Internal and external troubles in the mold market "Self-cultivation" is the key to breakthrough

During the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" period, China's mold industry market share will reach 120 billion yuan. Although the current mold industry has a broad market space, due to foreign monopoly squeezing the profit space of the industry and the various problems of domestic-funded enterprises themselves, industrial investment risks have risen sharply.
1. Foreign troubles-foreign companies are stepping up to cannibalize the mold market
In recent years, a new round of expansion of international mold manufacturing giants investing and setting up factories in China is in full swing. Hella Jilin of Germany settled down; Toyota Mould of Japan set up a factory in Tianjin; the Shenzhen Mould Manufacturing Factory invested and built by Finnish Belrose Company was officially put into operation not long ago, which provides high-end mould products for telecommunications, health care, electronics, automobiles and other industries.
A large number of foreign capital enters independently, which will not help to improve my country's own mold level. Foreign-funded enterprises generally do not choose joint ventures because they are unwilling to leak their core technologies. There are generally two modes for foreign-funded enterprises to enter: one is to enter together with their supporting enterprises (ie customers), which is characterized by professional services for a single customer and the same variety of molds; the other is to enter China by themselves. The purpose of foreign mold companies investing in China is to use China's cheap labor and cheap steel to make more profits.
Foreign-funded enterprises have advanced technology and financial strength, and re-use China's labor force and cheap raw materials, and their competitive advantages are self-evident. The high-end mold market that it has been occupying is even more inaccessible to Chinese companies, which means that Chinese-funded companies have no chance to upgrade. According to industry insiders, in foreign companies, the mold workshop is a "secret workshop", and outsiders cannot approach it casually. To set up factories in China, foreign capital has both capital and independent technology, and there is no need for joint ventures with Chinese companies. They are just to reduce labor costs. Moreover, they still keep the design abroad and spread it to other companies in China via the Internet.
At present, the scale of my country's mold companies is second only to Japan and the United States, but most of them are concentrated in the middle and low-end areas, with low technical level and added value. What Chinese-funded enterprises fear most is that their strength has not yet been strengthened, and foreign-funded enterprises have completed their monopoly on the Chinese mold market. According to the data provided by the China Die & Mould Industry Association, the precision and complex stamping molds and plastic molds, car cover molds, electronic connectors and other electronic product molds urgently needed by my country's manufacturing industry still rely heavily on imports, and the import and export deficit of mold products exceeds 10 More than billions of dollars.
2. Internal worries-many problems existing in domestic enterprises need to be solved urgently
According to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 20,000 factories producing molds in the country, and more than half of them are self-produced and used. At the same time, most of them are small enterprises. In recent years, the pace of structural adjustment and system reform of the mold industry has accelerated, but the level of design and manufacturing is generally much behind that of industrialized countries. Mainly manifested in:
1. The corporate structure is not reasonable enough. Most of the mold production plants in my country are self-produced and self-made mold workshops (branch factories), and most professional mold factories are organized in a "big and complete" or "small and complete" organization. Most foreign mold companies are "small and complete" organizations. "Professional", "small but precise"; the proportion of domestic molds produced and self-made is as high as over 50%, while more than 70% of foreign molds are commercial molds. The proportion of large-scale, precise, complex, and long-life molds in the total domestic molds is only about 30%, and the proportion of foreign molds is more than 50%.
2. The industry's innovation capability is weak and the production level is low. The mold industry is a technology-intensive and capital-intensive industry. With the progress of the times and the development of technology, there is an abnormal shortage of talents who can master and use new technologies. Due to the poor efficiency of mold companies and insufficient attention to scientific research and development and technological breakthroughs, overall, the mold industry has invested too little in scientific research and development and technological breakthroughs. my country's mold product level and production technology level are generally much lower than the international advanced level, while the mold production cycle is much longer than the international advanced level. The low level of production is mainly manifested in the accuracy, surface roughness of the cavity, life and the complexity of the mold; the low level of craftsmanship is mainly manifested in the aspects of design, processing, and process equipment.
3. Weak development capabilities and poor overall industry efficiency. The proportion of technical personnel in my country's mold companies is low, and they do not pay enough attention to product development, and they are often in a passive position in the market. The average annual output value of molds created by each employee in my country is about US$20,000, while most of the developed countries in the mold industry are US$200,000. In addition, although many domestic companies have adopted advanced processing equipment, the overall level of equipment is still much behind that of foreign companies, especially the equipment numerical control rate and CAD/CAM application coverage rate are much lower than those of foreign companies. Due to institutional and financial reasons, it is very common for imported equipment to be unmatched, equipment and accessories not to be matched, and the problem of low equipment utilization has not been well resolved for a long time. The result of this is that the economic benefits of my country's mold companies are poor, most of which are profitable and lack stamina.
4. The standardization level of molds and the low coverage of mold standard parts. The use coverage rate of mold standard parts in advanced foreign countries is more than 70%, while the coverage rate of domestic mold standard parts is only about 45%. The low level of mold standardization and the low coverage of standard parts also have a greater impact on mold quality and cost, especially the mold manufacturing cycle.
5. The management of mold companies is more backward than that of technology. The performance, quality and variety of mold materials often affect the quality, life and cost of molds. There is a big gap between domestic mold steel and foreign imported steel. Poor performance of plastics, plates, equipment, etc., also directly affects the improvement of the mold level. However, backward technology is easy to be found, and backward management is easy to be ignored. Most domestic mold companies still use the past workshop management model. Not many truly realize modern enterprise management.

Three, self-cultivation and self-cultivation-improving one's own quality is the key
Die companies are different from mass production companies. Its single-piece product characteristics determine its production and operation mode. Each mold has its unique structural characteristics, different process conditions and paths, and different matching methods. Just like "customization", the management difficulty of the enterprise is greatly increased. How to find common characteristics in the design and manufacture of different forms of mold products, so as to form high-efficiency management methods, and then form the core competitiveness of the enterprise, this is every aspiration It is a problem that must be solved by the mold company for sustainable development. In response, Luo Baihui, secretary general of the International Mould Association, pointed out that the mould industry is an investment-intensive and technology-intensive industry, and management plays a pivotal role in it. Only through management can corporate efficiency and core competitiveness be continuously increased. Different companies have different Only by grasping its own positioning and implementing management methods according to local conditions can it truly increase management efficiency.
Improve mold self-manufacturing ability
In order to ensure high-quality and sufficient manufacturing capabilities, mold companies often need to invest heavily in purchasing a complete set of processing equipment with international advanced levels, from rough to semi-finish, finishing, deep hole processing, EDM, etc. Of course, the guarantee of hardware is only the foundation of the advanced mold company, and the efficient management system and methods are the guarantee of success. Taking the road of standardization and systemization is the only way for the implementation of mold enterprise management to take off, and its foothold lies in the mechanism of motivating people.
1. Standardization
What troubles the efficiency of a mold enterprise is its own product and business characteristics. However, after careful analysis, it is not difficult to find that there are many commonalities in mold design and manufacturing. There are opportunities for the batch operation of mold design and manufacturing, and the opportunities for efficiency exist in the common law.
Like other industries, standardization is the basis and prerequisite for achieving efficiency. The efficiency improvement of the mold company in the design and manufacturing process is also based on this foundation. In the design, we have formulated a unified design standard. Every design engineer should follow the basic standards and principles to form a standardized platform. At the same time, we can continuously cultivate and train new employees to continuously improve their skills. On the basis of standardization, the further direction is modularization. Modularity is the extension of standardization, it is the integration of standardization. After the mold design has a standardized foundation, the integration becomes a matter of course. Of course, this is a cumulative process, which will undoubtedly bring high efficiency to mold design.
2. Systematization
The design and production of the mold is an inseparable process. Often the machining has already started during the design process, and the module development has already begun during the machining process. You have me and you are in the process of mold development It has always existed. In fact, mold manufacturing is a systematic problem. How to rationally integrate the functions of various departments and blocks, so as to realize the leanness of molds in terms of cost, time and quality is particularly important.
Expand project management capabilities
The project management of a mold company is not a simple mold outsourcing, it includes a series of professional content such as technical standards, design review, production monitoring, mold trial optimization, customer coordination, change tracking, etc. It is a professional service that creates value-added for customers. Luo Baihui believes that the project emphasizes technology and customer service as the orientation. It can not only provide complete technical tracking and implementation for high-end customers with complete standards, but also provide a complete set of services from technical standards to project tracking for original customers. While creating value, we can also achieve profitability.
Building a mold engineering team
In order to better serve customers and obtain projects, mold companies need to establish a pre-mold engineering team. We can join the pre-design at the same time as customer product design, and provide customers with CAE engineering such as mold feasibility analysis and mold flow analysis. Service, so that the product design is more optimized and perfect, and it is more conducive to the later mold design and processing. The more far-reaching significance of the preliminary engineering support is to provide an effective way for the optimization of the mold manufacturing cycle. If the product design and mold design can be effectively paralleled, the time for mold T1 trial mold will be greatly shortened.
Build a good corporate culture
Mold corporate culture has become an important factor in the development of the mold industry, and spiritual wealth will establish material profits. Build a good corporate culture to promote the development of the mold industry.
Some mold companies use innovative cultural concepts to break the old cognition. Mold companies use the law of competition of "the market chooses the company, the company chooses employees" and the distribution principle of "company distribution depends on efficiency, and employee income depends on contribution" to adjust employees' job selection concepts and values, so that employees can find their own position and realization in the company. The coordinate point of its own value.
"Helping customers to successfully build the future together" is the keynote of the new corporate culture of some mold companies. This sentence is a business philosophy put forward on the basis of the understanding of the win-win theory and the user relationship by the company's palm trustee, which is related to the user relationship. Judge correctly. Let employees understand that only by sincerely helping customers succeed, can the company succeed, the user can earn money, the company can earn money from the user, and the market value chain composed of the company and the customer can achieve long-term interaction and win-win together.
There have been many mold companies with an output value of 100 million yuan in China. The scale of the mold industry is no longer what it used to be. Moreover, the development of the mold industry has changed from the original workshop-style operation mode to a standardized and large-scale modern enterprise model. The strategic management method to increase efficiency and enhance the core competitiveness of mold enterprises has become a problem that every mold enterprise manager must think about.

Innovative employee management mechanism
The mold industry is an experience-intensive industry. Many structural designs and detailed adjustments still come from mold engineers and mold technicians who are responsible for experience and creativity. Therefore, the construction of human resources is particularly important in mold companies. According to Masnou's demand theory, we can establish a hierarchical incentive mechanism. Therefore, in addition to closely linking performance and personal income, we can also establish career development channels for employees, so that various positions can be moved, for example, machining personnel can become programming engineers, fitters can develop to designers, etc. , So that the development of employees and the development of the enterprise can be organically linked. Human knowledge is the knowledge of prohibited words, and the incentive mechanism needs to be continuously innovated according to development. Only by creating an excellent team of personnel can we manufacture advanced and high-quality molds.