Industrial robot automation enters the outbreak phase

Foreign auto industry, electronic and electrical industry, construction machinery and other industries have already used industrial robots automated production lines to ensure product quality and increase production efficiency, while avoiding a large number of industrial accidents. The practice of industrial robots in nearly half a century in many countries around the world shows that the popularization of industrial robots is an effective means to realize automated production, increase social production efficiency, and promote the development of enterprises and social productivity. Robotics is a forward-looking and strategic high-tech field. Industrial robots automated production line complete sets of equipment has become the mainstream of automation equipment, the popularity of domestic robots is also sooner or later.

Although today's robots have not yet developed to a very high degree of intelligence, simple machine workers and machine assistants have gradually deepened into the industrial field, and people are increasingly relying on advanced technology to produce and live. According to sources, the US Congress has stipulated that by 2015, one-third of ground combat will use robotic soldiers.

This triggered a sense of crisis in China and accelerated the pace of developing the robot industry. At the “2013 China Robot Industry Promotion Conference” held in early July of this year, Wang Weiming, Deputy Director of the Department of Equipment Industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, publicly stated that after researching the robot industry, “About promoting the development of industrial robot industry will be released soon. instructions". Robots will become intelligent and universal, and will soon revolutionize the manufacturing industry. It can thus be seen that the era of robotics in industry is embarking on the grand stage of China's industrial development.

High-end equipment planning to support the robotic application market will blossom

The 12th Five-Year 'High-end Equipment Manufacturing Industry Development Plan', hereinafter referred to as 'Planning', has already begun the implementation of the smart equipment development transformation and satellite and application development special projects. This shows that the high-end equipment manufacturing development plan has entered the substantive operation level.

As an important part of the strategic emerging industry, the development strategy of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” for high-end equipment manufacturing industry is to break through key points in five directions: aviation equipment, satellites and applications, rail transit equipment, marine engineering equipment and intelligent manufacturing equipment. The goal of the "Plan" is that by 2015 the sales value of high-end equipment will account for more than 20% of the equipment manufacturing industry, and it is expected that the annual sales value will reach 6 trillion yuan.

The data shows that the current industry scale of smart equipment is about 300 billion yuan, the market is mostly monopolized by foreign manufacturers, the market share of domestic manufacturers is low, intelligent instrumentation and control systems are 10%, industrial robots and special equipment are 20%, and mid-range CNC 20% for machine tools and 1% for high-end CNC machines. The goal of the “Planning” is that by 2015, sales revenue will reach 1 trillion yuan. The domestic market share of high-end smart equipment and basic manufacturing equipment required by key national economic industries will reach 50%; sales revenue will reach 2 trillion yuan in 2020. Yuan, the domestic market share reached 70%.

The first batch of funds used to subsidize smart equipment manufacturing has been released. The first batch of smart manufacturing equipment for the implementation of subsidy funds had 19 projects, and the state subsidy funds were 950 million yuan, which has now officially started. In particular, to support smart manufacturing equipment companies in expanding their markets, the country will allocate the first set of subsidy funds to subsidize funds of up to 25% to 50% of the product sales price.

According to the above-mentioned officials from the Department of Equipment Industry, the "Planning" predicts that by 2015, the annual sales value of high-end equipment manufacturing will be more than 6 trillion yuan. Prior to this, Zhang Xiangmu once expressed similar views. He said, "We will strive to make the high-end equipment manufacturing industry a pillar industry of the national economy through 10 years of efforts, and the sales value will account for more than 30% of the equipment manufacturing industry. The domestic market for equipment is more than 25%."

Machine Tool Industry Transformation Brings Robotics Technology to a New Trend

Machine tool companies have also begun to introduce robots into machine tools. Robots have become a general trend. In the transition from digitization to intelligentization, the manufacturing industry has higher requirements on the performance of equipment components, including precision and surface quality. Especially in some high-tech industries, such as aerospace and communications. The change of technology demand in the downstream market has brought new challenges to the development of the CNC machine tool industry. If the technical development of CNC machine tools can adapt to the needs of the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, it can play a promoting role, and vice versa, it will restrict its development.

An American expert put forward this year: "When we combine artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital manufacturing technologies, a manufacturing revolution will take place. It will enable American entrepreneurs to start factories and build a variety of This way, how can China compete with us? The United States is destined to regain leadership in the manufacturing industry, and it will soon be China’s concern to worry about it.” American scholars put forward the three major technical phases of declaring war on the Chinese manufacturing industry. Combined with the resulting manufacturing model, it can be called manufacturing intelligence, that is, smart manufacturing.

At present, most domestic machine tool companies are concerned about how to make the company bigger. There are thousands of people and tens of thousands of people. And foreign companies are more eager to lead the technology, that is to make their own products in the manufacture of other products indispensable. At present, the competition mechanism of Chinese machine tool companies mainly depends on price and quantity, and lacks core technologies. With the increase in labor, raw materials and other costs, corporate profits will become increasingly thin. Therefore, the competition mechanism needs to be changed.

The key application of industrial robots is motion control, and motion control is an important factor in ensuring the accuracy of machine tools. From this perspective, the correlation between machine tool manufacturing and robot manufacturing technology is very large. Therefore, the enthusiasm of machine tool companies to intervene in the manufacture of industrial robots has increased in recent years.

Not only is the CNC system manufacturing company, machine tool companies are also very popular in robotics. Kan Xiyou, chairman of Shenyang Machine Tool Group, which has the largest domestic sales of machine tools, also stated that the Shenyang Group has the experience in developing the Feiyang CNC system and is preparing to cut into the industrial robot manufacturing field and develop industrial robot products.

It can be seen that whether it is the introduction of foreign robots or the development of domestic industrial robots, smart entrepreneurs have already targeted the broad prospects of its integration with the machine tool industry!

Talent cultivation is the key to the development of the robot industry

Tang Zhimin, secretary of the Party Committee of the Chinese Academy of Personnel Sciences, said that under the strong support of the national policy, the robotics industry will surely usher in explosive growth, and the new industry will bring new employment opportunities.

At present, the competition for robotic projects has become a contest between emerging manufacturing industries. In the domestic manufacturing industry, from the demand for the transformation of labor costs and automated production, the industrial robot industry has entered a period of explosive growth. The robotic industrial bases in Chongqing, Tianjin, Kunshan, Qingdao, Shenyang, and Zhongshan have mushroomed.

At present and for a period of time in the future, the pressure on the total employment of college graduates in our country is still relatively large, the structural contradictions are still quite prominent, and the employment situation is rather grim. This year's document issued by the State Council on college graduates clearly puts forward the role of strategic emerging industries, high-tech industries, modern service industries, and modern agricultural development in the promotion of college graduates, which also includes smart Internet of Things and Robot industry.

How many new business start-ups and job opportunities can the new industry bring? Shen Hongru, vice president of Ziguang Youlan, said that the Internet of Things is beyond the communication between people and information on the Internet. It expands the connection between people and people to the connection between people and things, and between things and things. You can control the company. The rice cooker in your house starts cooking, turns on air conditioners in your home, lets water heaters put water for you, sees children learning or playing games... The central core of all this is a robot, and related product development and production , marketing, shopping guide, and after-sales service all require college students. In the next five years, with the rapid development of this industry, it is expected to provide at least 200,000 related jobs.

The future of automated production will usher in an explosion phase

In order to adapt to the intensified market competition, China's manufacturing industry is undergoing major changes in recent years. For example, large-scale production of enterprises is changing to flexible production according to market or customer requirements, and design and control systems have transformed independently into one integrated design and control system. In a certain place, production has shifted to global procurement and production. The requirements for quality, cost, efficiency, and safety of manufacturing plants are also increasing. It is foreseeable that these changes will push the development and application of automation technology into a new stage of development.

In July this year, the International Monetary Fund released a somewhat "sensational" report. The annual report on China’s economic development points out that China’s current growth model, heavily dependent on overseas exports and infrastructure investment, is already difficult to sustain. If it cannot reform quickly, the annual GDP growth of China after 2018 will fall to 4%.

At present, some domestic manufacturers have begun to introduce a large number of automated production equipment and technologies, and passed a message to the industry: the concept of intelligent production is awakening and entering the rising channel. “Although many robots introduced by many companies still belong to the category of industrial robots and cannot be regarded as intelligent robots, the automation technology represented by industrial robots is the basis of intelligence. The introduction of large numbers of automated robots is both intelligent and the development of the industry. It has played a catalytic and exemplary role, and these roles will greatly promote the development of China's robotics industry.

The level of development of China's robot industry is lagging behind, and there is a considerable gap between the world's leading level in smart software matching and information physics integration. However, with the guidance of market demand and the attention of the industry, it is bound to promote the development of the robot industry. The most intuitive should be the price. At the moment, it is the cost issue that restricts the automation of robots to enter into production on a large scale. The game of labor costs and robot prices is not obvious from the current point of view, but the increasingly widespread use of robots and mass production will cause prices to drop, and then it will be an explosion stage of automated production.

Intelligent manufacturing plants require clear control of production and sales processes, controllability of production processes, reduction of production line manual interventions, timely and correct collection of production line data, more rational production planning and production schedules, including product development, design, and outsourcing. Production and delivery, etc., need to be highly automated and intelligent at each stage of manufacturing, and the highly integrated information at each stage is an inevitable trend. Software will become an important foundation for building intelligent factories. Humanized operation interfaces, connection of highly-efficient computer computing platforms, cloud computing and information integration analysis and statistics across networks will all become key elements.

From automation to intelligence, although the intelligent process of China's manufacturing industry still has a long way to go, there is no doubt that with the rapid development and growth of the world economy, intelligent manufacturing plants will bring transformation and impact to all industries. It will also lead the advancement and innovation of the global manufacturing development model, which is an inevitable choice for the transformation of China's manufacturing industry.