China's hardware tools need to play an overall advantage

The number of hardware tools has leapt to the world's first planned economy era. All industries and industries have a tendency to expand in quantity, but the tool industry has performed even more prominently. By the end of the 1980s, the basic team consisting of more than 100 key enterprises and fixed-point companies in the tool industry had already formed the ability to produce 300 million high-speed steel cutting tools and more than 10 million measuring tools per year. The number of such tools has leapt to the top in the world. At the same time, our neighboring tool manufacturing country Japan, the annual output of high-speed steel cutting tools reached the highest record of 120 million pieces. Since then, due to the upgrading of the manufacturing industry, the demand for standard cutting tools has decreased, and the output has gradually dropped to 90 million pieces.

Later, most of these joint ventures developed independently from their mother plants, and some state-owned enterprises set up their own factories in the sea to form the first batch of tools for private and township enterprises in China. These enterprises are relatively flexible in mechanism and do not have the historical burden of state-owned enterprises. It may have become a new force for the reform and development of the tool industry, but unfortunately, due to various conceptual constraints on talents, technology, equipment, and management, these companies are still mostly taking the old road of quantitative expansion. And intensified, in just 10 years, the total volume has soared to 1 billion pieces. The varieties are concentrated on low-end products such as twist drills, construction drills, woodworking tools, and calipers.

Although the number is large, sales account for only about 30% of the total value of the domestic market. Although due to the brand and quality reasons, these products have not entered the formal manufacturing tool sales system at home and abroad, but they have caused a great impact on China's tool export market. Mistakes in the industry's strategy led to structural weakness in the market. The second major mistake in the development strategy of the tool industry is the unresponsiveness to the wave of big changes and major improvements in technology and international manufacturing. Did not seize the opportunity to timely upgrade the structure of China's tool products and services.

When the hardware tool industry in China transitions to modernization, it must also develop its own characteristics and start with small and specialized steps. In particular, current large and medium-sized tool companies should not overestimate their own strength. In the process of technological innovation and improvement of the competitiveness of enterprises, they must also pay attention to highlighting key points and focus on fighting warfare, and should not make mistakes in paving the way for large-scale development and blind development. This kind of positioning of seeking truth from facts for the enterprise will instead exert its overall advantages in the entire industry and accelerate the pace of modernization.