Recently, Xu Shixiong, chairman of Hunan Machine Tool Industry Association and chairman of Yuhuan CNC, was invited to accept an exclusive interview with a reporter from the Media Department of China Machine Tool Industry Association. As the president of the association, as a "veteran" of Hunan machine tool industry, Chairman Xu Shixiong talked about the transformation and upgrading of Yuhuan CNC and the development suggestions of the industry. Perhaps, Yuhuan's practices and ideas can bring some thinking or inspiration to industry colleagues.

Yu ring numerical control: keep up with the market demand persistent technology breakthrough

(China Machine Tool Industry Association Lan Hai Xia correspondent Yi Ding)

This is a time of changing roles. Under the "new normal" development stage of China's economy, the pattern of the machine tool industry has been quietly evolving. The most obvious feature is that some large and medium-sized enterprises that have won by scale are inevitably declining, while some small and medium-sized private enterprises have bucked the trend. The performance is remarkable, adding a touch of light to the difficult machine tool industry. Yuhuan CNC Machine Tool Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yuhuan CNC) is one of them.

Seize the opportunities of emerging markets, counter the trend of growth

Under the test of the continued downturn in the market, Yuhuan CNC's operating performance can be described as bright. The company mainly engaged in products for CNC grinding equipment and complete sets of intelligent equipment products.

Xu Shixiong, chairman of Yuhuan CNC, told reporters that in recent years, in the adverse environment of the rapid decline of the machine tool market, Yuhuan CNC has successfully grasped the development opportunities brought by the rise of consumer electronics, especially smart phones, tablet computers and other products. Since providing precision grinding equipment for Foxconn in 2010, with good product quality and outstanding technical advantages, Yuhuan CNC has begun to establish a long-term cooperative relationship with a well-known mobile phone manufacturer industry chain company.

In 2014, there was a new market technology demand in the field of smart phone industry, that is, to replace the original mobile phone glass screen with a superhard material, which puts forward higher performance requirements for processing equipment. At the customer site, Yuhuan CNC competed with Germany and Japan at that time. Finally, Yuhuan CNC won the test of the prototypes of the three companies, and the accuracy and efficiency of its processing equipment were higher than those of its competitors. Yuhuan CNC is how to defeat the technical strength of the German and Japanese opponents? For the grinding of this superhard material, if the use of physical technology alone, the processing of superhard materials will in turn destroy the processing equipment. In response to this technical bottleneck, the technology development team of Yuhuan CNC pioneered the use of integrated technology to solve: first soften this superhard material through chemical methods, and then perform physical grinding, completely solving this technical problem. Yuhuan CNC also won a large order of over 100 million US dollars.

This technological breakthrough does not simply come from the manufacturing link of machine tool processing, or it is not a major breakthrough in the field of industrial technology, but it deeply reflects the pioneering thinking of Yuhuan CNC technology research and development team, as well as the ultra-fast response to new market demands. Ability and innovation ability.

Over the years, Yuhuan CNC has been working with Hunan University, Dalian University of Technology, National High-efficiency Grinding Engineering Technology Research Center, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Ultra-precision Machining Technology and other universities and research institutes with leading advantages in the field of grinding technology. Close industry-university-research cooperation relationship. At present, Yuhuan CNC has formed its own relatively complete R & D system. The company has Hunan CNC Precision Grinder Engineering Technology Research Center, Hunan Enterprise Technology Center and Academician Expert Workstation. Its R & D center has six research institutes, which are involved in the fields of intelligent manufacturing, automation, technology, precision grinding and other subdivision technologies. The purpose is to have a clear division of labor in key technologies, to conduct in-depth and thorough research on subdivision technologies, and to dig into each link.

Planning ahead of the layout of intelligent manufacturing industry

An excellent enterprise must have two skills, not only to see the opportunity, but also to see the risk. Yuhuan CNC has seized the huge opportunities brought by the emerging consumer electronics industry, but it is also keenly aware of the potential risks. Although Yuhuan CNC has formed a long-term and stable mutual cooperative relationship with its main customers, if the company's core customers do not operate well due to their own reasons, or if there are major adverse changes in the end consumer market, this will inevitably lead to a significant decline in demand for the company's products.

In line with the future market development trend, the layout of intelligent manufacturing section is a step of Yuhuan CNC to deal with potential market risks. Xu Shixiong believes that intelligent manufacturing has become an irreversible development trend, and Yuhuan CNC is just in the advanced manufacturing field supported by the national economic policy. Up to now, it has a more prominent independent innovation ability and leading market position, and has the ability to seize the future market cake of intelligent manufacturing.

At the beginning, Yuhuan CNC set out to build an automation research institute and an intelligent application technology research institute to reserve technology and talents for entering the field of intelligent manufacturing. The Institute has introduced high-end technical talents from home and abroad, and gradually mastered the sensing technology, vision technology, controller application technology, intelligent human-computer interaction technology in the field of intelligent manufacturing, and has a considerable technical and talent base. In 2014, Yuhuan CNC subsidiary-Hunan Yuhuan Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yuhuan Intelligent) was formally established, which also means that Yuhuan CNC has officially entered a new period of simultaneous development of CNC machine tools and intelligent equipment manufacturing industry.

In the past two years, the manipulator produced by Yuhuan Intelligent has been supporting the medical, food and machine tool industries, and can provide complete sets of automation solutions. For example, in the food industry, chili is a specialty of Hunan. There are many enterprises producing chili oil in Hunan, which used to be bottled manually, and workers are the biggest source of pollution. Yuhuan intelligent independent research and development provides a chili oil manufacturer with the first automatic production line to meet the personalized needs of enterprises, completely solving the problem of artificial pollution, and winning huge business opportunities for Yuhuan CNC in this industry.

Xu Dong told reporters that Yuhuan Intelligence has just equipped hundreds of manipulators for Yuhuan CNC machine tools to solve the automation problem of loading and unloading materials on its grinding machine. Xu Dong said, "For the new machine tools newly developed and launched by Yuhuan CNC, it is difficult for the market to buy suitable manipulators in the first place. Yuhuan Intelligence has specially developed and provided product configuration for Yuhuan CNC to meet its own needs." Xu Dong said that the machine tool industry itself is a large user group of Yuhuan Intelligence, with unlimited business opportunities. What Yuhuan is proud of is that the core software programs of Yuhuan intelligent products are independently developed, and the company has the technical strength to tailor intelligent manufacturing solutions for users in various industries.

In addition, Yuhuan Intelligence has also actively carried out industry-university-research cooperation with Hunan Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. The two sides have jointly developed and formed an intelligent factory that can meet both teaching needs and part of production needs. This cooperation has not only reserved technical talents for Yuhuan Numerical Control, but also laid a solid foundation for the company to introduce a new business model of intelligent factory solutions to the market in the future.

Looking at the industry to lay a solid foundation

For future development, Xu Shixiong said that it is necessary to further increase investment in technology research and development, enhance independent innovation capabilities, continuously enrich the company's product line, and increase the added value of products. Xu Dong himself can be called an industry technical expert. In the interview, he can deeply feel his emphasis on technology. Xu concluded that excellent technicians generally have two characteristics, one is interest, and the other is seriousness. Yuhuan CNC is also in accordance with these two characteristics to select and train technical personnel.

Xu Shixiong told reporters that Yuhuan CNC now has to ensure the development of four or five new products every year. These products are products that closely track market demand, and do not necessarily have to be high-tech and cutting-edge technologies, but they must be specialized products that meet the individual needs of customers.

Xu Shixiong is now the president of Hunan Machine Tool Industry Association. He concluded that Hunan machine tool industry is gradually highlighting the extremely important position of precision grinding technology and related equipment in the transformation and upgrading, thanks to Hunan's unique technical foundation, Such as Hunan National High-efficiency Grinding Engineering Technology Research Center, Hunan CNC Precision Grinder Engineering Technology Research Center built by Yuhuan CNC, academician expert workstation, etc. At the same time, it has gradually formed a leading enterprise focusing on the R & D and manufacturing of grinding machine tools, represented by Yuhuan CNC, Zhongdachuangyuan, Haijie Seiko and other enterprises. In the domestic machine tool industry, grinding as a finishing technology is still a relatively weak field. Xu Shixiong expects Hunan's grinding industry cluster to develop together and make new and greater breakthroughs in this field in the future.

When summarizing and comparing the technical performance of domestic machine tools and foreign machine tools, Xu believes that in a single technology, some domestic machine tools have been able to surpass similar foreign products, but the gap in the overall technical level is still significant, and the gap is mainly reflected in reliability indicators.

Although the economy has entered a new normal and the development of the machine tool industry has slowed down, Xu Dong is optimistic about the development prospects of the national equipment manufacturing industry and is full of confidence in the development of the machine tool industry in Hunan. "High-end CNC equipment is one of the ten key development areas of" Made in China 2025 ", Hunan's machine tool industry has a deep historical origin and a unique foundation for development. Hunan's machine tool enterprises have the characteristics of" specialization, refinement and sharpness ", with collaborative innovation and group development conditions. As long as we emancipate our minds and be pragmatic, Hunan's machine tool industry can occupy a place in the country and even the world's equipment." Xu Dong's outlook on the future development of Hunan's machine tool industry. We also look forward to Hunan machine tool in the new round of industrial development to create greater glory.