How should practitioners in the machinery industry develop? How to take the road of manufacturing in China?

In recent years, there have been various voices about the industry battle:
There are many negative voices:
"Alas, made in China is no longer available"
"How fast is the money coming in for real estate speculation, those bastards have to go into some kind of industry, low pressure"
"You give me an idea, what should I invest in? Is it the land in Chaoyang District? Or is it the real estate in Lujiazui? What? A tractor! Are you sick!"
"I'm in finance. My salary for a month is worth a year's worth of their house of mechanics, so why don't you marry me?"
And the positive voice:
"Manufacturing is the foundation of a country"
"...Nothing else..."
I have no ability to speculate about the future of the manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is a very broad concept, including the bits and pieces related to daily life and the technological frontier of cutting-edge technology. As a novice mechanic who will be engaged in this industry in the future, I can simply focus on what I understand and focus on the mechanical industry, and talk about shallow views.
The machinery industry has existed for thousands of years, from the simple farm tools in the early agricultural society, to the later use of ox-turning carts for agricultural irrigation, windmills for grinding noodles, etc.; in modern times, the arrival of the steam engine gave birth to the machine manufacturing industry, Since then, various classic machines have appeared in this world, and today they have spread to almost every corner of the entire human society. In the new century, there will be new propositions: how will an industry that has developed for thousands of years go in the new century? Only God knows this.
01
What is the current situation of the machinery industry
The overall level of China's machinery industry is relatively low. We can discuss from two aspects of mechanical design and mechanical manufacturing.
Let’s talk about design first. What is design?
To design an institution that has never existed before? Don't be silly, this industry has been developed for thousands of years, and thousands of mechanical structures have appeared in this world. Although some are well-known and popular, some are relatively unpopular and only suitable for some special institutions. Various reasons are only presented on the drawings and have not been seen in the public. The design elements used in the current design are all discovered by the predecessors. The design is the arrangement and combination of different structures. Although the size parameters are different, the principle is the same. My understanding of design is: "Arrange and combine various mechanisms with mature technology according to production needs, and adjust various parameters to meet production needs, mechanical reliability, and production costs."
What about the current design?
More companies pursue the principle of borrowing, and there are a large number of professional reverse teams in China, with B copying A, and C copying B. We can perfectly replicate the size, but we don’t know where the size comes from. Naturally, we can’t talk about product iterative upgrades, and materials, heat treatment, and assembly processes cannot be copied.
A more representative face-slap incident is the incident where Chinese people frantically purchase in Japan during the Chinese New Year. The big guy who is a big Chinese New Year is not good at steaming rice cakes at home, so he has to go to the island country to grab some rice cooker. Of course, the rice cooker in the island country is indeed Excellent quality and excellent performance. There are hundreds of companies making rice cookers in China, but few people really understand what a rice cooker is, the material, thickness, surface shape of the pot, the choice of heating scheme, the relationship between temperature and time for different types of rice, etc. Every detail needs a lot of time and energy to be polished slowly. No one knows how many rice the R&D personnel have steamed before the rice cooker is put on the market, how many sets of inner pot molds have been opened by the mold master, and the details are made before the rice cooker is mass-produced. What adjustments have been made. It is not an easy thing to copy the polishing of these details. If you want to have a product that makes people crazy, it is better to do crazy technology with engineers first.
And who can play like this the most? There is a cult called Sony Dafa.
Although there are quite a few people who are bad at Sony, everyone in the circle knows that a company dedicated to creating excellent products is not something that a group of laymen who don’t understand manufacturing can make comments on, and it is not so easy for a technology-oriented company. There is only one way to die, that is, its technical route has deviated from the trend of history, its technology is no longer practical, and its products lose universal value, such as Kodak. As long as Sony remains at the forefront of technology, it will never be eliminated.
02
Let’s talk about manufacturing again. How do you see Made in China?
Many people in the mechanical circle have never looked down on Chinese manufacturing, but kept their mouths open to German manufacturing and Japanese manufacturing, worshipping high-tech craftsmanship as a belief, and dismissing the more common non-automatic mechanical production and messy and dirty workshops. But the reality is not only about poetry and distant places, but more about what is in front of you. From a macro point of view, there is no need to worship ultra-high-precision, ultra-large, and ultra-complex manufacturing processes, and there is no need to belittle yourself because of extensive and low-precision manufacturing. In fact, these are two completely different fields. The two complement each other and constitute the entire industry.
First of all, let’s talk about the low-level components. In fact, the entire industry needs not all high-precision components, but more common materials and low-precision components with ordinary processes. This is the result of the choice of cost and technical barriers. The more common, the simpler The cost of things is naturally easy to reduce, and low-cost products naturally have a price advantage. There are no technical barriers to allow more people to enter this field. Full competition is more conducive to product iteration and price reduction.
But how can we make the product more competitive in price?
The practice of most domestic companies is very simple and crude:
1. Reduce unit product profit, expand production scale, and make small profits but quick turnover. Take a look, take a look at it, as long as 998, as long as 998, take it home cheap.
2. Squeeze the surplus labor value of workers. We are not working overtime, we are promoting the spirit of hard work.
3. Replace materials and craftsmanship with lower cost and shoddy manufacturing. For details, please see the almighty treasure, only unexpected, not impossible to buy.
Fourth, the above types are used in combination.
I have also experienced several small workshop-style enterprises, with dozens or hundreds of workers, simple and crude design and production, or no design at all, directly using ready-made drawings and solutions, and even no The employees of the technical team just regularly ask the technicians to sort out the drawings and give simple technical guidance. Rough and popular products have no concept of quality control. The products can be used, or they can be used. Low pitiful profits and workers' wages. During my internship, I occasionally chatted with my colleagues, and the old master would say earnestly: "Pony, in the future, go to a big company, see the world, learn their formal procedures, and don't go our wild way." The master's words are full of sincerity, but as a junior, my mood is complicated, what should I do?
Practices of excellent foreign companies:
1. Invest heavily in infrastructure and use advanced production lines to improve efficiency and per capita productivity. I do the work of the seven of you alone, and I take five times your wages, and you are envious and jealous.
Second, increase R&D efforts to further reduce costs in details or increase the premium space of products. Although my cost is low, I sell expensive.
Third, we are not selling products, we are selling tastes and feelings. What a great product with only one key.
There is a huge gap in front of us. If things go on like this, the profits made in China will become lower and lower, and the low-level competition will become more and more intense. The more intense the competition, the more manufacturers will play with their products, and the brand effect and premium space of products will gradually disappear. Existing, sales and profits will be reduced even more. This leads to an endless cycle of bankruptcy and bankruptcy. The massive closure of labor-intensive enterprises in Wenzhou and Dongguan is a living example. Gone are the days of relying on institutions and demographic dividends to live a happy life. Even the government is calling for a shift from resource-driven to technological innovation-driven every day. How can we get out of this dead end?
Make a change? Not changing means waiting to die, and changing means there is a great probability of dying faster, but there is also a very small probability of being reborn and surviving. Show full sincerity to develop products, instead of talking about profits and sales. Many products do not have high technical content. It can be said that the threshold is very low, but there are not many sincere works. Even if they are copied, they have not copied the key points. Long skills", more people are just "teaching barbarians". It is very gratifying that a domestic brand of juice machine leads the US market. Are there any precedents that focus on technology, overcome pain, survive and become bigger and stronger? There is a CEO called Ren Zhengfei, and his team is called Huawei. Of course, it takes time to upgrade the technology and polish the details of the product, and companies like Huawei will not come out suddenly, maybe 3-5 years, or maybe 5-10 years.
Let’s talk about the high-level ones. I remember watching two very classic documentaries before, one is the domestically produced “Great Powers and Weapons”, and the other is called “Demystifying Cutting-edge Projects”. The comparison of the two films can clearly feel the domestic The gap with foreign countries in the field of cutting-edge manufacturing is that the importance of a great country is only large, and it cannot well reflect the high-tech, aero-engines, submarine propellers, aircraft wings, etc. that can best reflect the industrial foundation. It is far from the current domestic industry. The standard can be done, which involves material science, precision manufacturing, high-end assembly, and more.
These things may be a little far from us, but there are also examples in life that reflect the poor industrial foundation of our country. For example, the nibs of ballpoint pens are basically imported. Although there are domestic high-quality nibs in recent years, they are also imported using foreign machines. steel. Domestic bearings, especially precision bearings, are still incomparable with Havalo's international first-class bearings. There are also stepper motors, reducers, car engines, high-end tools, and more.
What is gratifying is that now China is also desperately catching up with the world's first-class pace. Shenyang Machine Tool has spent 12 years to build a passable domestic precision machine tool, especially the software system of the industrial computer, which is already at the international advanced level; China is also the first country to realize large-scale operation of high-speed rail, and is now promoting its own high-speed rail standards around the world. Although some core components and some machine tools that produce core components depend on foreign countries, the autonomy of high-speed rail technology and the localization of most components have already It is a huge progress. At the beginning, Japanese manufacturing was also shoddy and low-end cheap. Thirty years later, Japanese manufacturing has become synonymous with excellence. Cutting-edge technology and excellent products need time to settle. I am always on the cutting edge of China's future. Manufacturing is full of confidence.
I remember seeing a paragraph on Zhihu before: "You people all say that China is low and low, how is it compared with Japan, how is it compared with Germany, you understand the situation, this is my big heaven alone. Is it good to fight the whole world, thinking about it, I feel very proud to be a Chinese." If you think about it, there is no one who has the courage to compete with the rest of the world. Will China rejuvenate and take off in the near future? In fact, it is already taking off.
The current situation of the entire industry is indeed a bit gloomy. In the past ten years, some people in the machinery industry have had a very good life. A small salesman with no professionalism can make a few machines and make a small profit. , but this group of people will definitely be eliminated by the coming waves. But this is an opportunity, and every change is in the face of sharp contradictions. The wings of the chicks are getting fuller, and the strong wind is coming. If they can withstand it, they will soar into the sky.
03
Combine existing information and make several predictions
In the future, the machinery industry will definitely be a winner-take-all situation, and the machinery industry will definitely get rid of the situation of feudal feudal lords. Can't figure out the picture? Let’s take a look at BAT in the Internet circle.
There will be dozens or hundreds of small and beautiful unicorns that will become invisible champions in the subdivisions. These small companies will do their best in a small field, maybe making batteries or selling hammers. Maybe even pancake fruit.
There will be fewer and fewer employees in this industry, because the per capita productivity and efficiency will become higher and higher, and the war of Industry 4.0 has already burned. In the future, workshops that rely heavily on manual labor will be increasingly mature industrial robots and even weak artificial intelligence. Instead, perverted species like flexible robotic arms are about to appear in the workshop. Foxconn's million robot plan and the proposal of China's Industry 2.2 all demonstrate this. Maybe one day there will be a conversation in the workshop in the future: "Hey, lad, how are you doing?" "Oh boss, everything is fine, I just haven't seen a living person for a few months." Therefore, there will not be a shortage of labor in the country. On the contrary, a considerable number of people will be laid off and transformed into the tertiary industry, but who knows whether ramen masters, news editors, courier brothers, etc. will be replaced by robots? I guess in the future mechanical circle there may be such a sentence: "There is nothing that can't be solved by a machine. If there is, then build another one."
Advanced Internet tools will accelerate the take-off of this industry. The establishment of various design platforms emphasizes the value of human beings. Some designs will be completed concisely and quickly on the Internet, instead of taking the traditional path of low efficiency and low quality. Of course, there are still quite a few designs that are not applicable. The Internet has also made the collaboration between enterprises closer. It is possible for a small team to complete the production design of complex products. During this period, there is a lot of external collaboration, and professional things are left to professional people. The popularity of cloud computing also provides convenience for enterprises. Enterprises can obtain professional analysis services at relatively low prices without having to spend a lot of money to purchase analysis suites. The wide application of big data platforms can also provide enterprises with valuable information, so that enterprises can accurately adjust production and formulate more powerful marketing plans.
Agricultural equipment and food machinery will be the next big cake, but it is not easy to share a piece of this cake. These two industries still have certain technical barriers, and this also requires domestic material science and material science to have great development. , and practical application to product design. Therefore, at least in a short period of time, there will be no wave of carve-up, but I believe that within 5-10 years, there will be giants with strong technology and abundant funds to redefine domestic agricultural equipment and food machinery, and China's agricultural equipment and food machinery will not. Then there is a big gap with the world-class products. Will the giants of the future be the giants of today? No, but it will definitely be a young, passionate and thoughtful team.
04
What kind of people does the machinery industry need?
There are three types of people who can be called talents in the machinery industry today:
1. Skilled workers with exquisite craftsmanship
Having worked in the front line for more than ten years or decades, he has rich experience in design and manufacturing, can better deal with the problems in the work, is familiar with various standard drawings and mainstream machinery, and can complete the satisfactory design step by step. However, they do not understand mechanics theory very well, and most people are not proficient in using advanced design tools such as 3D modeling and finite element analysis.
2. Newcomers with solid theory and advanced tools
The advantage of newcomers is that they use mechanics and mathematical thinking to look at each design, and they can use advanced modeling and finite element analysis tools. The work efficiency is much higher than that of the older generation of engineers, and the creativity is more abundant, but the mechanical The understanding of manufacturing is not deep, and the application practice of basic machine tools is lacking, so the design made in this way may not be suitable for actual production. However, with the growth of work experience, the technical level will become higher and higher, and the design will become more and more skilled. They will be China's future machine  The backbone of the machinery industry.
Third, the person who has both
How should young people take the road?
As far as personal growth is concerned, first become the second kind of talent, concentrate on cultivation, and gradually become the third kind of talent.
As far as sub-sectors are concerned, we can simply divide the manufacturing industry into five fields A, B, C, D, and E according to the level of technical barriers. Aerospace, precision machine tools, etc. belong to the A field, automobile manufacturing, clock movements, etc. belong to the B field, agricultural equipment, construction machinery, food machinery, etc. belong to the C field, household appliances, electronic assembly, etc. belong to the D field, low-precision parts manufacturing, Clothing production, etc. belong to the E field.
The world in the A field is left to the first-class students of the first-class universities to explore. As a mechanical newcomer who is not excellent and has a background in agricultural equipment, he has no plans to set foot in the A field, and aspiring young people do not have to hold it. To subvert the ambition of the entire industry, I have no confidence to change the world, but I am very interested in redefining the soymilk machine, pancake fruit and so on. Technology is backward compatible but not upward compatible, and high-end technology can be passed down to low-end products. Might as well go to see the world of the A field, go to the world of the B field, and finally join the C field.