This article is from the public number:Bottom Designer (ID: Bottom-upDesigner) author: Ivan Chen, the original title” industrial robots crash data behind ?????? “, the title figure comes from: vision China.
On the world’s largest industrial robot marketIs undergoing an unprecedented plunge. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, industrial robot production fell by 9.1% in the first nine months of this year, with the largest decline in August, a year-on-year decline of 19.3%.
The plunge represents one aspect of the industry, but from the absolute number of statistics, the conclusions are different. In the first nine months of this year, the output of industrial robots was 133,600 sets, while the cumulative output in the same period last year was 108,300 sets.
The production figures reflect another industry fact: the total size of the industry has expanded by about 23%.
Which one is the truth?
“This is a question of caliber calculation.” The staff of the National Bureau of Statistics told reporters that the statistical sample database is changing every year. According to the standard of 20 million yuan in main business income, when the income of the enterprise reaches this standard, it will be included. The statistical sample library, if it is below this standard, is even bankrupt, it will be eliminated.
In the case of statistics, when calculating the year-on-year data, it is the situation of the enterprises in the current sample library compared with the previous year. From the data, the output of the sample bank’s enterprises this year, although there has been a year-on-year decline, the overall aggregate output is higher than the output of the sample bank enterprises last year. Where is this increment coming? This only shows that many new companies have been added to the sample library, contributing to the production of industrial robots.
The data under different calibers has a completely different trend, showing the dramatic changes in the industrial robot market: the output of emerging industrial robot companies is erupting.
Besides this data, in the field of industrial robots, those small and medium-sized enterprises that seek breakthroughs and appear to be inferior are gradually emerging.
Return and advance
A group of orders from Li Baoqin’s company to BOE has just been delivered. Her Hongyou is intelligent in the manufacturing, production and sales of smart devices.
Although Li Baoqin, who started his business in 2008, has plans to manufacture smart equipment, the capital and environment do not support the industry that has entered high R&D investment at the beginning of the venture. What she did in her early years was trade. After deciding on the transition, in order to ensure sufficient funds, Li Baoqin made trade on the one hand, and “raised” the business of intelligent equipment manufacturing through the trade of funds, and hired R&D personnel with high salaries.
The development of China’s smart equipment manufacturing has begun in the last 10 years. In 2010, the proportion of China’s labor force began to show a downward trend, the demographic dividend advantage disappeared, and the demand for machine-changing labor surfaced.The industrial robot market is starting to take off. In the following years, the market has been in rapid growth.
After 2015, the market began to heat up, Germany proposed the concept of Industry 4.0, and smart factories, smart solutions, and smart warehousing began to receive attention. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from December 2015 to August 2018, China’s industrial robot production has maintained rapid growth, and the highest growth rate in September 2017 reached 103.2%. In 2017, Li Baoqin’s company turnover doubled.
Differentiation appeared in September 2018, and although the overall market is still growing, the old industrial robot companies are beginning to enter a recession. In the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, this year’s decline was 16.4%. It shows that the old industrial robot enterprises have entered a period of recession and began to fall.
This decline also has policy factors, and there is a decline in the analysis of government subsidies. But the drastic changes in demand at the industrial level are decisive.
In the industrial robot market, the automotive industry is a very important application industry. The sharp decline in sales in this area is an important factor in the overall decline in sales of industrial robots. In the industrial robot market, there is one of the world’s automobile manufacturing industries. In 2018, it sold more than 32,000 robots, and its sales dropped sharply by 25.4%.
A staff member of the technology research and development department of Xinsong Robot told the reporter, “My feeling is that the winter has arrived, especially in the automotive industry in the past two years, which has caused the auto parts manufacturers to have a hard time. Previous industrial robots and non- The standard automation equipment is used in the auto parts industry. Because the auto parts are large and standard, it is suitable for the transformation of intelligent equipment. This year, I feel that there are a lot less orders in this area.”
Gao Jie Capital Partner Liu Zhongqing said that the core application areas of the core application fields of robots in the world have been concentrated in the automotive industry in the past. This is because the automotive industry itself is a heavy asset investment field and has high requirements for product consistency. Gaojie Capital is an organization that focuses on early and high growth investments in the hard technology sector.
Car sales are sluggish, car companies are shrinking their investment plans, and the demand for industrial robots is plummeting. In the automotive industry, the “four big families” (Fanaco, ABB, Yaskawa, KUKA) dominate the foreign brand market. The rate is over 80%, and the sales of foreign-branded robots have suffered a large market impact.
In comparison, demand is booming in other areas where domestic companies are attacking. “The whole industry needs to be upgraded,” Li Baoqin said.
Shi Qunbo, founder of Liqun Automation, said that this year’s workThe overall industry of the robot industry is not good, but there are differences, and companies with characteristics are still growing steadily. Last year, Liqun Automation’s turnover exceeded 20 million. This is a national high-tech enterprise specializing in the development, production, sales and application of lightweight high-end industrial robots. It was established in 2011.
In the emerging industrial robot companies, mainly domestic companies are developing rapidly, because ABB, FANUC, KUKA and Yaskawa are mainly medium and high-end products, and the price and maintenance costs are very expensive.” Jena, Germany Xu Hui, Ph.D., from the Department of University Work, Industry and Sociology.
Gaojie Capital recently invested in two companies, mainly engaged in intelligent platforms for industrial robots and production equipment. “China’s industrial robots in the field of domestic alternatives.” Liu Jieqing, a partner of Gaojie Capital, said, “The foreign brands have experienced a sharp decline in growth rate of 70% last year, and sales of self-owned brand robots have continued to grow.”
Liu Zhongqing, an industrial robot company that they recently invested in, this company has a fully self-designed robotic core component production capacity of the robot body company, customers from two channels – integrator customers and end customers, most of which are burden Can not afford high prices, are purchasing parts and components on their own. In the first half of 2019, the company received more than 1,000 robot orders and became the top 2 in the Chinese market for Scara Robotics.
The case of Liu Zhongqing confirms the large demand for industrial robots by SMEs. “This demonstrates the huge incremental market space for industrial robots,” he said.
Tian Feng, Dean of Shangtang Industry Research Institute, said why companies must do industrial upgrading, “because the global competition is very intense.” In his research, he found a Chinese company that made lawn mower blades. An automated production line has increased production efficiency and knocked down the manufacturing companies of American lawn mower blades.
Duan Rongbin of Lingya Technology is a member of the traditional enterprise from Changjiang Business School. He is studying the MBA program of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Lingya Technology is the largest wire manufacturer in China.
“Traditional manufacturing industries such as Lingya have very low profits. If they do not carry out industrial upgrading, they are subject to annual staff costs, rising raw material prices and the economic situation at home and abroad. If they cannot train their own internal strengths, they will face It may be hit in the increasingly competitive.” Duan Rongbin said.
Li Baoqin established Guangdong Hongyou Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. in 2018 to further deepen cooperation with Dongguan Polytechnic. There are many different parts of a smart factory. Their main thing is the AGV intelligent handling part. Because of cooperation with the university, there is core technology, Hongyou’sThe price is at the middle level of the industry, but quality is the main point of appeal for the company. In 2019, Hongyou Intelligence promoted mobile robots and intelligent stereoscopic libraries in the market.
Transportation is the main application area of industrial robots. In addition to young industrial enterprises such as Li Baoqin, local companies have increased their market share in this market.
Li Baoqin’s new business has entered the threshold of large-scale enterprises this year, which means that once it is included in the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, this becomes the source of statistical data increments.
This month, she took two big orders. Recently, Li Baoqin discovered that the e-cigarette industry has been booming in the past two years, and plans to expand the business to the e-cigarette industry and smart home field. “We have done some stereoscopic libraries and AGV projects with some e-cigarette companies this year, which are very good.”
The ambition of small businesses
The market brought about by the transformation needs of SMEs is also one of the reasons for the growth of industrial robot production. A demand like this is not something that traditional methods can satisfy.
Take the chip industry chain as an example. Song Junwei, founder of Caixin.com, for example, “There are still 90,000 SMT factories in China. SMT equipment is very expensive, but there are no more ERP management tools in tens of thousands of SMT equipment factories. 20%, which is a heavy burden for a small factory, there are many opportunities here.”
Although many industrial robots have not yet been included in the statistics, their efforts are providing a growth chassis for industrial robots.
Xu Hui said that some domestic industrial robot companies fill the low-end market, and this part has a relatively large demand for quantity.
In Wangniudun Town, 42 kilometers away from Chang’an Town, Deng Shixiang’s factory is there. The wages of workers are increasing year by year. The carpet industry is fiercely competitive. He urgently needs to improve labor productivity. He can have a suitable machine to solve the automation of handmade carpets. And intelligent weaving.
The mechanical sound of Deng Yuxiang’s factory is roaring, and traditional craftsmanship collides with modern production at a distance of about 50 meters.
In the factory, six rows of shelves about five meters high are hung with carpets with patterned manuscripts. Workers are kneeling on the ladders and are using carpet guns to make patterns. This is the most time consuming and painstaking process in the handmade carpet process. The pricking machine has a certain weight, and there is a strong backing force in the process of needle movement. This requires the hand of the gun to be strong and stable, and in this case, the cutting of different color threads is also required.change.
Due to hard work, the recruitment of such jobs has become difficult. There is a shortage of manpower in the peak season, and the factory still has to pay various labor costs when there is no order delivery in the off-season.
Beside the big factory, a worker who looks like a 50-year-old is operating a five-meter-high machine and is constantly trying a variety of sewing routes against a carpet in front of him. This is their second generation. Carpet weaving robot.
Deng Shixiang has his own abacus. He said that the first is to replace the most complicated and costly manpower by introducing automation equipment. The second is to realize the climb of the industrial chain by selling intelligent equipment and climbing to the upstream of the industrial chain.
Achieve the transformation and upgrading of its own industry through the upgrading of production links, which is equivalent to eating more fish. This is the path of many traditional manufacturing industries.
The pioneer has already completed this turn. Gree Electric was only an air-conditioning company in the early days. Now Gree’s smart equipment business has formed an important sector.
For the second generation of textile robots, Deng Shixiang has undergone many twists and turns. Deng Shixiang has cooperated with a number of technicians and researchers at research institutes to develop hand-carpet automatic knitting machines, but for various reasons, cooperation has been suspended.
In the Deng Shixiang factory, the workers are taking the needles of the carpet. Chen Yifan / photo
Deng Shixiang’s carpet weaving factory is a labor-intensive industry. If you want to self-develop such a carpet weaving machine, you need to re-recruit the R&D team. This is not a viable option for a company like Yisen Carpet.
All he can do is to continue to participate in the technical matchmaking meeting organized by various units in Dongguan, and to find the technical experts he needs at the meeting. This is a process of finding a needle in a haystack.
Deng Shixiang found a goal he needed at a technical matchmaking conference—a teacher in the computer science department of Shanghai Jiaotong University.