"Machine Substitution" In Zhejiang Textile Industry Cluster Development

The introduction of 120 computer looms has reduced the number of workers in a clothing company in Ningbo in the past few years to 800 now.

"Machine substitution" is rising in Zhejiang.

"Machine change, not want to do, but have to do".

Robots will reshape China?

Bill Gate once predicted that robots will repeat the way of personal computers to become the next technology to change the world. In fact, in recent years, the rapid development of robots in China seems to confirm this prediction.

In 2008, after the international financial crisis, the labor shortage appeared in China, which made industrial robots active in the manufacturing sector. The sales volume was 1/3 of the total sales volume in the first 24 years. It is predicted that the "12th Five-Year" period will be a key turning point in the development of China's industrial robot industry, and the market demand will grow at an annual rate of 15%~20%.

Industrial robot is an important automation equipment in modern manufacturing industry, which integrates mechanical, electronic, control, computer, sensor, artificial intelligence and other advanced technology. In addition to the currently widely used automobile manufacturing industry, it will be widely used in rough manufacturing, machining, welding, assembly and testing in the future.

For manufacturing in China, where labor costs are rising, raw material prices are rising, and export orders shrink, will the large number of robots face enormous challenges or boost their transformation and upgrading? This seems to be a proposition with "water can carry boats and overturn boats". On the other hand, when robots emancipate workers from monotonous and boring production lines, the workers who are crowding out jobs will go where they are, which is also the two sides of a coin.

The term "robot", born in science fiction, is full of fantasy. And how the robot will reshape the Chinese manufacturing, also has infinite imagination space. In any case, robots are coming, unstoppable. Let's approach it and get to know it.

In the new packing workshop of Zhejiang Tiansheng holding group in Ma Ma Town, Shaoxing, a cake shaped polyester filament is transported to the end along the production line. It is lightly grabbed by some two high manipulator and accurately placed in the cart. This reduced the cost of Tiansheng by two percentage points.

In Yongkang, Zhongtai holding group has introduced 12 fully automatic intelligent welding robots. The production line staff has been reduced from 120 to 30, and the one-time pass rate of products has increased to 99%.

In Jiaxing, Tian Zhi Hua Weaving Co., Ltd., relying on imported equipment from Japan and Germany, has greatly controlled manpower costs. Only the workers' wages are reduced by about 17000000 yuan a year.

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At the end of last year, the Zhejiang provincial economic work conference held that Zhejiang will accelerate the transformation and upgrading of industries and comprehensively promote "machine substitutions". Nowadays, more and more enterprises have tasted the sweetness brought by robots, and have joined in this change. How will "machine substitution" affect and change Zhejiang's manufacturing industry?

"We were forced out too."

In July 9th, reporters flew to Japan in Shaoxing. Spin Limited company witnessed the high efficiency of automation equipment production.

Flying cotton is a spinning enterprise, currently has more than 70 thousand spindles production capacity. Entering the automatic production workshop of the enterprise, relatively quiet space, clean ground, suitable temperature and sparse workers are strongly contrasting with the original impression that textile enterprises are noisy, dusty and high in room temperature.

"In recent years, the rapid rise in the cost of labor has made it very difficult for small profit cotton textile enterprises to get rid of it. We have been carrying out technological transformation and forced to come out." Wang Zhixiang, general manager of the company, admitted.

Wang Zhixiang's first contact with machine substitutions was 10 years ago. At that time, he saw that the pre spinning equipment and the carding machine were noisy and occupied a large area. Two units needed 6 employees in each shift. According to the "three class system", the enterprise needed 18 people. To this end, Fei Tian cotton invested about 3000000 yuan to introduce the blowing carding machine. After commissioning, not only did it not get rid of the noise in the past, it reduced the dust content in the workshop, but also reduced the occupied area of the equipment, and more importantly, it only needed one person to take charge of the class, and the quality of the product was greatly improved.

The first test of Wang Zhixiang's knife is that he won't benefit from machine substitutions. In 2010, flying Japanese cotton took advantage of the opportunity to move to the new site, investing tens of millions of yuan to introduce 35 sets of collective doffing spinning machines, 15 German and Japanese automatic winding machines and other spinning equipment.

Ningbo Noble Clothing Co., Ltd. because of the introduction of 120 computer looms, the number of workers in the past few years reduced to 800 dozens of people. General manager Zhu Feilong wrote accounts to reporters: each loom can make 10 to 15 sweaters 12 hours a day, one worker can manage 4 such machines, 120 machines are worth 700 workers, and the machine can work 24 hours. According to the wages of workers now, the use of looms can save 20 million yuan a year. In the future, as wages rise, they will surely save more. "Although looms cost hundreds of thousands of yuan, they are worth it," Zhu Feilong said.

The attempt of the two companies is not a case in Zhejiang. According to the Zhejiang Provincial Commission of information, in the first 4 months of this year, the province has invested 116 billion 600 million yuan in industrial technological transformation, an increase of 37.3% over the same period last year. Technological transformation investment accounted for 60.6% of industrial investment, an increase of 7 percentage points over the same period last year.

"Sales momentum is so good that we didn't expect".

However, the cost of "machine substitution" is not low. It is understood that more than 90% of the automation equipment used by manufacturing enterprises in Zhejiang is from abroad, and foreign equipment is not only expensive, but also not necessarily suitable for domestic enterprises, and needs two refitting and debugging.

Reporters have learned that some Zhejiang enterprises are breaking through the technical difficulties in this field, enabling local made robot equipment to serve local enterprises.

A year ago, Yao Jianli, general manager of Hangzhou KOH Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd., it was hard to imagine that Japanese customers would come to buy their company's soldering machine. "This Japanese guest tried my machine, thought it was good, bought two units, and this year he bought two units." Yao Jianli said.

It was only two years after the establishment of the Duke. It was founded by several Post-80 core technicians. Yao founded that the project was promising and bought it last year. At present, more than half of the company's 20 employees are R & D personnel, with an average age of less than 30 years old. "Unexpectedly, only two years later, Japan's famous air conditioning brand and Germany's most famous household appliance brand came to us."

Yao Jianli said that more than 10 solder machines had been sold in the first half of this year, and orders received rose sharply. The reason why we can get the market quickly is the price advantage of our products. "The same capacity and technology, the price of a soldering machine imported equipment is several times that of our product. However, we did not expect such a good sales momentum.

Not only the company, but many production robots in Zhejiang province have achieved a significant increase in output value this year. Zhejiang Huili Technology Co., Ltd. develops and produces various kinds of auxiliary tools such as manipulator. It is estimated that in the first quarter of this year, the output value of the enterprise has been equivalent to half of that of last year. Jiaxing's Rui Hong precision machinery Limited by Share Ltd developed a number of 6 joint mechanical arms last year, with a monthly output of 300 thousand units.

For small and micro enterprises, this road is not so easy.

"Machine replacement is not a problem that companies want to do, but have to do." Zhou Zhenfeng, an associate professor at Jiaxing University, who has been conducting enterprise research, believes that the continuous increase in labor costs has made many small profits enterprises almost without profits, and a large number of manual operations are also not conducive to quality control and enterprise management.

Zhuge Jian, director of the technological transformation Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Commission of letters, looks at the fact that the low cost advantage of Zhejiang is no longer in place. From the perspective of capital, talent and other factors, we still need to accumulate a certain period of time. Instead, "machine substitution" is the upgrading shortcut for small and medium-sized enterprises to learn and use quickly.

In the face of the good situation, some experts have reminded that "machine substitution" is just the beginning in Zhejiang. At present, the completion or ongoing updating of the automatic production line is mainly a number of powerful large enterprises. For the small and micro enterprises, this road is not so easy.

The first is huge investment. It is understood that the introduction of advanced production equipment, some hardware input reached million yuan or even tens of millions of yuan, and the cost recovery may take 3~5 years. Many small and micro enterprises do not necessarily have financial strength. They can only "have more than enough strength".

"Machine substitution" does not just mean updating the production line. If we can not improve the quality of workers, we will also limit their effectiveness. Lan Jianping, director of the Zhejiang Institute of industrial economics, said that in the transformation from traditional industries to modern industries, the simple and repetitive work has been drastically reduced, and the size of enterprises is no longer determined by the number of employees. Machine substitution requires front-line staff to transform to knowledge-based producers as soon as possible.

Zhou Zhenfeng also believes that software investment is more difficult than hardware input. He told reporters that many small and micro enterprises themselves lack technical departments and personnel, and it is difficult to develop new technology and equipment independently, which requires equipment development, manufacturing and other related support. The question is whether there is enough demand in an industrial cluster to support the production of new equipment. Different products of each enterprise will bring personalized equipment needs, and the cost of research and development and maintenance of hardware and software will be higher, and the ability of small and micro enterprises in this aspect will be very weak.

Zhou Zhenfeng suggested that the characteristics of industrial clusters in Zhejiang are quite obvious. The government should give support to equipment and technology research and development in a targeted manner. From the enterprise side, "machine replacement" does not have to be one step in place. Weaker enterprises may start with purchasing simple processing equipment, and then gradually update the equipment according to the needs of different stages.