Industry News

China is a major manufacturing country, especially driven by the wave of national economic development, and its manufacturing related industries have achieved very good results. In the mechanical industry, gears are the most important and indispensable basic components, applied in various fields of the national economy. The vigorous development of China's manufacturing industry has driven the rapid progress of the gear industry.

At present, independent innovation has become the main theme of the gear industry and has also ushered in a period of reshuffling. Nowadays, intelligent manufacturing has become a new policy promoted by the country. The gear industry has the characteristics of standardization and large batch production, making it easier to transform towards intelligence. It can be said that the current problem for gear manufacturing enterprises is the urgent need to change production modes and improve factory automation levels.

1、 The current development status of China's gear industry
The gear industry is a fundamental industry in China's equipment manufacturing industry, with high industrial correlation, strong employment absorption, and intensive technology and capital. It is an important guarantee for the equipment manufacturing industry to achieve industrial upgrading and technological progress.

After 30 years of development, China's gear industry has fully integrated into the world's supporting system and formed the most complete industrial system in the world, achieving a historic transformation from low-end to mid-range. The gear technology system and gear technology standard system have basically taken shape. The motorcycle, automobile, wind power, and construction machinery industries are the driving forces behind the development of China's gear industry. Driven by these related industries, the revenue scale of the gear industry has shown a rapid growth trend, and the scale of the gear industry continues to expand. Data shows that in 2016, the market output value of China's gear industry was about 230 billion yuan, ranking among the top in the world. In 2017, the output value of gear products reached 236 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.02%, accounting for about 61% of the total output value of general mechanical components.

According to product usage, the gear industry can be divided into three categories: vehicle gears, industrial gears, and gear specific equipment; The application fields of vehicle gear products include various types of automobiles, motorcycles, construction machinery, agricultural machinery, and military vehicles; The application fields of industrial gear products include marine, mining, metallurgy, aviation, electricity, etc; Gear specific equipment mainly includes gear specific machine tools, cutting tools, and other gear manufacturing supporting equipment.

Classification of Gear Industry

In China's vast gear market, the market share of vehicle gears reaches 62%, industrial gears account for 38%, among which automotive gears account for 62% of vehicle gears, or 38% of the overall gear market, and other vehicle gears account for 24% of the overall gear market.

Statistics of China's Gear Market Share in 2015

From the production perspective, there are over 5000 gear manufacturing enterprises, more than 1000 enterprises above designated size, and over 300 backbone enterprises. Among them, the listed companies include China High Speed Transmission, Ningbo Dongli, Hangzhou Gear Forward, Shuanghuan Transmission, Zhongdalide and Zhongma Transmission. According to the grade of gear products, the proportion of high, medium, and low-end products is approximately 25%, 35%, and 40%, respectively; According to the enterprises that produce high, medium, and low-end products, their proportions are approximately 15%, 30%, and 55%.

In terms of policy support, the National Medium - and Long Term Science and Technology Development Plan Outline (2006-2020), the Equipment Manufacturing Industry Adjustment and Revitalization Plan, the 12th Five Year Plan for the Development of Mechanical Basic Components, Basic Manufacturing Processes, and Basic Materials Industry, and the Implementation Guidelines for Industrial Strong Foundation Projects (2016-2020) have been successively released, which have played a significant role in promoting the research and industrialization of gear technology and product development.
From the consumer end, gears are mainly used in various automobiles, motorcycles, agricultural vehicles, power generation equipment, metallurgical building materials equipment, engineering machinery, ships, rail transit equipment, and robots. These equipment require higher precision, reliability, transmission efficiency, and longer service life for gears and gear devices. From the perspective of the value of gears (including gear devices), the proportion of various vehicle gears exceeds 60%, while the proportion of other gears is less than 40%. In 2017, various automobile manufacturing enterprises produced and sold about 29 million vehicles, equipped with gear products such as manual transmissions, automatic transmissions, and drive axles worth about 140 billion yuan. In 2017, the total installed capacity of power generation in China increased by 126.61GW. Among them, 45.1GW of thermal power installed capacity, 9.13GW of hydropower installed capacity, 16.23GW of grid connected wind power, 53.99GW of grid connected solar power, and 2.16GW of nuclear power installed capacity were added. These power generation equipment are equipped with gear products such as speed increasing gearboxes and reducers worth billions of yuan.

In recent years, with the support of policies and funding, the innovation capability of the industry has significantly increased. Some industry-leading enterprises have established innovative research and development platforms such as enterprise technology centers, enterprise postdoctoral workstations, academician workstations, and enterprise research institutes, laying the foundation for innovative development. The number of authorized patents is numerous and of high quality, especially with a significant increase in the number of invention patents. Significant breakthroughs have been made in scientific and technological achievements, and the manufacturing technology of high-end gear products such as large module hard tooth surface racks, large heavy-duty planetary gearboxes, and 8-speed automatic transmissions for the Three Gorges ship lift has reached an advanced level. However, there is a serious polarization among enterprises, with "South High Gear", "Fast", and "Double Ring Transmission" becoming global brands for wind power gearboxes, heavy-duty vehicle transmissions, and automotive and construction machinery gears, respectively. At the same time, many small and medium-sized enterprises are still in a vicious competition of homogenization. Different enterprises focus on different application areas based on their own characteristics and advantages, with a relatively small proportion of the overall market share held by a single enterprise, resulting in a low concentration of the domestic gear market.

2、 The problems faced by the development of China's gear industry
Although China's gear industry continues to grow in terms of revenue scale and has certain manufacturing capabilities for high-end products, most gear products are still concentrated in the mid to low end range. There is still a significant gap in power density, reliability, and service life compared to the international advanced level. We still have many key products that need to be imported, such as automatic transmissions for automobiles and robot reducers. Last year, the import value of gears in China reached 16 billion US dollars, the export value was 6 billion US dollars, and the deficit was 10 billion US dollars. The main problems currently faced by the gear industry include:
▶ Lack of basic research and data, and insufficient data support for product design and manufacturing;
▶ Lack of innovative platforms for the research and development of common and cutting-edge gear technologies for the entire industry, as well as the transformation of important scientific and technological achievements and engineering application research, and a lack of testing and evaluation service systems to guide the design, manufacturing improvement, and reliability enhancement of gears and their transmission devices;
▶ The independent innovation capability of the gear industry is weak, and high-end gear products rely heavily on imports, with core technologies subject to others;
▶ Insufficient R&D and manufacturing capabilities for high-end products, severe overcapacity in mid to low end products, and intensified homogeneous competition;
▶ Gear products have poor quality and stability, high early failure rate, short service life, low reliability, and cannot meet the requirements of the main engine;
▶ There is a general lack of high-level R&D and high skilled talents, and the overall quality of personnel urgently needs to be improved;
▶ Many small and medium-sized enterprises in the gear industry are facing difficulties in financing, heavy tax burdens, and weak risk resistance.

3、 Future Development Trends of the Gear Industry
Electrification, flexibility, intelligence, and lightweight are the development trends of future products, which are both challenges and opportunities for traditional gear enterprises.
Electrification: The electrification of power poses a challenge to traditional gear transmission, and the crisis it brings is: on the one hand, traditional gear transmission is upgrading to a simpler and lighter structure with high speed, low noise, high efficiency, high precision, and long life; on the other hand, it is facing the subversion of electric direct drive without gear transmission. Therefore, traditional gear transmission enterprises not only need to study how to meet the requirements of electrification for controlling gear transmission noise at ultra-high speeds (≥ 15000rpm), seize the opportunity of the explosive growth of new transmissions in electric vehicles, but also pay close attention to the revolutionary threats that future toothless wheel electric direct drive technology and electromagnetic transmission technology will bring to traditional gear transmission and the gear industry.

Flexibility: With increasing market competition in the future, the demand for products tends to be diversified and personalized, but the demand for a single product may not be very large. As a fundamental industry in the manufacturing industry, the gear industry faces numerous downstream fields, which demand higher diversity and efficiency in product manufacturing. Therefore, it is necessary for enterprises to establish a flexible production system and complete batch production tasks of different varieties on the same production line through equipment adjustment. This not only meets the diverse requirements of multiple varieties, but also reduces the downtime of equipment assembly lines, achieving flexible production and building the core competitiveness of enterprises.

Intelligence: The widespread application of control technology on machines has enabled them to achieve automation; The comprehensive application of control technology, information and communication technology, and network technology enables machines and manufacturing to have intelligence. For traditional gear manufacturing enterprises, the challenge is how to integrate electrical engineering, electronic engineering, control technology, network technology, and integration to form intelligence.

Lightweight: Lightweight and high-strength materials, structural weight reduction, and surface modification strengthening require cross industry cooperation and advanced simulation technology.