Made in China 2025 Planning System: The Instrument Industry Meets New Challenges

    According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the "1+X" planning system for Made in China 2025 has been fully released. "1" in the planning system refers to "Made in China 2025", "X" refers to 5 major project implementation guidelines, 2 special action guidelines, and 4 development planning guidelines.

    The implementation guidelines for the five major projects include National  Manufacturing Innovation * Construction, Industrial Strong Foundation, Intelligent Manufacturing, Green Manufacturing, and High end Equipment Innovation Projects. Among them, the intelligent manufacturing engineering focuses on the popularization of digital manufacturing and the demonstration of intelligent manufacturing, promoting the intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry and advancing the industry towards the mid to high end; The high-end equipment innovation project aims to break through the industrial application of a batch of major equipment and provide advanced production tools for upgrading various industries.

    The release of this planning system is not only a signal for the accelerated promotion of Made in China 2025. For the instrumentation industry, it is also a booster for accelerating intelligent manufacturing and moving towards high-end.

    The intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry has become a future development trend, not only guided by policies, but also continuously promoted by the market to upgrade instruments and meters towards intelligence. Taking power instruments as an example, with the continuous development of electricity in China, the construction of smart grids and ultra-high voltage has brought severe challenges to the instrument and meter industry, and there is an urgent need for their increasing intelligence. Not only in China, but also worldwide, smart grids have become a necessary path for the development of modern power grid technology. The implementation of smart grids not only involves the intelligence of the transmission process, but also involves the intelligence of a complete set of links in the terminal and intermediate operation of the power grid. To meet the construction of smart grids, power instruments must continuously introduce and absorb technological achievements, and continuously improve their research and development capabilities.

    Since 2011, China's intelligent power instruments have entered a stage of rapid development, with market sales continuously expanding and an average compound annual growth rate of 29.62% in the past three years. China's power instruments have initially formed an industrial system with a relatively complete range of product categories and a certain production scale and development capacity. Currently, many enterprises are also focusing on the research and development, production, and sales of high-end intelligent power instruments, occupying a considerable proportion in the market. However, some well-known foreign enterprises, with their strong financial strength and high brand awareness, still occupy a certain share in the domestic market, especially in the mid to high end field.

    With the development of technology, the advantages of high-precision and cutting-edge fields will be amplified, and enterprises that master high-end core technologies will occupy a dominant position in the fierce market. Although the market share of power instrument enterprises in China is relatively high, a large number of scattered small and medium-sized enterprises are at risk in the future technological wave.

Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, once pointed out: "It is urgent to take intelligent manufacturing as the starting point and use the Internet to drive the transformation and upgrading of the entire industry. The original traditional advantages of China's equipment manufacturing industry are weakening, and the equipment manufacturing industry has ended its era of ultra-high growth of 25% every year. At present, it is necessary to use high-end equipment manufacturing based on intelligent manufacturing to drive the transformation and upgrading of the entire industry. In view of this situation, China will accelerate the development of industrial robots, sensors, intelligent instruments and meters and other key components and devices, and implement special projects for the development of intelligent manufacturing equipment."

    Taking advantage of the favorable policies, Chinese instrument companies should increase their investment in scientific research, strengthen independent research and development of core technologies, improve product quality, and layout in the high-end manufacturing field to adapt to the future trend of high automation and intelligence, and welcome more opportunities and challenges.