【英语中国】用机器人武装中国龙

Katsushi Saito / Wenjie Ge


The words 'Made in China' usually conjure images of row upon row of low-wage workers manufacturing cheap toys or stitching inexpensive garments. But Chinese manufacturers are starting to climb up the value chain. Not only are the goods produced changing, but so are factory floors as manufacturers embrace more sophisticated technology to replace increasingly expensive labor.

Consider the Beijing plant of SMC, a Japanese pneumatic equipment manufacturer, which is introducing machines to move unfinished products from one machine to another on the factory floor. The Shanghai plant for NSK, a Japanese maker of precision machinery and parts such as industrial bearings, plans to introduce machines to transfer components between assembly lines. The plant of Nabtesco, another Japanese company whose products include hydraulic motors, is considering installing a machine to spray-paint finished products. In all three cases, these functions are currently performed by manpower.

Several factors are driving this automation push. Higher labor costs top the list. Minimum wages, which are set by each province, are due to rise again this year after being left unchanged last year amid the global financial crisis. The monthly minimum wage is projected to rise about 20% year-on-year in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province; 15% year-on-year in Shanghai; and most likely 10-20% year-on-year in the other regions. Many manufacturers can afford to take this hit over the short term, since staff costs account for only about 5%-10% of sales. But with personnel costs likely to continue rising it makes sense to start thinking about automation now.

Meanwhile, despite rising wages many factories still face labor shortages. With more jobs becoming available in inland regions thanks to government-promoted development, fewer workers are migrating to coastal regions where most factories are located. This trend is exacerbated by the higher living costs workers face along the coasts.

Economic growth itself is boosting the drive for more capital-intensive manufacturing. For instance, automobile and electric-machinery production has risen sharply of late, partly thanks to rising prosperity and partly thanks to government stimulus measures. Chinese auto sales surpassed 13.6 million units in 2009, making China the world's biggest market by volume. Chinese auto output is likely to expand further from 2010, supported by growth in sales volume in inland regions where car ownership is still low. In the medium term, annual auto output in China could reach 20 million units, roughly double that of Japan. With this strong output -- and the resulting revenue -- companies are now in a position to invest in more sophisticated equipment without denting profits too deeply.

Finally, with production volume rising, companies are also pushing ahead with automation to maintain quality. That's one explanation for the growing popularity of robots. Yaskawa Electric's Shanghai plant uses robots to solder the circuit boards used widely in electronic devices. Omron, a manufacturer of components for products ranging from automobiles to electronics, has installed a sensor system that notifies workers when substandard parts have been detected on the production lines at its Shanghai factory. Welding robots increasingly are being employed on automobile assembly lines, as quality levels are more reliable than with human welders.

This has translated into a boom for foreign companies that supply manufacturing equipment. Exports of Japanese machine tools -- machines used for processing parts used in a variety of industries including automobiles, electronics and general machinery -- to China have recovered markedly since the depth of the global crisis. Orders from Chinese electronics-components companies have been firm. Indeed, Chinese demand for such machinery exceeded Japanese domestic consumption in December 2009, and accounts for around 30% of Japanese machine-tool orders.

Here too, of course, China is a competitor. Its machine-tool production value in 2009 surpassed that of Japan and Germany to reach the highest level in the world. However, in this arena Chinese manufacturers don't yet constitute direct competitors to non-Chinese companies because of their low level of expertise. Even plants operated by Shenyang Machine Tool, China's largest machine-tool manufacturer, use many numerical-control systems provided by Fanuc and Siemens to govern production processes; linear guides to control the path of inputs through machines provided by Japan's THK; and ball screws by NSK.

While China has proven adept at growing its market share in many other areas, machine tools will be a tougher sell. Japanese and European manufacturers are market leaders in the high-end segment. At that level, customers are less sensitive to price than they are to the quality of the tools. Japanese and European machine tools are on average five times more precise than their Chinese competitors, and those companies offer extensive technical support. Reputations built over decades also matter. All of these are high barriers for new Chinese entrants. By some measures, China is currently on par with where Japan was in the first half of the 1980s in terms of the degree of manufacturing automation. China's demand for automation equipment will only grow as Chinese industry becomes more technologically advanced. The challenge will be for foreign companies to position themselves to take advantage of this opportunity.

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Mr. Saito is head of Asian industrial research and Mr. Ge is a junior research analyst at Nomura Securities in Tokyo.

Katsushi Saito / Wenjie Ge

“中国制造”这个词勾起的想像通常是一排排正在制造廉价玩具或廉价服装的低收入的中国工人的形象。但中国的制造商正开始向价值链的高处攀登。并非仅是生产的成品在改变，工厂的车间也随着制造商以更高级的技术取代越来越昂贵的劳动力在发生着变化。

看看日本气动元件研究开发制造商SMC公司在北京的工厂，这家工厂正在引入在工厂车间内将未成品在机器间转移的设备。制造工业轴承等精密器械及部件的日本精工(NSK)在上海的工厂，计划引入机器在组装线之间传输元件。另一家生产液压马达的日本公司Nabtesco，正在考虑安装一种为制成品喷漆的机器。在这三家工厂中，上面提到的诸项功能目前都是人力在操作。

推动这种自动化进程的有如下几个因素。劳力成本上扬居首位。各省设定的最低工资在去年全球金融危机中未做调整，今年应再度上调。广州市的月度最低工资预计年比涨幅为20%左右；上海为15%；而其它地区很可能上调10%至20%。许多制造商短期内可以承受这种工资涨幅，因员工成本仅约占销售额的5%至10%。但因人力成本可能继续上扬，现在开始考虑自动化是有道理的。

同时，尽管工资不断上扬，许多工厂仍面临人手短缺问题。由政府倡导的内地开发为中国内陆地区创造出更多的岗位需求，到沿海地区打工的民工减少了，而多数工厂都设在沿海地区。工人在沿海地区的生活成本增加也使这种趋势加剧。

经济增长本身也推动着资本密集化的制造业的发展。举例来说，近期汽车与电子机械生产急剧上升，部分原因是经济日益兴旺，部分原因是出于政府的刺激措施。2009年中国汽车销量超过1360万辆，使中国成为全球销量最大的汽车市场。受汽车保有量仍较低的内陆地区销量增长支撑，2010年之后中国的汽车产量可能继续增长。中期来看，中国年汽车产量可能达到2000万辆，几乎是日本产量的两倍。产量及其带来的收入如此之高，使得汽车生产厂目前可在先进设备上加大投资而不至于过多地降低盈利。

最后，随着产量增加，汽车生产厂也在推进自动化以保持质量。这是机器人越来越受欢迎的一个原因。工业用机器人制造商安川电机（Yaskawa Electric）在上海的工厂使用机器人来焊接广泛用于电子设备的电路板。为从汽车到电子器件等各种产品提供元件的欧姆龙(Omron)已上海工厂内安装了一套传感器系统，这套系统在检测到生产线上有不合格产品时可向工人发出通知。汽车组装线上越来越多得使用焊接机器人，机器焊接的质量水平比人工焊接更可靠。

这为生产制造设备的外国公司带来一片繁荣。日本产机床(也就是汽车、电子及通用机械等各行业中加工零部件所用的机器)对中国的出口已自全球危机最严重时明显恢复。中国电子元件公司所下的订单一直很稳定。中国对这类机器的需求在2009年12月之时即已超过日本国内的需求量，目前占到日本机床订单量的约30%。

当然，中国也是个竞争者。2009年中国机床产值超过日本及德国居全球第一。但由于中国公司的专业水平较低，在这一领域，中国制造商仍无法对非中国公司构成直接竞争。即便是中国最大的机床制造商沈阳机床（集团）有限责任公司(Shenyang Machine Tool)属下的各家工厂，仍大量使用自动化机械生产商法努克(Fanuc)及西门子(Siemens)生产的数控系统来控制制作工艺；用日本THK生产的机器来控制输入线路的直线导轨；并采用日本精工的滚珠螺杆。

尽管中国已证明善于在许多其它领域扩大市场份额，但在机床销售领域却并不容易。日本及欧洲的制造商是该领域高端产品的市场主导者。客户更加看重高端机床产品的质量而非价格。日本及欧洲产机床的精确度平均是中国产品的五倍，此外，这些公司还提供广泛的技术支持。数十年建立起来的声誉也很重要。所有这些对于新进入这个市场的中国公司而言都是很高的壁垒。以某些指标来衡量，从制造业的自动化水平来看，中国目前相当于日本在上世纪80年代前半期的水平。随着中国工业越来越多地采用先进技术，中国对自动化设备的需求只会增加。外国公司面临的挑战将是如何利用这个机遇。

（编者按：Katsushi Saito是野村证券亚洲工业研究负责人，Wenjie Ge是野村证券驻东京初级研究分析师。）