Abstract: In recent years, thanks to the improvement of industrialization and continuous economic growth in the mainland, the mold manufacturing industry in the mainland has also grown steadily. Domestic mold manufacturing enterprises have achieved rapid development by learning foreign advanced technology and management concepts, and constantly carrying out business transformation and industrial upgrading. At the same time, due to the high correlation between the mold industry and many industries, the continuous development of the downstream market has also driven the rapid development of the mainland mold industry, especially with the transfer of the global manufacturing industry to China, driving the upgrading of the mainland manufacturing industry, which will also bring new growth opportunities to the mold industry. The data shows that in 2020, affected by the epidemic, the scale of the industry has declined, and with the effective control of the epidemic, the scale of the mainland mold market has resumed growth, and the market size of the mainland mold industry will be about 346.773 billion yuan by 2022, a year-on-year increase of 12.6%.
1. Definitions and Classification
Mold refers to various molds and tools used in industrial production to obtain products and parts with specific shapes and sizes by injection molding, blow molding, extrusion, die-casting or forging molding, smelting, stamping and other methods. To put it simply, the mold is a tool used to make molded items, which is composed of various parts, and different molds are composed of different parts, which mainly realizes the processing of the shape of the item through the change of the physical state of the molded material. The development level of mold production is one of the important symbols of the level of machinery manufacturing, known as the "mother of industry". According to the processing technology and processing object, the mold is mainly divided into five categories: stamping mold, plastic mold, casting mold, forging mold and rubber mold
Second, industry policies
In recent years, various departments in mainland China have issued a series of policies to improve the quality and performance of the mold industry, such as the "Notice on Printing and Distributing the Action Plan for Further Improving the Quality of Products, Projects and Services (2022-2025)" issued in 2022, which mentions that the quality and performance of basic parts and general parts will be improved, and the research on basic common technologies will be strengthened to improve the reliability and stability of core basic components (components) such as bearings, gears, fasteners, liquid-air tight parts, hydraulic parts, pump valves, molds, and sensors, and extend their service life.
3. Industry barriers
1. Technical barriers
Mold production involves multidisciplinary and multi-field technologies such as process design, machining, and material science, and is a technology-intensive industry. The production characteristics of mold products are single-piece production, the personalized demand is obvious, the technical ability of designers and skilled workers is required to be higher, and manufacturers need to master the core technology after long-term practical experience accumulation and production application in manufacturing process, quality control, online debugging, etc. With the continuous improvement of downstream enterprises' technical requirements for mold material strength, service life, manufacturing accuracy, stability, etc., technology upgrading is accelerating, and the product development and manufacturing capabilities of enterprises are more stringent. At the same time, the industry's leading technology enterprises can further optimize the original technology by continuously undertaking orders, meet the new needs of customers through continuous new product development, and then form new processes and new methods, and constantly build high technical barriers, making it difficult for new entrants to have the technical level to meet the requirements of industry development in a short period of time, constituting a higher technical barrier in the industry.
2. Customer barriers
As the basic equipment of production, the mold will affect the quality, performance and service life of mass-produced parts to a large extent, and most of the molds are non-standard customized products, which cannot be replaced or replaced once established, so downstream customers have very strict requirements for mold suppliers. In particular, well-known downstream enterprises usually formulate a set of strict standards to inspect the capabilities of mold suppliers in all aspects, not only requiring suppliers to provide reliable quality products, but also strict requirements for suppliers' R&D and testing capabilities, advanced manufacturing equipment and maintenance status, processing technology, production process arrangement, employee execution, quality control, working environment and other aspects. In addition, because each manufacturer has its own technical standard system for the technical characteristics and quality of the mold and is different, once the manufacturer selects the mold supplier, it usually establishes a long-term and stable cooperative relationship, which is a big obstacle for new entrants.
3. Talent barriers
The quantity and quality of professional and technical personnel is an important guarantee for the strength of the enterprise, and it is also one of the key factors for the enterprise to be recognized by customers, which determines the scale of the future development of the enterprise. With the innovative application of technological processes, the acceleration of the pace of technological innovation, and the improvement of the level of production automation and informatization, enterprises in the mold industry must form a team of technical talents with deep professional background, rich practical experience, and outstanding R&D and innovation capabilities in order to maintain a leading edge in the change. At present, the supply of professionals with both practical experience and theoretical knowledge in the industry is relatively scarce, and mainly relies on internal training. The leading enterprises in the mold industry have established a mature talent training mechanism and talent echelon through continuous technology accumulation and market precipitation. For new entrants in the mold industry, especially those lacking scale advantages and production experience, it is difficult to build a professional and reasonable talent team in the short term and always ensure the stable development of the talent team, so there are certain talent barriers in the mold industry.
4. Financial barriers
Due to the objective needs of production line purchase, plant construction and daily operation, higher requirements are put forward for the supporting financial strength of manufacturers in the industry. In particular, some equipment has strong specificity, and driven by technological innovation and customer demand, the equipment is updated quickly, and continuous capital investment is required to ensure the improvement of product performance and production efficiency. If the new enterprise does not have a certain amount of capital accumulation, it will be difficult to adapt to the market competition in the industry. Therefore, there are high financial barriers in the mold industry.
Fourth, the industrial chain
The upstream of the industrial chain of the mold industry chain is the raw materials and equipment links, mainly including the mold steel, cast iron, rubber, plastics, CNC machine tools, etc., which need to be selected according to the required characteristics of the design product, and the CNC machine tool as the supporting components of the mold, through the design and processing procedures to control the cooperation of the mold and other components, so as to produce finished parts; the midstream is the production and supply link of the mold; the downstream is widely used in automobiles, home appliances, machinery and equipment, electronic information, instrumentation, medical equipment, rail transit, Aerospace and other manufacturing industries.
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