be used in engineering Machinery and heavy trucks.
Xiang Wenbo, president of Sany Heavy Industry, believes that if key components are too dependent on foreign countries, the industrial chain will be very fragile. This is both a safety issue and a cost issue. After several years of hard work, Sany's domestic deployment rate has continued to increase, which has enhanced the overall competitiveness of the company.
Raise to the "last 10%"
The reporter learned that although construction machinery parts and components have made great progress, there is still the problem of "the lack of high-end products and the homogeneity of mid- and low-end products". High-end hydraulic parts, high-end chassis, large-tonnage engines and other parts are imported in large quantities, facing constraints such as high prices, long cycles, and unstable supply.
Sun Changjun, vice president of Zoomlion, believes that in the field of low-end equipment, parts and components are gradually being replaced by domestic products, but some high-end key parts and components still rely on imports from Europe, America, and Japan. At present, China's leading construction machinery companies are already in the first camp in the global industry. Once companies enter the stage of "high-end competition" and "boutique competition", they may be "stuck".
The reporter learned that due to gaps in materials, design, and manufacturing processes, some domestic key components are lacking in stability, reliability, and durability, causing customers to dare not try and OEMs dare not use them. For example, a large tonnage crane is required for the lifting of a nuclear power plant, and customers have no idea about domestically made key components and still have to use foreign products. Excavators are called "the jewel in the crown of construction machinery". Due to their high performance requirements, a large number of engines are equipped with foreign brands.
In addition, domestically produced key parts and components still lack innovation, and some parts are still in the stage of imitating foreign products. In particular, cutting-edge products lag behind others. For example, the "single-engine" engine for truck cranes was first launched by German companies, and domestic companies followed up and learned.
Wang Min believes that China's construction machinery industry has solved 90% of the problems, but the most important thing is to overcome the last 10%, which is like climbing the last few hundred meters of Mount Everest. The core parts and components of China's construction machinery industry must "mainly aim at high-end and play high-end" in order to make progress towards "high-tech, high-tech and independent".
On the one hand, we must attach importance to basic innovation. He Qinghua, chairman of Sunward Intelligent, said that to break through the design "threshold" of high-end key components, it is not something that can be solved by "moving and spending money." Focus on research and development. Regarding the problem of too much investment in R&D parts by a single OEM, the market is too small, and it is not cost-effective, you can guide the investment fund of the OEM to focus on the construction and support of high-end core parts companies, and ultimately radiate the entire industry.
On the other hand, some people in the industry suggest learning from the new energy vehicle support policy on the demand side, subsidizing end users, guiding and encouraging the use of domestic key components, and truly nurturing the market to solve the problem that domestic products were not accepted and there was no way to improve in the past. And iterative issues.
Explore new topics in smart transformation
At present, the construction machinery industry is accelerating the intelligent and digital transformation, and major companies are deploying smart manufacturing plants, and new equipment such as 5G remote control excavators, unmanned cranes, unmanned road rollers, and unmanned mixer trucks are emerging in an endless stream. The reporter learned that traditional manufacturing companies have a weak foundation in the field of intelligence and digitization, and they are facing some new "stuck necks" from R&D and design to production and service links.
The relevant person in charge of the Equipment Industry Department of the Hunan Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology said that the original manufacturing industry’s "stuck neck" was mainly in certain core components, such as engines and hydraulic parts. With the upgrading of intelligence, the more important "stuck neck" "The problem is manufacturing equipment involving high-end precision machining.
The reporter saw in the intelligent manufacturing workshop of a construction machinery company that there were hundreds of industrial robots in the entire 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 intelligence are inseparable from "algorithms", and now most of them are foreign algorithms.
Not only that, industrial software such as simulation analysis required by the construction machinery industry, controllers called the "brains" of construction machinery, and sensors all over the equipment also need to be imported in large quantities. The R&D personnel of a construction machinery company said that the controller requires high reliability, and foreign companies do not open the "lower layer" of the controller (that is, the driver that matches the hardware, which is equivalent to the Android system of the mobile phone). Domestic companies are controlled by others. Be able to program small applications on its platform.
The above-mentioned person in charge of the industry and information department suggested that we should vigorously promote the breakthrough of short-board equipment, and guide enterprises to make full use of digital and network technologies 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 systems, and make up for shortcomings such as key equipment, basic components, and system software as soon as possible.
Industry insiders pointed out that to solve the new "stuck neck" problem, traditional manufacturing companies cannot do it alone, but must integrate industry resources to form an industrial ecosystem with complementary capabilities, shared benefits, and shared risks. The reporter learned that some companies have been "going hand in hand" with domestic suppliers, exploring the construction of collaborative innovation models in the intelligent and digital age.
Zoomlion's Digital Transformation Record
In Changsha, the "city of construction machinery", Zoomlion is an "veteran" enterprise. Its predecessor was the Sha Construction Machinery Research Institute, the former Minister of Construction. In the digital wave, it is another "new player" who is brave enough to try new things. Recently, the reporter walked into this top five global construction machinery company and talked with Zhan Chunxin, chairman of Zoomlion, to explore the context of its digital transformation.
Intelligent product entry
Around 2014, the construction machinery industry went into a trough after the last round of "blowout" growth. When the industry was booming before, everything was extensive, and tower cranes that hadn't had time to paint could be bought directly by customers. When the market is down, where is the way forward?
At that time, this question lingered in Zhan Chunxin's mind. As an engineer, he decided to return to the origin of "good products". The "Industry 4.0" of foreign companies inspired him. The core of this concept is "embedded sensors."
From the intelligentization of products, it has become the digital path of Zoomlion. Zoomlion puts forward the "three self" of 4.0 products, that is, through the installation of embedded sensors, the product can realize self-diagnosis, self-adjustment, and self-adaptation, so that the equipment can "perceive, have a brain, and think".
A 3200 ton crawler crane is used for hoisting the outer containment dome of nuclear power plants. There are several basketball courts in the dome. Lifting, luffing, raising hook, walking translation, adjustment, and dropping hook must be done in one go, and each bolt must be tightly connected. Zoomlion has installed more than 100 sensors on the crane to sense pressure, load, speed and other conditions in real time, enabling it to complete difficult movements "lightly and accurately".
Up to now, nearly 300 4.0 products of Zoomlion have been rolled off the production line, and 4.0 products accounted for more than 90% of the company's new product sales.
After the product is intelligent, the traditional manufacturing industry, which has been accumulated and evolved by the experience of masters in the past, is equipped with an "accelerator". Sun Changjun, vice president of Zoomlion, said that the original construction machinery and equipment were isolated, and now each device is equipped with sensors. Engineers can know the status of the product while sitting at home, and the speed of product error correction, iteration and innovation has been greatly accelerated.
The big data of intelligent products is gathered into Zoomlion's own industrial Internet platform-Yungu Industrial Internet of Things platform. At present, this platform has connected about 450,000 sets of equipment assets worth 100 billion yuan, and collected more than 9,000 kinds of data parameters, including working hours, pressure, gears, fuel consumption and other types of working conditions data of construction machinery and equipment. .
Yang Hui, deputy general manager of Zhongke Yungu, said that based on these data, remote health assessment, life prediction and predictive maintenance of key components can be carried out, from passive services to "active and predictive services."
"Product + sensor" goes a step further, and can also "+ artificial intelligence". Zoomlion applies this to smart agricultural machinery and smart agriculture. For example, the harvester recognizes the growth and fall of crops through machine vision, and automatically adjusts the height of the header to improve work efficiency.
Business model reengineering
Product intelligence is only the first step. As an enterprise manager, Zhan Chunxin is thinking about extending digitalization to business models and business management.
The traditional business model of the construction machinery industry is the distribution agency system. The disadvantages of this model are low efficiency, high cost, untimely service, poor customer experience, and the company's ability to control risks is not strong.
"In the digital age, we can't stay the same." The change touches the inertial thinking that has formed for a long time. Naturally, the resistance is not small, but Zhan Chunxin has a firm attitude: we must subvert the tradition and do business in accordance with the "Internet thinking".
The specific approach is: the entire marketing organization is "extremely flat," and "end-to-end" management is carried out between enterprises and customers. All customers and salespeople enter the big data platform of the company's headquarters, and product, financial and other data are clear in the background.
Yang Hui said that the new model achieves a "win-win". On the one hand, it reduces costs, improves product competitiveness, and enterprises are more effective in preventing risks such as customer equipment operation status and credit; on the other hand, customers can also efficiently manage equipment through the big data platform and obtain a series of Value-added services.
Overseas markets follow the same logic. In the past, it was difficult for companies to "go global" to find people who understand both the product and the local market and customer needs. The salesmen dispatched from China rely on a few agents, and some businesses can't do many orders in a year, which gradually becomes unsustainable.
Zoomlion changed its gameplay, using the model of "overseas airport + localized ground forces + product division", and on a unified big data platform, overseas business has also achieved flat management.
Zhan Chunxin said that now companies and customers can achieve "end-to-end" overseas. It is precisely because of the big data platform and Internet technology that this change in business model is possible.
The "Factory of the Future" is here
Another scenario of digital transformation is on the production line, which is also disruptive.
Not long ago, Zoomlion’s smart tower crane factory in Changde, Hunan was put into production, including 1 "smart factory", 2 "lighthouse workshops", 3 "smart warehouses", and 4 "black light production lines". , The production efficiency is increased to one tower crane off the assembly line every 18 minutes.
This is just the digital "outpost" of Zoomlion's factory. Located in the Zhonglian Smart Industry City in Changsha High-tech Zone, the project covers an area of more than 10,000 mu, with a planned total investment of about 100 billion yuan. According to the plan, Zoomlion Smart Industry City will build more than 7 world-leading lighthouse factories, more than 300 smart production lines, and a big data center with an area of tens of thousands of square meters.
This is the "Future Factory" of Zoomlion "Facing the future and leading for 20 years". Through the multi-dimensional integration of digital operations across the value chain, intelligent production scheduling, industrial AI, digital twins, full-process intelligent logistics, and industrial Internet big data platforms, Zoomlion Smart Industry City will become a “sense and think” smart factory.
"Future changes will be subversive upgrades. Under the drive of digitalization, companies will be more sensitive, agile, and flexible, and even production and manufacturing can be platform-based." For Zhan Chunxin, this construction machinery company, which has been established for nearly 30 years, is digitalized. There are endless possibilities for transformation.
