China's textile economy has experienced 30 years of rapid development. Cheap human resources and abundant natural resources are our advantages. As one of the main bodies of economic development, the manufacturing industry is facing the problem of transformation and upgrading. The disappearance of the demographic dividend, the increase in production costs, and the awareness of the new generation of migrant workers paying more attention to their rights, the development of China's textile industry is facing reforms.

Although China has become a big country in textile machinery manufacturing, the level of textile machinery manufacturing is not high, so enterprises must speed up transformation and improve technical performance. The status quo of low-grade products with low technical content, low added value, high labor costs and low production efficiency no longer meets the current market needs and does not adapt to the future development of enterprises. The transformation and upgrading of textile machinery products is the general trend.

The transformation direction of China's textile industry is undoubtedly to achieve transformation and upgrading through technological progress and the improvement of labor quality. By improving production efficiency, increasing benefits, and catching up with or exceeding the increase in production costs, this is the meaning of transformation and upgrading. "Machine substitution" is one way.

Industry insiders said that the use of high-speed, intelligent and large-capacity textile machinery equipment by textile enterprises can reduce labor and improve efficiency. Due to the current shortage of raw materials such as cotton in the world, high-end textile machinery and equipment can make full use of fibers and increase the added value of products. In the next 5-10 years, this demand trend will become more obvious.

The replacement of textile machinery and machines is an inevitable trend of industrial development

Recently, an upsurge of "machine substitution" in which intelligent equipment replaces labor input is sweeping across Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other developed manufacturing areas, attracting attention from all parties. It is reported that Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province alone will implement 800 "machine-replacing" enterprises and 800 technological transformation projects this year, reducing labor by 80,000 people; Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province recently made a plan to allow industrial robots to be widely used within a few years. More than 80% of the manufacturing enterprises in the city.

One and a half months ago, Shaoxing Jinhui Textile's annual production capacity of 30 million meters of polyester fabric technical transformation project was launched. The newly purchased 260 new water jet looms, 9 warp looms, 26 winding cars and 260 double twisters were all put into operation. It is estimated that the annual sales will increase by 200 million yuan and the net profit will increase by 5%.

Among the 100 "machine substitution" enterprises scheduled at the beginning of the year in Nanxun District, at present, 80 have begun to be renovated and 40 have been put into use. At present, "machine substitution" has covered five industries such as elevators, motors, electromagnetic wires, textiles, and wood industries. Through technological transformation and equipment renewal, these enterprises have gradually realized automated production, reduced labor and production costs, and improved product quality and production. efficient. According to statistics, from January to April, the whole district invested 2.806 billion yuan in industry, 1.569 billion yuan in industrial technological transformation, and 1.11 billion yuan in equipment.

It is predicted that during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, it will be a critical period for the development of China's industrial robot industry, and the market demand will grow at an annual rate of 15% to 20%. The provincial economic work conference held at the end of last year proposed that our province will accelerate industrial transformation and upgrading and comprehensively promote "machine substitution". In May of this year, the Municipal Economic and Information Commission issued the city's special action plan for "replacing people with machines", and announced the first batch of 12 demonstration enterprises and 28 pilot enterprises of "replacing people with machines".

There are many hidden worries under the benefits of textile machinery substitution

A few days ago, Liu Zhibiao, president of Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, said that for my country's manufacturing industry, there are three major problems in realizing machine substitution:

1. Whose machine is used.

my country has comparative advantages in the production of general consumer goods, but the advantages of equipment manufacturing are not obvious. At present, the replacement of people by machines is mainly based on foreign machines. The fundamental reason for this market gap is the gap in the technical level of my country's equipment manufacturing industry.

Second, replace who, who will operate the machine.

The machine replaces the operator who sells physical strength, but it does not mean that there is no need for people. Those who know how to operate machines are still skilled workers. If there is a lack of skilled workers to operate and maintain these advanced machines, it will be difficult to achieve real transformation and upgrading in the end.

3. Where do the replaced people go?

Due to the substitution of machines, there will be a surplus of workers traditionally engaged in manual labor, and there will be structural unemployment in the manufacturing industry. Therefore, in the process of replacing human beings with machines, industrial upgrading and employment expansion should be considered in a coordinated way, so as to minimize labor pains and increase employment channels. Both the manufacturing industry and the workers need to realize their own transformation and upgrading.

1. From a practical point of view, these three major problems do exist. Dieter, president of the Asia-Pacific region of the consulting firm Solidiance, predicts that the six major Japanese companies account for half of the sales of industrial robots in China, while the four major domestic robot equipment manufacturers add more. Together, they account for only 5% of the Chinese market share. In China's robot market, foreign robot giants are in a monopoly position. Although China's robot industry has developed rapidly in recent years, domestic robot companies have been catching up, but they are still in a weak position.

A study from Tsinghua University shows that there is still a big gap in competitiveness between local brands of industrial robots and foreign brands. In 2012, the four giants, Fanuc, Yaskawa Electric, KUKA and ABB, accounted for 53.8% of the market share.

In the entire robot industry chain, among the main upstream key components, midstream equipment manufacturers and downstream industry applications, domestic enterprises are currently mainly concentrated as system integrators to realize downstream applications, that is, through the purchase of robots from abroad, Design corresponding solutions for downstream customers to achieve profits. However, there is no support from core component manufacturers in the upstream of the industrial chain, and key components are still far behind foreign companies, so they have been controlled by others for a long time.

An industry insider told reporters that domestic enterprises generally rely on imports for the key components of the reducer, the joint part of the robot. "The reducer is an important factor restricting the cost of domestic industrial robots. The research on the reducer requires not only good equipment. , but also have good materials and craftsmanship, and the materials need to be absolutely wear-resistant. These are not things that can catch up with foreign technologies in a while.”

2. The difficult running-in of man and machine

In 2007, Huang Jianping, the chairman of Weimei, went abroad to investigate and was amazed at the advanced automatic production lines in the West. When he came back, he spent more than 4 million yuan to introduce seven or eight sets of automation equipment, but encountered opposition from some middle-level managers.

"One machine can be as low as 100,000 yuan, and as much as 500,000 to 600,000 yuan. It's not worth it to reduce a few people." At that time, the director of the production workshop also had this criticism. What's more difficult is that some workers like Dai Chaozhi don't want to, and some don't know how to operate the machine: "I'm so full of energy, how can it be so troublesome to operate something that can be done with one lift and one move?"

Zhong Weiqiang said that when the new production line was just started, he was "old card" and had to be shut down for maintenance in serious cases. The kiln in the tile factory could not be stopped 24 hours a day. One minute of empty kiln operation cost more than 5,000 yuan in energy and equipment maintenance. Over and over again, the workers all returned from "fully automatic" to the original state of "all have to move by themselves". The machines were left idle and had to be dismantled in less than a year, and more than 4 million machines were put into "cold palaces". .

Chen Wuqin told reporters that when the robot first entered the production workshop of Aomei Hi-Tech, workers would be afraid to approach because of fear, fearing that the new technology would be damaged by improper operation. Moreover, the code to control the robot is almost incomprehensible to the workers, which increases the alienation from each other.

However, after nearly half a year of running-in, the relationship between the two has become closer. Although the automation of the production line has been greatly improved, the efficient operation of robots is still inseparable from the cooperation of humans.

3. Where do the replaced people go?

Over the past 4 years since the establishment of the factory, Zhejiang Xinwei Plastic Co., Ltd. has been continuously expanding its scale and has been continuously recruiting workers. In order to seek greater development, in December last year, the management of the company decided to introduce advanced equipment and technology to improve production efficiency and product quality.

However, a problem has emerged: after the introduction of advanced equipment and technology, many manual tasks will be replaced by machines, which means that a surplus of labor will be generated. According to the expectations of the company's management, more than 50 employees will be laid off at one time, which is close to one-third of the total number of employees. It is precisely because of this that the disputes between companies and employees that occurred some time ago due to machine substitution.