Valve industry is developing rapidly

Although China's valve industry has developed rapidly in recent years, the overall level of the industry is still low, and the technical content of products is low. Many key valves with high parameters also depend on imports. Some experts estimate that China's valve level is 10% behind that of foreign advanced countries. ~20 years ago, China's valve industry to strengthen exchanges with the European valve manufacturing industry, has organized more than 10 domestic valve company bosses visited Europe, learned the valuable experience of many foreign counterparts, and compared with the foreign valve industry , also saw our own shortcomings.
Processing gap

In the welding process, Germany KSB company to meet the requirements of radiation resistance of the sealing material of nuclear valves, has been widely used special welding powder for cobalt-free welding; France Wellan valve company will preheat before welding, automatic welding, welding after processing The same equipment or the same processing production line is completed, regardless of the pre-welding, welding, post-weld treatment, the temperature can be automatically controlled to ensure the quality of welding.

The domestic valve welding process behind, and some also used the old welding method, welder technology level is low, the welding material is also an ordinary material, can not reach the special valve design requirements. Many companies are busy with production and marketing all day, rarely in the process Conduct research and improvement.

In the application of new technology for die forgings, the German KSB company produces valves made of high-temperature resistant alloy steels F91, F22, and high-pressure valves are mainly made of forged parts to ensure the reliability and economy of the products. The gate valve below 600Lb adopts die forging and welding. The valve does not cause many defects such as porosity, looseness, etc. due to casting, and greatly reduces the waste of free-forging materials, greatly improving economic efficiency.

In the domestic industry, most of the valve blanks are made of cast parts, and the use of die forging is rare. Valve forging at pressures below 600 Lb can be described as extremely rare. Many companies use steel castings to reduce costs, and cast iron at low pressure. Many items, low material cost, simple processing technology.

Quality management and equipment gaps

Bernard Electric Appliances in France had sales of 300 million yuan in 2005, exports accounted for 70% of sales, and established a global sales network. China's metallurgy, papermaking, water treatment and oil and gas pipeline valves have adopted a large number of the company’s Denso products. In the field of nuclear power, their supply ranks second in the world, France has more than 70 nuclear power plants to use their products. Their management is in place, the company's parts processing records flow with the parts, the production site is neat Neat and tidy, the two assembly lines work in an orderly manner. Their screw processing adopts a rolling method, which has high efficiency and a high surface finish of the parts. The processed parts are cleaned and processed in time, and the station tools are applied properly, such as on each shaft. A plastic bag is very simple, but very practical, to avoid collisions between parts. The coating method of parts is similar to that of the domestic, but because the blank itself is smooth and the quality of the paint is excellent, the product after the painting is painted. The effect and quality are quite good.

In comparison, there are still many defects in quality management in China. First of all, the process is more or less neglected. Many companies clearly have a quality assurance system, but they can't use it in actual work. Quality management implements itself and is arbitrary. Second, in the assembly process is also sloppy. No wonder some of the installation of the valve appeared to run, run, drip, leakage phenomenon.

Another example is the backwardness of many domestic enterprises' production equipment, which has remained at the level of the 70s to 80s of the last century. Some equipment has already passed the service life and is still running at full capacity. How can the quality of product processing be guaranteed? Some are limited to funds. , Also gradually added CNC and machining centers, but the formation of CNC machining business so far in the industry is not much, only about 20%.

Gaps in process management

The layout of the equipment of the French company Weyland is carried out according to the product process route to achieve the shortest processing route, so that the operator can complete the workpiece processing within the minimum range of motion. They have adopted a machining center and even a flexible machining center with five axes linkage. CNC turning and milling machine tools and CNC numerical control machine tools connect computer-aided manufacturing into a single line. The product is clamped once in the equipment and programmed once. The programming can even be remotely operated in the office. This simplifies the machining process. The program is compiled and the proper tool is selected to ensure the processing requirements of the product and to make the product high quality and high efficiency.

Similarly, the characteristics of the production process of the New Guinean company are: after receiving an order, the design and development center will be transformed to provide product design drawings, outsourced procurement details, and mechanical processing programs, and will be transmitted to various related departments through the internal network. The production department organizes the production according to technical requirements and sales orders. After the blanks are brought into the factory, the warehouse personnel will send the blanks and other parts to the various processing and assembly sites according to the production plan. Not all of them produce their own products. Many of them are also purchases. However, almost all of their parts and components are completed on CNC equipment, and the machining accuracy is high. The processing efficiency is also very high. The employees can read the parts processing drawings and parts processing programs on the console of CNC machining equipment. The processing technology requires that the workpiece be clamped to the numerical control equipment, start the processing program, and it can automatically complete the car, drilling, milling, boring and other processing operations.

Many domestic valve companies are not professional, small and complete, products are mixed, processing valves are disordered, the layout of workshop processing equipment is unreasonable, and parts and components are not stacked. At present, the domestic piece-rate working hours system is commonly adopted, but there are also disadvantages, and the working hours are not reasonable. It also uses the original manual record summary settlement. It is precisely because of some business process management level restrictions, resulting in low product technology, processing technology lag, raw material waste.

In addition, the layout of domestic machinery processing equipment is mostly arranged according to the type of equipment, such as the arrangement of machining centers, horizontally placed in a row, vertical in a row, CNC machine tools in a row, this arrangement only consider To the site neat, without considering the ease of operation, labor efficiency is low, the cart before the horse.

Gaps in technological innovation capabilities

The lack of technological innovation is a stumbling block that hinders the development of our valve industry. At present, many domestic valve companies have rarely reinvented after introducing advanced technology. The result is that it is difficult for valve companies to export their products to Western markets.

Actually, in terms of technical level, we have no difference in the design and material application of conventional valves from well-known foreign companies. There is no insurmountable gap in the manufacturing process. What is the difference? The difference is in serious terms. There is such a product, originally a patent valve of a company in Germany, there are several different companies producing at the same time, one is a foreign company, one is a Taiwan-funded enterprise, one is a domestic company. In the product map, the actual valves produced are the same. The first two companies, whether internal quality or appearance, are better than domestic companies. It is puzzling that these companies are manufacturing in China. A variety of products, and castings are from domestic factories, but the results are quite different. In a sense, our business philosophy, the pursuit of goals and foreign companies have a big gap, especially in the process of product rough processing does exist Certain problems, but also we must think deeply.

The practice of foreign companies in the construction of factories is also different from that of Chinese companies. The Chinese enterprises first engage in infrastructure, expand production plants, and increase production facilities. The factory buildings are expanded and expanded, pursue large-scale, modern style, and only want production scale. The expansion has neglected the R&D and investment of new products. The product has a serious shortage of stamina. Most of the production products are imitations, producing only ordinary low-grade products and putting too much effort into market operations. As a result, the core competitiveness is lacking. When companies engage in R&D, they refer more to the design of other manufacturers, thereby ignoring the importance of the original experimental data. The product thus developed has only a shape and no real soul.

Form a joint force to accelerate the development of the valve industry

Low cost is the main competitive advantage of China's valve industry. At the same time, China's continuously growing market space is also a prerequisite for China's valve industry to maintain its advantages. However, this is only an external advantage of the company and it is not the company's core competitiveness.

In order to solve the problems existing in China's valve industry, the state has also formulated some policies to encourage the development of the valve industry, promote domestic enterprises to master complete R&D and manufacturing technologies, and at the same time the rapid development of domestic economic construction and the construction of many large-scale projects are also domestic The valve industry has created enough market space. Under this situation, China's valve industry should seize the opportunity to catch up.

Innovation is the only way for the development of the industry. If a nation does not innovate, there is no soul. If a company does not have its own core technology, then in the international industrialization division, it can only act as an international worker. At the same time, we must pay attention to management. Improve the level. Establish a corporate culture, work hard on human resources management and computer-aided manufacturing, improve labor productivity, and thus achieve good economic benefits.

Obviously, there are gaps are not terrible, as long as we adjust the development thinking, enhance development confidence, strengthen corporate management, promote technological progress, attach importance to technological innovation and core technology research and development, improve the company's core competitiveness. In the near future, China The valve backbone enterprises must be able to catch up with and surpass their foreign counterparts, contribute to the nationalization of major national technical equipment, occupy a certain share in the world valve market competition, and become a strong country in the world of valve manufacturing.