The backwardness of China's mold manufacturing industry and its reasons

Now, the level of mold production technology has become one of the important indicators to measure the level of manufacturing of a country's products, because the mold to a large extent determines the product's quality, efficiency and new product development capabilities.

Although China's total mold production ranks among the top in the world, the overall level of design and manufacturing is lower than that of Germany, the United States, Japan, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Portugal, South Korea, and Singapore. The gap is mainly reflected in the following six aspects.

(1) The domestic self-provision rate is less than 80%, among which the supply of middle- and low-end molds is oversupplied, and the self-ration rate of medium and high-grade molds is less than 60%. Mould is an important process foundation for manufacturing industry. In China, mold manufacturing belongs to special equipment manufacturing industry. Although China started to make molds and use molds very early, it has not formed an industry for a long time. Until the late 1980s, the Chinese mold industry entered the fast lane of development. In recent years, not only the state-owned mold enterprises have made great progress, but also the development of foreign-funded enterprises and township and village (individual) mold enterprises has been rapid.

(2) The organizational structure, product structure, technical structure, and import and export structure of the company are not reasonable enough. Most of China's mold manufacturing plants are self-produced tooling workshops (branches), and most of the professional mold factories are "large and complete" and "small and complete". Most foreign mold companies are "small and special" and "small and fine." The proportion of self-produced and self-made molds in China is as high as 50% or more, and over 70% of foreign molds are commercial molds. The proportion of large-scale, precision, complex, long-life molds in the total domestic molds is only about 30%, and foreign countries are more than 50%. In 2003, the ratio of imports and exports of moulds was 4:1, and the net import after imports and exports was US$1.03 billion. It was the country with the largest net import volume. In this regard, the International Model Association Secretary-General Luo Baihui said that the backwardness of China's mold is only a relative concept. In recent years, China's mold industry has accelerated the pace of institutional reform and mechanism conversion, and the industrial structure has become increasingly reasonable. This is mainly manifested in two aspects.

The first is that more and more foreign-funded enterprises see the ever-growing Chinese mold market entering the Chinese mold market one after another. Many internationally-known auto mold companies and injection mold companies have also entered China one after another, and they have entered the Chinese market very rapidly. The speed is also very fast. For example, Japan Toyota set up a factory in Tianjin. It takes less than one year to plan, build, and produce. The American company Sekely is a large stamping die factory in North America and built a factory in Shanghai in 2006. The second phase of the project is mainly stamping dies. Magna of North America has built a certain scale of stamping factories in the airport of Tianjin in 2006. In the areas of Guangdong and Shenzhen in southern China, Hong Kong capital, Taiwanese capital, and foreign-funded enterprises abound. The total sales volume of molds has become China's largest area. Companies entering the Chinese market not only bring funds to the Chinese market, but also bring advanced technology, equipment and factory management.

In addition, the rise of private mold companies is also a major adjustment in the structure of the entire Chinese mold industry. Private mold companies have dominated the entire mold market. According to general information, in the past few years, people mentioned that auto mold enterprises may think of companies such as FAW, Tianqi and Dongfeng. However, this pattern has been broken now, and more and more private auto mold enterprises have begun to enter. At the front end of the industry, they stepped on the pace of the times and followed the footsteps of the advanced level of international mold development, setting off another wave of booms in the Chinese mold market. Many emerging private mold companies are good at summing up the development process of the entire Chinese mold industry, drawing valuable lessons from them and digesting them into the company's design plans and development strategies. Private-owned mold companies are more free in terms of fund use, prompting them to go faster than state-owned companies in the market. Many private mold companies also attach great importance to the company's brand building, focusing on the enterprise's information construction, focusing on the development of the company's international market, and to achieve the professional production of the mold.

(3) The level of mold products and production technology are generally lower than the international advanced level, but the mold production cycle is much longer than the international advanced level. The low level of product is mainly reflected in the accuracy, cavity surface roughness, life, and the complexity of the mold; the low level of technology is mainly reflected in the design, processing, process equipment and so on.

(4) Weak development capacity and poor economic efficiency. The proportion of technical personnel in China's mold enterprises is relatively low, and their level is also low. They do not attach importance to product development and are often in a passive position in the market. According to Luo Baihui, the secretary-general of the International Association for Modeling, the average annual output of molds for each worker in the country is about 10,000 U.S. dollars, and most of the mold industry developed countries are 15 to 200,000 U.S. dollars, and some even reach 250 to 300,000 U.S. dollars. As a result, China's mold enterprises have poor economic returns, and most of them have low profits. The state-owned enterprises have suffered a total loss and lack of stamina.

(5) Mold standardization level and use coverage of mold standard parts are low. The use rate of mold standard parts in foreign advanced countries is over 70%, and the coverage of domestic mold standard parts is only about 45%.

(6) Compared with the international advanced level, the management of mold enterprises is more backward than technology. The management is backward and easy to be neglected. Most of the domestic mold enterprises still use the extensive management mode of workshop-style extensive management in the past, and there are not many modern enterprise management.

China's plastic mold industry and its development needs compared with foreign advanced level, there are also six problems.

(1) Unbalanced development and low overall product quality. Although the products of individual companies have reached a fairly high level, some of the products of individual companies have reached or approached the international level, but overall, the accuracy of molds, cavity surface roughness, production cycle, life expectancy and other indicators with the advanced level in foreign countries. There is still a big gap. The overall level, including production methods and enterprise management, still has a gap of more than 10 years compared with foreign industrialized countries.

(2) The technological equipment is backward and the organization and coordination ability is poor. Although some enterprises have undergone technological transformation in recent years and the level of technological equipment has been relatively advanced, most of the company's technological equipment is still relatively backward. What is more important is that our corporate organization has poor coordination capabilities and it is difficult to properly integrate or mobilize social resources for my own use. This makes it difficult to undertake relatively large projects.

(3) Most companies have weak development capabilities. On the one hand, the proportion of technicians is low, and the level is not high enough. On the other hand, less investment in scientific research and development, and more importantly, the concept is backward, and the importance of development is insufficient.

(4) Management is even worse than technology. Backwardness in technology is often easy to see, and management is sometimes difficult to realize. The gap between the management of mold enterprises at home and abroad is very obvious, and the problems caused by the management gap are often more serious than the technical gap.

(5) With strong market demand, it is still difficult to keep pace with the development of production. The contradiction between supply and demand is difficult to solve for a time. The situation that demand exceeds supply will continue for some time, especially in high-end products.

(6) The solution to the system and talent issues will take some time to come. In the socialist market economy, in the process of economic globalization, competitive industries, especially those that rely on special users like molds and require single production, many companies still have difficulties in adapting to the current system and operating mechanisms. Market. The quantity and quality of talent cannot keep up with the rapid development of the industry. Although all localities are working hard to solve these two problems, it will take time to get a better solution.

There are many reasons for the above gaps. Apart from the fact that the mold has not received the attention it deserves as a product for a long time, there are several other major reasons.

First, the system is not smooth and the foundation is weak.

Although the "three-funded" enterprises have already played a positive role in promoting the development of China's mold industry, private enterprises have developed rapidly in recent years and state-owned enterprise reforms are still underway. However, overall, the systems and mechanisms are not yet adapted to the market economy. Coupled with the weak foundation of the domestic mold industry, the development of the industry is still not satisfactory, especially the overall level and high-tech aspects.

Second, there is a serious shortage of talents, and too little investment is devoted to scientific research and technological development.

The mold industry is a technology-intensive and capital-intensive industry. With the progress of the times and technological development, there is an abnormal shortage of talents capable of mastering and applying new technologies, and senior mold fitters and enterprise management personnel are also in short supply. Luo Baihui believes that due to the poor efficiency of mold companies and the lack of attention to scientific research and technological development, overall the investment in the mold industry in scientific research and technological research is too small. The difficulties of private enterprises also affect the technological transformation of many companies, resulting in Little progress has been made in science and technology.

Third, the level of technological equipment is low, and the matching is not good and the utilization rate is low.

Although many domestic companies have adopted advanced processing equipment, the overall level of equipment is still much behind that of foreign companies. In particular, equipment NC ratio and cad/cam application coverage are much lower than foreign companies. Due to institutional and financial reasons, the introduction of equipment is not complete, equipment and accessories are unworthy of the image, and the problem of low equipment utilization has not been solved for a long time. The low level of equipment has brought problems such as too high a proportion of fitters in China's mold enterprises.

Fourth, the degree of specialization, standardization, commercialization is low, and collaboration is poor.

Due to the long-term impact of “big and full” and “small and complete”, many mold companies are lagging behind in the concept, and the professional production level of mold enterprises is low, the specialized division of labor is not fine, and the degree of commercialization is also low. At present, the domestic production of molds, commodity molds only accounted for about 45%, and its production for its own use. Cooperation between mold companies is not good, it is difficult to complete the larger-scale mold set tasks, compared with the international level to be behind many. The low level of standardization of molds and the low coverage of use of standard parts also have a great influence on the quality and cost of the molds, and have a particularly great influence on the mold manufacturing cycle.

Fifth, the technology related to mold materials and molds is behind.

The performance, quality, and variety of mold materials often affect the quality, life, and cost of molds. Compared with foreign imported steels, domestic mold steels have large gaps in quality and variety specifications. Poor performance of plastics, plates, equipment, etc., also directly affects the improvement of mold level.

The development of plastic molds has evolved with the development of the plastics industry. In recent years, people have become increasingly demanding for lightweighting, appearance and feel of various equipment and supplies, which provides a broader market for plastic products. The development of plastic products will inevitably require the development of plastic molds. The major users of plastic products such as automobiles, home appliances, office supplies, industrial electrical appliances, building materials, and electronic communications have all been operating at high levels in recent years and have developed rapidly. As a result, plastic molds have also developed rapidly. In 2007, China's (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan statistics, the same below) plastic mold sales were about 36.5 billion yuan.

Looking into the future, due to the overall good international and domestic macro environment, the major users of the domestic plastic mold industry will continue to develop at a relatively high speed, and plastic molds will also continue to develop rapidly. The major problems that currently exist are gradually being better resolved through exchanges and cooperation at home and abroad, through the joint efforts of the entire industry, and through common support from all sides.