We’ve already known that manufacturing is China's business card, especially the manufacture of large-scale and complex products. Nevertheless, with the rising cost of human and material resources in China and the recent Sino - US trade friction, the shortcomings of China's manufacturing sector, especially in the frontier of science and technology, are exposed themselves to the public.
From this paper, first of all, we would briefly review the development process of the manufacturing industry, then look at the current stage of China's manufacturing industry, at last, analyze the advantages and disadvantages of China manufacturing.
From industry 1.0 to industry 4.0
The word of Industry 4.0 was firstly appeared at the Hanover industrial fair in 2011. By October 2012, the German industry 4.0 working group proposed the implementation proposal of industry 4.0 to the German federal government. The concept was officially launched at the Hanover industrial exhibition in April 2013. The core concept of "industry 4.0" is the introduction of the Internet and intelligent models into manufacturing.
In fact, the classification of industry 1.0 to 3.0 is based on the change of manufacturing mode.
Industry 1.0, in fact, refers to the first industrial revolution. The great development of steam engine made the manufacturing industry shift from manual work to mechanization. The most typical representative of that period was the mechanized textile factory.
And industry 2.0, the second industrial revolution, the use of electricity led to large-scale manufacturing. The most typical manufacturing representative is the assembly line of Ford Motor Company .
The so-called industry 3.0 is the great development of information technology that brings the automation of machines, such as the fully automatic Coca Cola production line. Human beings have been greatly liberated both physically and mentally.
And industry 4.0, its outstanding feature is the introduction of "information physics integration System", known as cyber-physical System .That is to say, the data is used to connect workshops, production lines and production equipment, and the Internet technology is used to achieve intelligentization.
The current situation of China manufacturing industry
What stage of development is China manufacturing at? What are the future trends?
For now, the China manufacturing industry is still between industry 2.0 and industry 3.0. However, although the informatization and systematization capacity of our manufacturing industry is still far behind those of the manufacturing strong countries : Germany, Japan and the United States, the apple phone is not made in Japan and Germany, but in China.
Germany, which proposed industry 4.0, is not a pioneer of global cutting-edge technology or a leader of the global economy, and does not seem to have the ability to surpass the US with industry 4.0 advantage. Instead, China has become an indispensable manufacturing base for global innovative companies.
Strengths: efficient organization and coordination of a complete industrial chain
Shenzhen, one of the most dynamic cities in China, not only has the most complete mobile phone manufacturing integration capability, but also has a large number of engineers who can implement innovative design into industrial mass production.
It’s said that when Mr. Jobs was alive, President Barack Obama asked him, 'can you move all your overseas factories back?' Well, we’ve known that it's not just Trump talking about made in America.
Then Jobs said, we make a change in the United States, the amended message immediately will send to the Shenzhen factory, and their engineers will immediately start action, fully, in the industrial chain and production line to adjust. Within 2 hours, their adjustment will be completed, and the workers will enter the production line with the adjusted way for production. The new products can be shipped to the United States within 24 hours after the adjustment.
If the U.S. can do the same, I can move the plant back, and Obama has nothing to say.
Of course, it must be said that Apple's success is not only to make full use of China's complete manufacturing industry chain, but more importantly, to realize the ecology of software and application based on its own powerful hardware.
If the App Store is not an open platform designed by the following software, the application will be ecological, and it is far from enough to make mobile phones by relying on the industrial chain.
Therefore, if you want to produce high-end products, mass production is only the first step, and effective integration with other value chains is necessary to realize the full potential of products.
In addition to the mobile phone industry, the automotive industry also has high requirements for manufacturing integration capabilities.
In the early June of 2018, Tesla announced the construction of its first factory outside the United States in Shanghai, mainly producing batteries and assembled vehicles. Negotiations are underway with the Shanghai local government.
Why did they choose Shanghai? In addition to bullish outlook for the Chinese market, the most important thing is that Shanghai has the most complete automotive manufacturing chain in China.
To be sure, Chinese manufacturing is the best place to support scientific and technological innovation. It is the real advantage of China's manufacturing industry to be able to support the mass production of any high-tech products in an open way.
The reason is very simple, manufacturing industry must serve industry. At the present stage, the core requirements is not to improve the quality of existing products, but to create a more innovative products, while industrial 4.0 is in the service of the secondary contradictions, namely how to build better existing products, and we’ve known that China's manufacturing capabilities is mainly to serve the principal contradiction, namely how to create a update products.
Of course, it is also necessary for China's manufacturing industry to constantly improve the scientific and technological level and informatization level of the whole manufacturing ecological chain on the basis of giving full play to its innovation advantages.
Weaknesses: the technical level needs to be improved
MIUI, for example, is now the best company to integrate China's manufacturing supply chain. There's no question about MIUI's rapidly increasing popularity in recent years.It is well known that MIUI is characterized by "high cost performance".
The most critical factor to achieve this is that MIUI has strong supply chain control ability, which can reduce the cost of each link to the greatest extent on the basis of guaranteeing quality.But the problem is that this chain was not built by itself. It was just very good at integrating and mobilizing existing chains. As a result, although most of MIUI's products are cheap and fine, most of them are not high-tech enough.
Of course, it is unrealistic to elevate the manufacturing level in isolation, and the best approach is to serve the cutting-edge technology industry and make cutting-edge products using the manufacturing advantages to strive for cooperation with more scientific and technological products to further improve the technological content.
Take the information identification industry, along with the technical innovation promotion and popularization, the intelligent terminals third-party mobile payment market scale continuous growth, in 2015 the third-party mobile market size was reaching to 16.36 trillion RMB, up 104.20% year-on-year, compared with 2010 annual compound growth rate of 142.06%, according to the forecasts, by 2018 the size of the market is expected to exceed 52.11 trillion RMB.
Datasource : Internet data
And with the continuous development of QR code technology and application in the field of development, image scanning technology began to gradually achieve the replacement of the laser scanning technology, and information literacy equipment has become an indispensable infrastructure in commodity retail, logistics, warehousing, product traceability, industrial manufacturing, medical health, electronic commerce and transportation information system, so the demand for the bar code identification equipment market is growing rapidly.
According to the data, the global sales volume of handheld bar code scanner, stationary POS scanner and stationary industrial scanner is expected to reach $1.164 billion, $360 million and $498 million respectively by 2018, with a compound growth rate of 4%, 3% and 7% respectively between 2013 and 2018.
From the global market, because the bar code recognition technology of optical design, chip design, software development technology, communication technology, c tional companies such as Symbol ( Acq by ZEBRA),Honeywell, Datalogic,Cognex and others have been developing in this field of bar code recognition for many years, and take the lead in the brand and technology.
Therefore, if China's manufacturing industry wants to reach a new level, it should not focus on the development of manufacturing technology itself, but on the manufacturing object itself. Because manufacturing is not an end in itself, it is a means.
China's complete manufacturing industry chain already has the ability to support global innovation. In the future, it must be deeply integrated with global innovation.
Of course, the informatization and intelligence level of each manufacturing link needs to be improved rapidly. Only in this way can we achieve mass production of high-tech products and better support global innovation.
Summary
After explained the positioning and development status of China manufacturing, analyzed its advantages and disadvantages, here summarized the following three points:
Firstly, Chinese manufacturing is the world's first and unique market in terms of scale, complexity and openness.
At present, China and the United States are in a sensitive period of trade war. There is no need to place too much emphasis on the ability of "made in China" in the world which has no real significance in optimizing its own industrial layout. China's manufacturing sector should keep a low profile.
Secondly, made in China, the key question now is not what capacity of being made, but what can be made. The concept of industry 4.0 is not value enough for China at the present stage, and even misleading.Because manufacturing is only a link in the industrial chain, it is used to support innovation and product landing. The value of China's manufacturing industry can be maximized only if it is connected with advanced global technologies.
Thirdly, the complete industrial chain of China manufacturing is the best place to support scientific and technological innovation.
However, according to the thinking of task decomposition, the informatization and intelligence level of each manufacturing link needs to be improved rapidly. Only in this way can global innovation be better supported.
References :
iResearch http://www.iresearch.cn/
National Bureau of Statistics : http://www.stats.gov.cn/