With the development of manufacturing industry, the important role of machine tools is increasingly prominent. Due to its late start, China's industry has a certain technological gap with developed countries, and the machine tool industry is no exception. Fortunately, both the country and machine tool companies have never given up on challenging technology. After the proposal of "Made in China 2025", the machine tool industry has also set the goal of moving towards "high-precision and cutting-edge". What challenges do machine tool companies need to solve when launching a sprint towards it?

Talent dilemma

Talents are one of the main bodies of production, and no matter how many technologies or fancy machines there are, they need people to research and operate them. Recently, a survey conducted by People's Daily on 100 enterprises in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Weifang, Changsha, and Zhuzhou, three provinces and six cities, showed that the manufacturing industry is facing "three difficulties" in attracting talent - inability to find, unable to recruit, and unable to retain. The author believes that these three difficulties also deeply reflect the talent problem faced by the machine tool industry. To solve these problems, efforts need to be made in nurturing, attracting, and retaining talents. In this process, in addition to the government's guidance work, enterprises themselves also need to take responsibility, such as establishing a long-term enterprise training mechanism and improving the treatment of technical workers.

Innovation Challenge

At present, China's machine tool industry is facing problems such as technological scarcity and weak competitiveness, and urgently needs to inject innovative vitality. However, in terms of enterprise distribution, China's machine tool industry is mainly dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises; In terms of product distribution, the main focus is on mid to low end products. Many industry enterprises are limited by their own scale and lack innovation funds; On the other hand, due to the long development time and high market risks of new products, enterprises tend to focus more on stable "old businesses" in their operations, resulting in a lack of innovation motivation. When it is difficult for individuals to form a climate through individual efforts, school enterprise cooperation and enterprise alliances may become ways to share risks and solve innovation problems.

Difficulties in transformation and upgrading

With the development of intelligent manufacturing, the demand for transformation and upgrading of traditional machine tool enterprises has become increasingly urgent. However, at the same time, the cost pressure brought by transformation and upgrading has deterred many enterprises. More importantly, many enterprises lack accurate understanding and development planning for transformation and upgrading, making the transformation and upgrading process a slogan.

In this situation, machine tool enterprises need to streamline internal management and do a good job in top-level design; On the other hand, it is necessary to ensure the health of the enterprise and extend it after deepening and penetrating a certain field. The transformation and upgrading of machine tool enterprises is a long-term process, which is not simply about replacing robots and installing automated assembly lines. The transformation and upgrading that cannot bring economic benefits is still a failure. How to find the right transformation and upgrading path for machine tool enterprises will become a problem that enterprises must face and solve in the future stage.

Ecological difficulties

The incomplete ecological chain is another challenge faced by machine tool enterprises. At present, machine tool companies are facing the dilemma of customers not understanding, not recognizing, and not accepting in downstream market expansion. In competition with foreign products, they often lose momentum before even starting to compete. In the upstream of the industry, the core technologies of materials and functional components are still subject to human control. The shortcomings in upstream and downstream, as well as the lack of cooperation among peer enterprises, have led to a lack of a favorable ecological environment for the development of domestic machine tool enterprises.

A single flower blooming alone is not spring. A hundred flowers blooming together make spring full. Only by establishing a healthy industry ecosystem can enterprises develop more smoothly. In the "Dialogue" section of the 19th China Machinery and Electrical Products Expo and Wuhan Machine Tool Exhibition, many industry leaders proposed that production enterprises and end users should strengthen understanding and cooperation, and jointly establish a healthy ecological chain for domestic CNC equipment. To achieve this, more active participation from industry enterprises is needed.

Numerical control equipment is the tool for revitalizing the country and the foundation for building a strong nation. Strong equipment makes a country strong. Although China's machine tool industry still needs to face numerous obstacles in the process of moving towards "high-precision", with the joint efforts of industry enterprises, we believe that it will eventually become stronger and stronger.