Introduction: Although China is a major producer and consumer of machine tools globally, the majority of high-end CNC machine tools rely on imports. At present, the concentration of CNC machine tool production countries worldwide is relatively high, showing a tripartite situation of the United States, Japan, and Germany

The reason why China's CNC machine tool industry is deeply mired in the situation of "low-end chaos and high-end loss" is due to the lack of independent research and development capabilities of enterprises caused by the lack of centralized capital investment. Therefore, the industry calls on the country to select capable enterprises to make research and development "refined" and spend money on "cutting edge".

On April 18th, the 12th Five Year Plan for the machine tool industry was released. According to the news from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the development goal of the machine tool industry has been clarified: high-end CNC machine tools will become the focus of future development.

In fact, the slogan of "vigorously developing high-end CNC machine tools" has been shouted for many years, and the country has invested a lot of financial and material resources in it. However, why is the technical problem still a bottleneck that is difficult to break through in China's CNC machine tool industry?

Capital investment should be targeted

Recently, reporters visited the 12th China International Machine Tool Exhibition and found that many large domestic enterprises have brought the latest research and development of CNC machine tools. However, although the scene seems prosperous, many participating companies told reporters that in recent years, China's machine tool industry has developed extremely rapidly. Although it has caught up with the level of developed countries in production technology and techniques, there is still a significant gap between high-precision CNC technology and developed countries. The CNC machine tools that come to the exhibition can only reach the level of some high-end brands in Japan and Germany five years ago in terms of technology, "Zhu Wen, the head of Yichang Changji Technology Co., Ltd., told reporters bluntly. That is to say, the 'body' of our product is as strong as theirs, but the 'mind' is not as intelligent as theirs

Indeed, although China is a major producer and consumer of machine tools globally, the majority of high-end CNC machine tools rely on imports. At present, the concentration of CNC machine tool production countries in the world is relatively high, showing a tripartite situation of the United States, Japan, and Germany.

Wei Liancheng, Secretary General of the China Association for Mechanical and Electrical Equipment Maintenance and Renovation Technology, told reporters the whole story. Developing CNC technology is not a one-time task and requires long-term and significant investment in manpower and material resources. Although the country has repeatedly invested funds to encourage enterprises to develop CNC technology, the concentration of enterprises is currently very low and it is difficult to see results. There are many enterprises participating in the research and development of CNC technology nationwide, and the financial support from the government seems insufficient. In order to become more refined and stronger, enterprises must concentrate on research and development, "said Wei Liancheng.

According to the development goals, China will solidly move towards becoming a strong machine tool country in the next five years, and the industrial structure will be significantly improved. 80% of domestically produced machine tools can meet the needs of domestic engineering projects, and the market share of CNC machine tools will reach over 70%. During the 12th Five Year Plan period, in order to achieve the plan of building a strong machine tool country, it is necessary to first break the monopoly of developed countries on CNC machine tools, "said Ju Lin, an analyst at Galaxy Securities.

He pointed out that compared with developed countries, there are still many shortcomings in China's CNC machine tool products, such as relatively few varieties; Due to the long development and delivery cycles, the production of the enterprise is difficult to meet market demand; In addition, the performance level of domestic CNC machine tools lags behind that of foreign products, and their competitiveness is not strong; Insufficient investment in software development, failure to achieve serialization and commercialization, lack of industrial scale, and other issues. The gap between our CNC machine tools and those produced in developed countries has widened. If limited funds are dispersed among various enterprises, it will actually drag down the industry's research and development level and speed, "said Julin.

Therefore, Wei Liancheng suggests carefully selecting several large machine tool enterprises with research and development capabilities, and concentrating funds on these enterprises. Only by relying on key enterprises to drive the development of the entire CNC machine tool industry can we break the current awkward situation in the machine tool industry.

Survival of the fittest among small and medium-sized enterprises

The 12th Five Year Plan for the machine tool industry has listed high-end CNC machine tools as a future development focus. In the industry's view, this also gives a warning to small and medium-sized enterprises: only by changing their own development mode can they have a foothold in the machine tool market.

Wei Liancheng pointed out that small and medium-sized enterprises can only ensure their competitiveness by achieving performance in different fields.

To achieve breakthroughs in a key process of a typical industry and solve prominent problems in user applications. By improving and perfecting the design and adding functional accessories, expanding the scope of processing technology and further improving the composite processing performance, the stability, reliability, and various precision indicators of the machine tool will be improved, and it will be promoted to other units in the user's industry for demonstration applications. Only by specializing and refining in a certain field can we continue to survive, otherwise we will only face elimination, "Wei Liancheng said.

Julin pointed out that in fact, over the past decade, China's machine tool industry has made great progress and achieved many important breakthroughs. During the 11th Five Year Plan period, China has launched special development plans for high-end CNC machine tools, large-scale integrated circuit equipment, and large aircraft, and has achieved many results.

In the next five years, China will be in a critical period of equipment upgrading in the manufacturing industry, with a high demand for high-end CNC machine tools such as large and heavy-duty, large specifications, and high precision. Due to the technological content, product units, and added value of these products being tens or even hundreds of times higher than ordinary machine tools, it is expected that the sustained growth of these products will become the main driving force for the machine tool industry.

According to the National Medium - and Long Term Plan for Science and Technology Development (2006-2010), the development of high-end CNC machine tools will be elevated to the level of national strategy. China will increase the market share of domestic machine tools by encouraging the purchase and use of domestic CNC machine tools, supporting domestic machine tools in major projects, and canceling import preferential policies.

In addition, Julin believes that for a long time to come, China's machine tool market will be huge, and the situation of being large but not refined will soon be broken. If some small and medium-sized enterprises find it difficult to get a share in the field of CNC research and development, and instead develop high value-added products such as high-precision and cutting-edge components, they can avoid being eliminated in the "reshuffle".