On the eve of entering the 2 1 century, American welding colleagues launched a large-scale discussion on the theme of "American welding industry meets the challenge of the 2 1 century". They extensively and deeply discussed the opportunities and challenges that welding may encounter in the next 20 years, and put forward a series of analysis reports based on the prospect of welding industry.
People of insight in the welding industry in China also paid unusual attention to how the welding industry in China entered the 2 1 century. The consulting project working group of China Academy of Engineering, led by two academicians, Lin and Guan Qiao, conducted a research on the current situation and development strategy of welding production in China manufacturing industry. In the past three years, the project working group has carried out painstaking research, systematically analyzed the present situation and main challenges of China's welding industry on the basis of mastering a large number of first-hand information and data at home and abroad, planned the future development strategy and countermeasures, and put forward a research report with rich connotation and great strategic significance.
This work has been highly concerned by the welding industry. In March 2004, China Welding Association and China Welding Society organized a seminar on the development strategy of welding industry attended by authoritative experts in China. Experts attending the meeting spoke highly of the reports of the two academicians and put forward many valuable suggestions for the future development of the industry.
This paper aims to discuss the main challenges and countermeasures for the further development of the industry under the overall framework of the reports of two academicians and according to the suggestions of the seminar experts.
summary
With the rapid development of science and technology, welding has successfully completed its own transformation. Few people pay attention to when this process begins and ends. But it did happen at some point in the past. Today, we are faced with the fact that welding has developed from the traditional hot working technology into an engineering technology discipline integrating materials, metallurgy, structure, machinery, electronics and other disciplines. Moreover, with the development and progress of related disciplines and technologies, new knowledge is constantly being integrated into welding.
Analyzing modern welding, we can easily find several main features that are increasingly apparent:
Welding has become the most popular connection technology.
In today's industrial society, no connection technology is so widely and universally used in various fields as welding. The most important reason is its competitive cost performance.
-High welding technology content and added value.
Today, human society has entered 2 1 century, and welding has also entered a brand-new development stage. There are many latest scientific research achievements, cutting-edge technologies and high-tech in the world today, such as computers, microelectronics, digital control, information processing, industrial robots, laser technology and so on. , has been widely used in the field of welding, making the technical content of welding unprecedented and creating extremely high added value in the manufacturing process.
Welding has become a key manufacturing technology.
As one of the assembly processes, welding is usually arranged in the late or final stage of the manufacturing process, so it plays a decisive role in product quality. Because of this, welding is regarded as a key manufacturing technology in many industries.
Welding has become an inseparable part of modern industry.
In the most industrialized United States, welding is regarded as "the lifeblood of American manufacturing and the key to the future competitiveness of the United States". The main reason is that many industrial products cannot be manufactured without welding technology.
The Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project, the West-to-East Gas Transmission Project and the Shenzhou Manned Spacecraft have left a brilliant chapter in the history of human development. Which project has not adopted welded structure? Take the West-to-East Gas Transmission Project as an example. The total length of the gas transmission pipeline is about 4,300 kilometers, the number of welded joints exceeds 350,000, and the length of the weld seam of the whole pipeline is at least1.5000 kilometers. Without welding, it is almost impossible to imagine how to complete such a project.
If we compare welding with sunshine, air and water in life, we will inevitably feel a little exaggerated, but there is no doubt that welding has been deeply integrated into the modern industrial economy today and has shown a very important and even irreplaceable role in it.
Opportunities and challenges
(A) the status quo of China welding industry
The welding industry consists of "users" of welding and related technologies, "suppliers" of welding equipment (including welding materials, welding equipment, auxiliary tools and cutting tools) and organizations or institutions providing related support services (including scientific research institutes, schools, training institutions, testing institutions, laboratories, equipment dealers, etc.). ).
As a general technology, welding is regarded as the key processing technology by quite a few enterprises in manufacturing industry, and welding directly determines the quality of its products. These enterprises constitute the main body of welding technology application.
According to the classification method of industrial categories in China, these enterprises are widely distributed in boilers, pressure vessels, power generation equipment, nuclear facilities, petrochemicals, pipelines, metallurgy, mines, railways, automobiles, shipbuilding, port facilities, aerospace, construction, agricultural machinery, water conservancy facilities, engineering machinery, machinery manufacturing, medical equipment, precision instruments and electronics. These enterprises have a far-reaching impact on China's industrial economic construction, involving a wide range, and have a decisive impact and role. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 7,000 enterprises whose main processing technology is welding (or welding has a key impact on the quality of their products).
There are thousands of welding equipment manufacturers in China. Among them, there are about 900 welding equipment manufacturers and more than 500 welding materials manufacturers. In addition, hundreds of enterprises in China are engaged in the production and manufacture of welding auxiliary equipment, supporting equipment, cutting tools and related safety protection articles. These enterprises constitute the main body of welding equipment supply industry in China.
China's welding industry also includes institutions that provide various technical support and services for the above two types of enterprises. Although the number of these institutions is small (only a few dozen), they have great influence on the industry, mainly engaged in information consultation and services in industry management, research and development, education, training, certification, standardization, welding and material connection. These public institutions include scientific research institutes, universities, vocational and technical schools, training bases, industry management and service departments.
The statistical results of relevant data show that in 2002, there were more than 654.38+0.6 billion employees in the secondary industry in China, including more than 80 million employees in the manufacturing industry. In the United States196, the number of welding employees exceeded 200 million, accounting for more than 10% of the total number of manufacturing workers in the United States. Considering the industrial output value of American manufacturing industry is 4-5 times that of China, the per capita labor productivity is 25 times that of China, and the factors of welding productivity level between China and the United States, even if it is estimated by conservative methods, the number of employees in China's welding industry should be around 6,543,800+million at present.
It may be difficult to make a quantitative evaluation of the overall situation of China's welding industry, but the output of welding materials in various countries can reflect the scale of China's welding industry to some extent. The statistical results of welding materials data in 2002 show that the total output of welding materials in China has climbed to 6.5438+0.449 million tons, equivalent to the sum of the United States, Japan and Europe. China's position as the largest welding country in the world can be seen.
(2) Future market demand
According to the statistical bulletin of national economic and social development in 2003 issued by the National Bureau of Statistics, the steel output in China in 2003 was 220 million tons, an increase of 2 1% over the previous year. According to the proportion of 40% of welding steel in China, the steel used for welding structure is close to 90 million tons.
In developed countries, the amount of steel used for welding basically reaches 60%-70% of its total steel consumption. According to the overall goal of China's national economic development in 2020 and the forecast of China's welding industry development trend, China may reach 60% in the next five years to 10. By then, China's steel output will be between 250 million and 300 million tons. This means that the welding quantity will be doubled, which has formed considerable demand for welding production efficiency and labor force. Considering the actual space for the growth of welding production efficiency in China, the linkage relationship between productivity and labor force and other factors, the demand for welding labor force in China may be more than one million orders of magnitude in the future. Therefore, the welding industry will continue to grow in the next five to 10 years.
On the eve of entering the 2 1 century, AWS organized authoritative experts to discuss and formulate the development strategy of American welding industry in the next 20 years. Its analysis report predicts the future of welding as follows: In 2020, welding will still be the preferred way to connect metals with other engineering materials. American industry will become the world leader of these products with high cost performance and superior performance by virtue of its leading edge in connection technology, product design, manufacturing capacity and global competitiveness.
It is not difficult to see that welding not only has a broad application space in the future industrial economy, but also has a greater impact on the product quality, manufacturing capacity and competitiveness of enterprises.
After China's entry into WTO, as the largest developing country and the country with the strongest economic vitality in the world, the development of China's welding industry is full of opportunities and challenges. How to effectively grasp the opportunities, meet the challenges and ensure the sustainable and healthy development in the future is an important issue facing the welding industry in China.
(iii) Major challenges
1 Innovation and learning in welding industry
200 1 China's accession to the WTO marks the beginning of China's integration into the global economy. In 2002, China attracted more than US$ 50 billion in foreign direct investment, ranking first in the world. In fact, since China's manufacturing industry entered the global industrial chain in an all-round way, the concept of manufacturing industry has changed fundamentally. Today's manufacturing industry is completely different from the traditional concept. In the past, manufacturing industry was simply defined as "the process of processing raw materials into semi-finished products or finished products". The contemporary international industrial economy explains the manufacturing industry as "a series of activities and processes in which manufacturers operate and manage their own supply chains, provide users with qualified products and meet users' needs".
Therefore, today's industrial competition is not limited to enterprises, but extends to the external space of enterprises (including all links in their supply chain). Moreover, the connotation of competition is not limited to the technology, management, quality, price and cost of an enterprise, but includes its comprehensive adaptability to environment, rules, culture and policies.
Nowadays, the environment of industrial development in the world has changed obviously, the obstacles to trade and investment are decreasing day by day, and technological progress has made the international economy more closely linked. New technology, enterprise innovation and organization management, and international rules constitute three main features of today's industrial competitive environment. This view has been strongly recognized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. On this basis, skills, research and development, foreign direct investment, technology introduction cost and modern infrastructure are regarded as the five driving forces directly related to national industrial development.
According to the Industrial Development Report 2002/2003 issued by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in 2002, there are two ways to gain competitive advantage in modern international competition. One is to gain temporary advantages under static conditions such as natural resources and low labor costs. This method is defined as a "low-level method". Another "advanced method" is to gain long-term competitive advantage by establishing and strengthening independent ability. In today's international competition dominated by technological innovation, all countries attach great importance to the latter, that is, by improving adaptability, deploying and gradually upgrading new production and management technologies and creating newer technologies. This whole set of activities and capacity building process is defined as "innovation and learning".
In the stage of low industrialization, it is possible to gain competitive advantage easily only by relying on basic skills, infrastructure, favorable resources and low labor costs. But this advantage is often temporary. With the improvement of industrialization, this advantage will gradually disappear if competitors do not absorb new technologies, carry out innovative activities and improve their own capabilities. The consequence is nothing more than being marginalized in the competitive environment and eventually being eliminated.
When industrialization enters a certain mature stage, R&D, foreign investment and advanced skills will become the leading factors of industrial competitiveness. "Learning and innovation" is particularly important for enterprises at this time.
Looking back on the development of China welding industry for more than 50 years, we have experienced the development process of "from scratch, from small to large". From the comprehensive evaluation of the existing scale, production efficiency and technical level of China welding industry, it is not difficult to draw a conclusion that China welding industry is entering a relatively mature stage.
After more than 20 years of reform and development, China's foreign investment and technology introduction in the welding field have reached a considerable scale, but we have no advantages in high-end technology and cutting-edge technology, which means that although we have entered the global industrial chain, we are only at the low end of the value chain. It can be seen that the welding industry in China is facing the development topic of "from weak to strong". The construction of independent innovation ability is undoubtedly the key to our future development. I'm afraid this will be the theme of "innovation and learning" in China welding industry for some time to come.
According to the experience of industrialized countries, the content of "innovation and learning" will change in different enterprises, different development periods and stages. Moreover, this is a long-term, expensive and risky process, and its difficulty may be no less than the technological innovation activities carried out by industrialized countries to maintain the advantages of cutting-edge technologies. Of course, if China's welding industry gives a satisfactory answer to this question, it will undoubtedly get rich returns. This return is the strong industrial competitiveness and the sustained, stable and healthy development of the whole industry.
2. Technological innovation ability
According to the report of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in 2002, China's ranking in the industrial competitiveness index rose by 25 places (from 6 1995 to 37th 1998), making it the country with the largest increase in industrial competitiveness in the world. This achievement is gratifying, but further analysis will reveal that we still have a series of problems and are facing severe challenges.
As mentioned above, five factors that have a direct impact on industrial competitiveness include skills, R&D, foreign direct investment, technology introduction cost and modern infrastructure. In the report of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, these factors are regarded as the five driving forces directly related to the national industrial development.
If we compare and analyze some countries with better industrial competitiveness, it may better reflect our problems.
South Korea and Singapore have performed well in the ranking of industrial competitiveness of the United Nations Industrial Organization. South Korea's ranking rose from 22nd in 1995 to 8th in 1998. While Singapore rose from the 6th place in 1995 to the 6th place in 1. The industrial competitiveness indexes of these two countries are relatively high, showing strong competitiveness.
In fact, the two countries gain competitiveness in different ways. Singapore mainly relies on foreign investment and technology introduction. Although its local R&D strength is not strong, it has successfully improved its competitiveness with the help of external technology and investment. South Korea is a completely different success model. South Korea attaches great importance to its own research and development, and mainly relies on independent innovation ability to improve its competitiveness. Japan is also a model of this model. In order to improve its technological innovation ability, it even tries to achieve the purpose of independent innovation and enhance competitiveness by restricting foreign investment.
The improvement of China's industrial competitiveness mainly comes from the last three of the five driving forces, namely, relying on foreign capital, technology introduction and large-scale infrastructure construction, which have increased significantly since the reform and opening up. The first two of the five driving forces, namely skills and research and development, are obviously backward in China. Especially for R&D, which represents technological innovation, the evaluation conclusion obtained in China is: very weak.
The first problem we need to solve is how to further improve our competitiveness. China is the largest developing country in the world, and both successful models are worth learning from. In the early days of reform and opening-up, we successfully enhanced the industrial competitiveness of China by improving the investment environment, expanding the scale of capital construction, attracting foreign investment and introducing foreign technology. In the future, I am afraid that the enhancement of China's competitiveness will depend on our technological innovation to a greater extent. In other words, advanced labor skills and science and technology will play a leading role.
Looking back on the welding industry in China, it is not difficult to find that we are facing almost the same problems in technological innovation.
The first is the skill problem, which is reflected in the lack of welding professionals in the welding industry. In recent years, the contradiction between supply and demand of professional talents has become increasingly prominent. On the one hand, since 1998, Chinese universities have cancelled the welding major and implemented general education. Under the condition of imperfect vocational training system in China, the problem of talents has begun to appear. If this situation continues, the contradictions will become more prominent in the next few years.
Followed by research and development in the field of welding. The main problems of welding research and development are reflected in two aspects: first, the investment is seriously insufficient; Second, the overall research level has declined. In industrialized countries, R&D expenditure generally accounts for 3%-5% of GDP. In China, the situation is obviously different. According to the statistical bulletin of national economic and social development in 2003 issued by the National Bureau of Statistics, the total research and development expenditure in China in 2003 was 654.38+0.5 billion yuan, accounting for only 654.38+0.3% of China's GDP. However, the sampling survey results of 100 welding enterprises are even more frustrating. The average R&D expenditure of these enterprises only accounts for 0.37% of their GDP. In addition, in the process of transforming scientific research institutes into enterprises in China, some problems have not been well solved. These problems include: great changes have taken place in the management and research direction of the institute, ignoring some medium-and long-term research projects and public welfare research projects; Some research institutes are forced to give up some research fields with market demand due to brain drain and poor financial support, which leads to the gradual decrease of research fields. In short, as far as the overall research level is concerned, we are in a downward trend.
In addition to the above two problems, there are also problems that cannot be ignored in the field of welding technology diffusion and research results transformation. In the field of welding, most enterprises (especially manufacturers of welding materials and welding equipment) belong to small and medium-sized enterprises, and their own research and development capabilities are relatively weak, relying largely on the research strength of universities and research institutes. For a long time, China's welding industry has mainly relied on this Industry-University-Research cooperation chain with universities as the upstream, scientific research institutes as the midstream and enterprises as the downstream (the main application of scientific and technological achievements) to engage in research and development and the transformation of research achievements. When there are problems in the source, middle and upper reaches of innovation chain, the negative impact on the downstream goes without saying, and the result can be imagined.