Dongguan-made robots join hands with international giants: "intelligent manufacturing" is unstoppable

German KUKA industrial robot, Mande robot pneumatic spindle, FANUC welding robot... On the morning of June 8th, the International Intelligent Robot Exhibition-Zhenzong Machinery Exhibition was held at the Guangdong Modern International Exhibition Center in Houjie, Dongguan's intelligent manufacturing The equipment and internationally renowned brand products are displayed on the same site.

At present, Guangdong Province is advancing the "machine substitution" strategy. The scale of products related to robotics, such as information, home appliances, communications, and equipment manufacturing, has reached more than 300 billion yuan. Robots and intelligent systems will become the next wave of development in the manufacturing industry. The main driving force. The Dongguan Municipal Government has also set up a special fund for "machine substitution" to vigorously promote the implementation of "machine substitution" and support the development of the industrial robot industry.

At present, Dongguan focuses on the intelligent equipment manufacturing industry, from manufacturing products, buying equipment, and using machines to today's manufacturing machinery, manufacturing production lines, and manufacturing smart factories, leading the innovation and upgrading of the industrial system.

In this round of international competition in artificial intelligence, intelligent manufacturing has profoundly affected the division of the global intelligent manufacturing industry. In the fierce competition and cooperation with foreign giants, Dongguan's intelligent equipment industry is exploring the way forward.

A The localization of industrial robots is accelerating

Walking into the factory of Zhengye Technology in Songshan Lake, I saw that the robots were conscientious in their positions, and the front-end orders and subsequent logistics were also fully automated. This is version 3.0 of Smart Factory developed by Zhengye Technology. Mei Lingliang, the company's technical director, said that the technology is in a leading position in the industry and can even be benchmarked overseas.

Zhengye Technology has transformed from a small workshop into an equipment company oriented to the national market, and then entered the international market. It is the pioneer of the transformation and upgrading from "Made in Dongguan" to "Intelligent Manufacturing in Dongguan".

In the Jinsheng Precision Dongcheng plant, robots are busy in the factory, and workers only need to monitor and remotely control the machine in real-time from the control center or mobile phone. The "unmanned factory" that once appeared in science fiction movies has become a reality at Jinsheng Precision.

What's more commendable is that the intelligent equipment, numerical control system, and industrial software used by Jinsheng Precision have been localized, of which the equipment made in Dongguan accounts for a considerable proportion.

Wang Jian, CEO of Jinsheng Precision, said that in the past, Jinsheng Precision used foreign equipment in the process of production and processing. These equipment not only cost high, but also difficult to grasp the production data. It turns out that the data of foreign equipment operation is in the hands of the original manufacturer, and users cannot master big data, which is detrimental to the company's long-term production.

Later, with the breakthrough of domestic technology, Jinsheng Precision began to adopt "domestic products". Now Jinsheng Precision can easily complete the processes of data collection, production plan analysis, production model building, and intelligent production. Wang Jian said: “Today, in the production process, the integrated control system plays the role of the “brain”. The system collects data and issues instructions. It can also analyze big data in the cloud to detect equipment wear and tear in time. Improve the quality of the product."

Not only Jinsheng Precision, but also the multiplication pilot company Ruibida also used domestically-made equipment in the production process. The reporter walked into the Ruibida factory located in the Songshan Lake National High-tech Zone. There are only a few staff in the huge factory area, and only manipulators and industrial robots are working in an orderly manner.

What made the reporter even more amazed was that this set of intelligent manufacturing equipment was independently developed by Rapida, with a localization rate of over 99%. Zeng Jianjun, general manager of Dongguan Ruibida Technology Co., Ltd., talked about the reason for the "efforts" to develop robots. He said: "Our main business is the production of mobile phone screen glass. With the acceleration of the mobile phone industry, it is difficult to purchase robots out of the country to meet the needs of enterprise production. Self-developed worker robots have become the only way for enterprise development.

After determining his own R&D plan, Zeng Jianjun formed an enterprise R&D team represented by engineers and PhDs, thinking about the independent research and development of industrial robots. Now it seems that the results of the industrial robots developed by Rapida are gratifying. Since the realization of the machine replacement, Rapida's monthly output of touch screen glass is 8-10 million pieces, a 100-fold increase compared to the previous one.

Ruibida has tasted the "sweet soup" of Dongguan's "intelligent transformation", and realized intelligent transformation in many links such as fine carving, silk screen printing, baking, etc., from small glass manufacturing "playing" to the intelligent workshop. ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Zeng Jianjun said that at present, the company's core intelligent manufacturing equipment is 100% independent research and development, which not only mobilizes the enthusiasm of equipment manufacturers, but also shows that domestic intelligent manufacturing equipment can also be competent for the new mode of intelligent manufacturing in the industry.

The experience of Jinsheng Precision and Rapida has undoubtedly brought demonstration experience to other manufacturing companies. In July last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Provincial Government, and the Chinese Academy of Engineering held a national intelligent manufacturing pilot demonstration experience exchange meeting and intelligent manufacturing equipment application field experience exchange meeting in Dongguan, which confirmed the acceleration of the pace of localization of industrial robots.

B From chaser to leader and break the international monopoly

The acceleration in the adoption of domestically-made equipment by manufacturers is both an opportunity and a challenge for equipment manufacturers. Due to the shortcomings of technology and core components, many domestic robot companies have suffered, and they have also stimulated the enthusiasm and enthusiasm of equipment manufacturers to innovate and develop.

A palm-sized steel plate is put into the laser cutting machine. The operator adjusts the remote control in his hand. The sharp laser pulses up and down for 20 seconds, and radioactive petals are engraved on the steel plate... This is self-developed and produced by Zhengye Technology. UV laser cutting machine. It is worth noting that this equipment not only allows Zhengye Technology to break the foreign monopoly, but also gains a firm foothold in the domestic and overseas markets.

This laser machine condenses the self-developed and innovative results of the Zhengye Technology team. Since top foreign brands have decades of technology and brand accumulation, it is not easy for Zhengye Technology, a native of Dongguan, to grab orders from them. Mei Lingliang knows that the equipment used in China mainly relies on imported brands, and many companies need to import brands when purchasing equipment.

Such an "impression" not only keeps the price of equipment high, but also causes many smart manufacturing enterprises represented by Zhengye Technology to close their doors in the international market competition. In order to break the monopoly of international giants, Mei Lingliang led a group of engineers and technicians to form a research and development team. Until around 2005, through the joint efforts of the R&D center team, Zhengye Technology finally released the first instrument and equipment product with independent intellectual property rights, which can directly benchmark foreign top brands.

Following this equipment, Zhengye Technology continues to improve its technical process and product functions. It has successively developed automated X-ray inspection machines, automated paste reinforcement machines, and UV laser punching machines, all of which broke the monopoly of overseas markets and not only promoted similar equipment The price has been greatly reduced, and it has gained a say in the industry.

In an international exhibition a few years ago, the latest product achievements exhibited by Zhengye Technology attracted widespread attention, and many foreign manufacturers came to the booth to discuss cooperation matters. At this time, an exhibitor representative from a leading brand company in the US industry ran to the booth of Zhengye Technology and said that Zhengye Technology had robbed their market. At that time, Mei Lingliang realized that Zhengye Technology was gradually transforming from a small workshop into a leader in the industry, and it was quite influential in the domestic and foreign markets.

The multiplication pilot company Jugang Machinery is also a representative of the industry's catching-up and becoming a leader. Entering the production workshop of Jugang Machinery, there are high-end CNC machine tools running non-stop in the workshop of 40,000 square meters.

"The five-axis and five-linkage drilling and attacking center we developed and produced is comparable to foreign giants, but the price is 70% of the price of foreign products." Huang Guangjing, general manager of Jugang Machinery, told reporters that after technological improvement and technological improvement , Our products are gradually narrowing the distance between Germany and Japan and other major industrial countries. This equipment has won the world's most powerful CNC system research and manufacturing company, FANUC, Japan.

From large industrial robots to small parts and accessories, a large number of Dongguan enterprises have relied on their keen sense of smell to conquer each of the technologies monopolized by foreign companies, enabling domestic manufacturing to reduce costs and achieve their own development.

For example, absolute encoders, which are equivalent to the "eyes" of machines, are a necessity for many manufacturing companies, and this technology is also monopolized overseas. And Yingdong Hi-Tech Automation Co., Ltd. is trying to break this pattern. Luo Rihui, deputy general manager of the company, said that the accuracy and reliability of the absolute encoder introduced by Yingdong High-Tech is no less than that of foreign brands, filling a gap in the field of important core components of domestic motion control.

To a certain extent, the rise of domestic intelligent equipment companies poses a threat to foreign manufacturers. According to an industry insider, foreign robot manufacturers have made concessions on prices for some domestically produced similar products that are relatively large in volume and competitive in the industry, with a drop of 15%-20%.

C Join forces with international giants to improve the level of "Dongguan Intelligent Manufacturing"

Although product quality, technology, cost-effectiveness and other aspects have won the trust of the market, in the long run, the road to localization of the robot industry is still very long. Back to Dongguan, the road to localization of smart manufacturing is also very long. In the manufacturing equipment industry in Dongguan, problems such as lack of supporting facilities for upstream and downstream enterprises, dependence on imports of core components, insufficient talents, and insufficient innovation capabilities are still prominent.

A few days ago, Yaskawa Electric, one of the "four big families" of robots recognized worldwide, signed a contract with Changying Precision, a pilot company for multiplication in Dongguan, to establish a joint venture company-Guangdong Tianji Robot Co., Ltd. in Songshan Lake. The new company will devote itself to the development of the latest generation of small six-axis industrial robots in order to change the status quo of poor quality domestic industrial robots and lack of core technology.

Based on the strategic development needs of both parties, the two parties have reached a higher level of in-depth cooperation at multiple levels such as capital, technology, talents, and industry applications to jointly build a leading robot enterprise. The person in charge of the company Mo Zhuoya said: "This will not only help Changying Precision to overcome the core technology of robot manufacturing, improve production efficiency and product quality, but more importantly, the joint venture can use each other’s industry application experience to help more external parties. Enterprises improve the level of intelligent manufacturing."

Another multiplication pilot company and smart equipment Dongguan company Topstar took the lead in independently developing a robot controller in China, breaking the monopoly of countries such as Europe, America and Japan, and also making the secondary development and collaboration of robot functions simple. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the company has maintained a compound growth rate of more than 50% every year.

As the first GEM listed robot backbone enterprise in Guangdong, Topstar focuses on the R&D, manufacturing and sales of intelligent equipment represented by industrial robots. In the company’s smart workshop, its first self-developed “six-axis industrial robot” can operate at high speed, high precision, and flexibly through the use of industrial cloud and other technologies, and can realize automatic grasping and polishing, automatic identification of position, assembly and labeling. Wait.

In April last year, Topstar signed a contract with ABB, a world-renowned robotics company, to cooperate in 3C, injection molding, die casting and other fields. According to Wu Fengli, Chairman of Topstar, cooperation with international giants in the industry can increase Topstar’s competitive advantage, accelerate the development of Dongguan’s robotics industry, and promote China’s traditional manufacturing industry from “manufacturing” to “manufacturing”. "Intelligent manufacturing" transformation.

Different from Changying Precision and Topstar, the multiplication pilot company Dongguan Aoxing Audiovisual Equipment Co., Ltd. plans to acquire an overseas company in the near future to enhance its competitiveness in the international market. The chairman of the company, Zhao Wenfa, said that overseas markets have strong innovation in subdivisions, strong brands, and a complete industrial chain, while Dongguan has strong manufacturing capabilities and capital. Through mergers and acquisitions, the two can join forces, and the company can be in a short period of time. Achieve rapid growth.

According to statistics from the Dongguan Robot Industry Association, there are at least 500 companies in Dongguan currently engaged in robots and related supporting facilities (including basic spare parts, integrated system vendors, etc.). At present, the number of robot companies in Dongguan accounts for about 10% of the country's total. In the face of increasingly fierce competition, in order to keep up with international standards, many Dongguan companies have gone overseas to learn from their experience in recent years. At this year's Hannover Industrial Fair in Germany, dozens of Dongguan enterprises formed the "Dongguan Intelligent Manufacturing Corps" to observe the exhibition, learn, and exchange experiences.

The multiplication pilot company Huixing Intelligent Manufacturing is one of the smart equipment companies that visited the exhibition. After participating in the exhibition, the chairman of the company Zhong Hui deeply felt: "The International Industry Exhibition is an important platform for market expansion and exchanges and innovations. On the one hand, it gathers smart manufacturing manufacturers at home and abroad, and on the other hand, it is a stage for the world’s latest smart manufacturing technology. From this we can look for gaps in benchmarking international companies."

In view of the current overall development status of Dongguan's intelligent equipment, Shi Yong, vice president of the Institute of Machinery Industry Information and vice president of the Machinery Industry Press, proposed that Dongguan should build a global innovation network, make good use of external forces, and actively carry out strategic deployments. , Prioritize layout at some key nodes.

The relevant person in charge of the Institute of Machinery Industry Information pointed out that the robot industry in China is at least 10 years away from the international one. In shortening the gap between the two, domestic companies can learn from the experience of excellent foreign companies. After years of cultivation, the technologies and products of international companies such as the United States and Japan have become very mature and have strong competitiveness in the industry. Therefore, next, Dongguan and even domestic smart manufacturing companies can find a way that suits their own industrial characteristics.