Current Situation and Future Development Plan of Bearing Development in China

With the rapid development of the bearing industry in China, the variety of bearings has grown from few to many, the product quality and technical level have grown from low to high, and the scale of the industry has grown from small to large. A professional production system with basically complete product categories and reasonable production layout has been formed.

Based on the analysis of the data in the past five years, it is found that the sales revenue of China's bearing manufacturing industry also increased year by year from 2009 to 2013. In 2013, the sales revenue was 249.012 billion yuan, up 11.80% year on year.

At present, China's bearing industry is mainly faced with three outstanding problems: low concentration of production, low R&D and innovation ability, and low manufacturing technology level.

First, the industrial production concentration is low. Among the world's bearing sales of about 30 billion dollars, the world's eight largest multinational companies account for 75%~80%. Germany's two major companies account for 90% of the total, Japan's five companies account for 90% of the total, and the United States one company accounts for 56% of the total. However, the sales of the 10 largest bearing enterprises in China, such as bearing shaft, accounted for only 24.7% of the total industry, and the production concentration of the top 30 enterprises was only 37.4%.

Second, the R&D and innovation capabilities are low. Weak basic theoretical research in the whole industry, weak participation in the formulation of international standards, few original technologies and few patented products.

At present, our design and manufacturing technology is basically imitated, and our product development ability is low, which is reflected in: although the matching rate of domestic main engines has reached 80%, the matching and maintenance bearings of important main engines such as high-speed railway passenger cars, medium and high-end cars, computers, air conditioners, and high-level rolling mills are basically imported.

Third, the level of manufacturing technology is low. The manufacturing process and equipment technology of the bearing industry in China are developing slowly, the CNC rate of turning is low, and the level of grinding automation is low. There are only more than 200 automatic production lines in China. Advanced heat treatment processes and equipment that are critical to bearing life and reliability, such as controlled atmosphere protective heating, double refining, bainite quenching, have low coverage, and many technical problems have not been solved. The research and development of new steel grades of bearing steel, the improvement of steel quality, and the research and development of lubrication, cooling, cleaning, abrasive tools and other related technologies cannot meet the requirements of improving the level and quality of bearing products. As a result, the process capability index is low, the consistency is poor, the product processing size dispersion is large, and the internal quality of the product is unstable, which affects the precision, performance, life and reliability of the bearing.

Under the guidance of the 12th Five Year Plan, China's high-end bearing industry has formulated an industry development plan. The policy of promoting the development of domestic mold industry with projects and exports has been formulated. Driven by the development of rail transit, medical equipment, new energy, aerospace, automobile lightweight, rail transit and other fields, China's bearing industry has significantly improved. The bearing industry has advanced steadily in the traditional market while actively exploring emerging markets, and even the marginal markets that were ignored in the past have been developed. These factors have made remarkable achievements in the development of the mold market.

According to the current domestic situation, there must be many difficulties in developing high-end bearings. Only by constantly overcoming the existing difficulties can the high-end bearing industry achieve a huge leap. The domestic high-end bearing industry is shouldering the challenge of the important mission of the localization of high-end equipment in China, and considering the excellent R&D, casting and innovation capabilities of Axis Research Technology, I believe that in the future, it will be able to support the localization of major equipment in China.