Today I was talking to a marine power specialist in China, and I got some insights. China’s manufacturing sector is stuck, but since when did this happen? (This post is not just simply about the valve industry, but all the situation of China’s manufacturing.)
The global low-speed marine engines are dominated by German MAN and Wärtsilä, which account for 80% of the market. This two-stroke engine may seem simple to manufacture, but the speed control system in it is the weakness of Chinese engines. The speed control system is an electronic control system, plus a hydraulic actuator. For the hydraulic actuator part that it’s no difficult for China. But it is weak in the electronic control system and its algorithm.
So, when was China’s electronic control system is thrown off track? The global instrumentation, equipment, and sensors all rely on the rise of computers, turning the mechanical navigation path to electronic fusion. In this technological diversion, the mainstream of Chinese manufacturing is unaware.
Just in the 1990s, it was the golden age of the combination of electronic chips and actuators. At present, the electronic governor of marine low-speed engines is dominated by WoorWard of the United States. The Rosemount of the United States and Yokogawa’s differential pressure instruments monopolize the instruments of the Chinese chemical industry. Rosemount, the moribund meter maker, had just been bought by Emerson, who saw a big opportunity in electronic chips and digitally tuned Rosemount to the top of the world’s traffic meters.
Made in Japan is out in force, sensors dominate keens instruments in Japan, its circuit boards are still a product of the last century, and the Japanese Kawasaki hydraulic, which has swept away Chinese engineering machinery.
With the way of electronic chips and machinery, the worldwide manufacture has completed the astonishing transformation of equipment digitalization and instrument digitalization. The word “Mechatronics engineering”, which was invented in Japan, is actually a sign of the times.
At that time, Chinese universities and institutes were already aware of it, and there were also produced rudimentary products.
At the end of the last century, just after the emergence of the fourth generation of governors and the emergence of Germany’s MTU, America’s Woodward and Japan’s NABCO, the 70th Research Institute of the Chinese Ministry of Ordnance Industry developed the EECS governor, mass production capacity. The Shanghai Institute of Marine Science, the Dalian University of Technology, and the Lanzhou Power Vehicle Research Institute of the State Machinery Commission all made progress.
Ultimately, however, those products can not be commercialized. There is no market for Chinese-made parts and components, and there is no user. China’s high-end manufacturing, represented by sensors and meters, has been suppressed by foreign products and can not develop better.
At this point that China’s high-quality manufacturing was thrown off the track. The instruments, the control systems, the chips, and the sensors, are being thrown off. Now China’s various weakness points, are around 1995, the global machinery manufacturing great divergence, China failed to follow its that’s why now we are meeting the manufacturing stuck now.
Nowadays, technology is everyone’s responsibility. We should abandon low-price competition, invest in more scientific research, make more commercial value, and strive to catch up with the advanced countries.
