Emerging industries drive instrumentation to high-end manufacturing

In the joint exhibition hall of the private enterprises of the Expo, there is a "Shiny Matrix" display wall made up of 30,000 crystal plates. The whole shining matrix shines under the illumination of the light and it is beautiful. This is the largest crystal matrix in the world. Each exhibit name is engraved with the name of a company. This is the most compelling collective appearance of Chinese instrumentation companies on the world-class stage, indicating that the Chinese instrumentation industry is just like this. The matrix is ​​as colorful as it is.

Market reversal

China's instrumentation industry experienced a decline in growth rates during the world financial crisis in 2009, and the industry was in a downturn. In 2010, the instrumentation industry was one of the industries that recovered more quickly.

When summarizing the development of China's instrumentation industry, Yu Jiacheng, a special consultant of the China Instrument and Meter Industry Association, pointed out that since 2008, the year-on-year increase in the production and sales of the instrumentation industry has dropped by about 10 percentage points year-on-year, especially in the instrumentation industry in 2009. , "This has a direct relationship with the industry characteristics." Yan Jiacheng analysis said.

First, the proportion of rigid demand products in the instrumentation industry is low, and due to the short production cycle of products, the demand for recovery has a certain lag. For example, the complexity of DCS (Distributed Control System) is at least moderately high in the industry, but its production cycle is only one quarter.

The production and sales of secondary and foreign-funded enterprises accounted for 45% of the entire industry, which was significantly affected by the financial crisis, which drove the entire instrumentation industry to slump.

Third, in the equipment manufacturing industry, the recovery of the instrumentation and meter industry is lower than the average, lower than the automotive, agricultural machinery, construction machinery and electrical, heavy machinery and other industries, the policy measures to the instrumentation industry, the degree of benefit is also relatively low. So in the face of the impact of the financial crisis, instrumentation industry "overwintering" time is relatively long.

Fourth, the development and innovation capabilities of instrumentation and instrument companies are not strong, and the poor adaptability to macroeconomic adjustments is also the main internal cause of weak industry trends. This will be a long-term problem faced by domestic instrumentation.

Although the instrumentation industry was affected by the global financial crisis, the domestic economy has been picking up since the second half of 2009. The instrumentation market has gradually become hotter and the industry has accelerated. Ju Jiacheng believes that this indicates that the situation in 2010 will be better. It is worth mentioning that in 2009 the industry's total output value exceeded 400 billion yuan for the first time.

Demand promotes transformation

The rapid development of new industries has driven the instrumentation industry, and the intelligent technology has also transformed the instrumentation industry into a high-end manufacturing industry.

New industries that have a major impact on the instrumentation industry should be low-carbon economies. Yang Jinggui, deputy director of the Economic Cooperation Department of the China International Economic Cooperation Association and executive deputy director of the Chinese Enterprises' Going Global Research Center, pointed out that the low-carbon economy has become a hot spot in the world economic development with its unique advantages and a huge market, and has a close relationship with the instrumentation industry. The leading role. At the same time, instrumentation has the characteristics of “three highs and three lows”—high technology, high input, high output, low energy consumption, low material consumption, and low pollution. Many products are combined with technology intensive and labor intensive. The development of a low-carbon economy is bound to drive up the demand for instrumentation.

One is thermal energy meters and thermal energy monitoring instruments. These products are directly used by households or related environmental monitoring organizations as energy consumption measurement instruments to monitor carbon dioxide emissions. Their market prospects and market capacity are huge.

The second is automatic control instruments, such as thermal power grid automation control instrumentation, coal bed methane power generation automation control instrumentation, smart grid system instrumentation, motor energy conservation instrumentation, energy automation regulation instrumentation, and so on.

The third is related to instrumentation and instrumentation for food safety, drug safety, accident detection, environmental and climate monitoring. In addition, "two integrations" put great demands on equipment automation and production line automation.

Industry defects highlight

Although the instrumentation industry is developing rapidly, but in the development and application of high-tech, China's instrumentation industry still has drawbacks.

First, the scale of the industry is small, and the total output value of the measurement control and instrumentation industry is low. Not only is the absolute amount small, but the proportion in the total economy is also very small. The vast majority of companies in the instrumentation industry are SMEs. The industry has 1,887 large-scale and above-scale enterprises, less than 15 of which have annual sales of more than 1 billion yuan, and lacks "flagship" companies with comprehensive strength. The domestic companies' single product market has strong operating capability but lacks comprehensive strength. Neither manpower nor financial resources can compete with foreign multinational groups in the market. Therefore, it is in a weak position in market competition.

Second, the company's labor productivity is low. As instrumentation belongs to the high-tech industry, the role of low labor costs is not obvious, and the management level of domestic enterprises is generally lower than that of foreign companies.

Third, the abnormal development of the industry, affect the overall play. With the exception of a few key enterprises, most companies take the path of low-cost expansion. With the specialization of division of labor to form a strong collaborative supporting capacity, many products have made the cost very low. It is precisely by virtue of this low cost advantage to overcome their opponents and seek development. However, this way of low-cost expansion is getting more and more challenging. Because of the low-cost expansion, relying mainly on cheap labor, the entry threshold is low, and it is easy to cause disorderly competition. At the same time, it also affects the sense of urgency for enterprises to invest in technology and talents.

Fourth, the investment in technology development of the state and enterprises is generally insufficient. Since most domestic enterprises are small and medium-sized enterprises, they cannot support sufficient and long-term technological innovation in human and financial resources. Taking scientific instruments as an example, the development investment of foreign companies in general accounts for 10% of sales, while China only accounts for 3%. The internationally famous test equipment company's development funds for technological innovation generally exceed 10% of annual sales, while China's test equipment companies not only do not have high sales, and the development funds used for scientific and technological innovation generally do not exceed 3% of the annual sales amount.