- Jul 19, 2020-
Compared with the international technology, my country's wire and cable industry has very big deficiencies. The most prominent problem is that the investment of local enterprises in equipment has not kept pace with the development of wire and cable in the world today. Most of the cable equipment in use in China is domestically produced, and some are produced in a joint venture with Taiwan. As far as the overall level of equipment is concerned, due to the slow replacement of the equipment, there is a certain gap compared with the equipment of international famous brands, and some equipment is extremely inefficient. . In terms of equipment management, it is far from the same industry in the world or compared with the tobacco, petrochemical, and steel industries in my country.
First of all, the equipment management system is formalized, the work is slow, the equipment professional inspection team has not been established, the modern inspection equipment is insufficient, and the inspection tools and maintenance methods from the 1980s to the 1990s are basically still used. Second, the equipment failure response method is single and backward, and it is still in the post-maintenance stage. Basically, it only relies on replacing parts to solve the problem. The coexistence of over-maintenance and under-maintenance has severely restricted the efficiency of equipment production. In addition, the awareness of autonomous maintenance is weak, and the equipment is all repaired by maintenance workers. The habit of autonomous maintenance is not formed, causing frequent equipment failures, maintenance workers tired of rushing repairs, and lack of energy for pre-inspection and maintenance, forming a vicious circle. This situation is difficult to compete with international cable giants.
A series of problems are hidden behind the inadequate nature of equipment and lack of management. The competition in the external market of enterprises has intensified, cash flow is correspondingly tight, and delayed delivery of orders is inevitable. Among them, the downtime due to equipment failure has a greater impact, and the amount of accounts receivable remains high due to late delivery. Such a vicious circle has seriously affected the company's normal business activities. At the same time, quality problems frequently occur due to equipment. For example, a well-known cable company caused 57 quality accidents due to equipment in 2014, accounting for more than 20% of all quality accidents, and economic losses accounted for 27% of all quality accident losses. The situation is serious.
The current reality is that cable prices continue to decline rapidly, and cable manufacturers can only continuously invest equipment costs and energy to recover prices and profits that are constantly falling to the bottom. In this cruel contest, the outcome depends on which side is faster. If wire and cable manufacturers want to grow faster, they need to meet two conditions: one is the ability to rapidly update technology, increase the interest rate of product structure, adapt to the product updates necessary for this technology update, and the organizational efficiency of the commercialization of these products. The second is to implement equipment management innovation and technological upgrading to improve production and quality assurance capabilities. Relatively speaking, the implementation process of technology research and development is relatively long, which can be used as a long-term planning strategy, while the latter can be immediate and solve the current problems encountered by the low efficiency of equipment and the inability to deliver on time. In short, it is urgent to solve the equipment problem.
Today, as the second largest industry after the automobile manufacturing industry, the wire and cable industry has entered a brand new industry environment. It is necessary to be soberly aware that the original low-price production factor price model itself is wrong, because the price advantage of low-price production factors is not determined by the prices of these factors, but by subsequent technological upgrades and equipment management. Wait for organizational variables to determine, whoever masters advanced technology and equipment management and other variables will be able to master the advantage of low-price production factors, so the real growth of local wire and cable companies should be the growth of technology and management, rather than the immediate immediate interest.
Combining the modern integrated manufacturing system of the national 863 plan and the development direction of Made in China 2025 (intelligent manufacturing and enterprise innovation), in the process of German Industry 4.0 and China’s "Internet + Manufacturing" intelligent production promotion process, the entire cable industry needs to be carried out Strategic adjustment requires efforts to enhance its own value to face more challenges in the international market.
The equipment of the wire and cable industry is a key link in the production system. However, this is often overlooked by the top of the company. In the five core elements of the manufacturing industry, "people, machines, materials, methods, and environment", delivery time and quality occupy Too many eyes, but I don't know that the maintenance and management level of most automated production lines in the wire and cable industry is only at the initial stage of professional equipment management (fault repair), which is far from the international modern equipment management system. This problem of increased production costs and customer losses caused by weak equipment management links needs to be solved urgently.
In the equipment management work of the wire and cable industry, it is an inevitable development trend to gradually engage in the post-maintenance management mode toward the lean equipment management mode including predictive (predictive) maintenance. In the past, the equipment management model with equipment managers as the core and relying too much on the knowledge and experience of the managers often caused human errors due to the outdated knowledge and one-sided experience of the managers. The modern equipment management is based on the TPM system. The characteristics of the company’s equipment are improved and innovated to ensure the smooth and optimal operation of equipment and facilities, so as to achieve the goals of safe production, declining costs, and maximum benefits, and improve the competitiveness of the company’s industry.
The entire cable industry needs to make strategic adjustments and needs to strive to enhance its own value to face more challenges in the international market.