China's Shipbuilding Industry Leads Global Intelligence Transition in Q1

The latest data show that China's shipbuilding completion, new orders and hand-held orders in the first quarter continue to rank among the three leading indicators in the world, and the intelligent transformation of shipbuilding industry still needs to speed up the global leading position. Reporters learned from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that facing the fierce competition in the global shipbuilding industry, China will establish an intelligent manufacturing standard system for shipbuilding assembly, and China's shipbuilding industry will be transformed into an intelligent one to improve its competitiveness in an all-round way. From January to March this year, China's shipbuilding completion, new orders and hand-held orders accounted for 35.5%, 41.5% and 42.4% of the world market share, respectively. The three indicators continued to occupy the leading position in the world. This is a good achievement in the fierce competition of the global shipbuilding industry. However, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, also pointed out that the situation of China's large but not strong shipbuilding industry has not changed significantly.

In 2018, besides maintaining the leading position in the bulk and branch container market, China has made few achievements in the field of postal and large container ships, especially in the field of large LNG vessels, and has not undertaken an order. The quality, brand and competitiveness of high-tech ships need to be further improved.

In fact, our country is not unable to build high-tech ships. More than 95% of the existing ship types in the world can be manufactured in China last year. Why can't we get the order? One reason is that the production efficiency is not high. Xin Guobin said that China's shipbuilding efficiency is only 1/2 to 1/3 of the world's advanced level, and the gap in labor productivity is wider. Another major reason is that the level of intellectualization of ships built is not high enough to adapt to the trend of global intelligent shipping development. 

With the legalization of autonomous navigation vessels on the sea, ships will be equipped with wisdom wings, which can be operated remotely, autonomous navigation and automatic berthing. The ship engine room system, cargo system and energy efficiency management system can also achieve intellectualization, which is the core element of intelligent shipping - intelligent ship. The industry believes that the two major problems existing in China's shipbuilding industry belong to the category of intelligent transformation, which requires shipbuilding enterprises to speed up the process of intelligent transformation. On the one hand, the intelligent transformation of factories and manufacturing processes can significantly improve production efficiency. Dalian COSCO Shipping Kawasaki Shipbuilding Engineering Co., Ltd. is currently building an intelligent workshop and an intelligent shipyard. Pan Zhiyuan, Secretary of the Party Committee of the company, compares the efficiency differences between intelligent manufacturing and non-intelligent manufacturing, and gives a set of data. After the use of intelligent production line, the efficiency of personnel use has been improved, especially the workload of 3D links has been greatly reduced, and the energy consumption per million working hours has also been greatly reduced. Especially in 2018, the working hours increased by 15% compared with the previous year, while the energy consumption per million working hours decreased by 5%, and the productivity of products increased significantly.

For the intellectualization of the ship itself, another shipbuilding company, Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. (23.380, 0.21, 0.91%) has been exploring for many years. Wang Qi, chairman of the company, said that in terms of hardware, the construction of intelligent ships is not much different from that of ordinary ships. The key lies in software inspection and system integration. Shipbuilding enterprises have made breakthroughs in this respect, which can help them to develop service markets and build competitive advantages. Smart ships can provide lifecycle services for our future shipyards and build a foundation. It is necessary not only to build ships, but also to provide services, which has laid the foundation in this respect. It can also enable shipowners to better enjoy the value-added services of shipyards and reduce the skill requirements for the operation of ships.

Although intelligent transformation has been explored and applied to some extent, Xin Guobin said that, overall, China's shipbuilding industry is still in the initial stage of digital manufacturing, the development level of various shipbuilding enterprises is uneven, the capability of three-dimensional digital process design is seriously inadequate, the key technological links are still dominated by mechanized semi-automated equipment, the lack of accumulation of basic data, and digital integration. The level is low. Industry analysis shows that there are many factors affecting the intellectualized transformation of China's shipbuilding industry, such as insufficient supply capacity of common technology, basic components and key systems; poor connection between various equipment and imperfect standards; and enterprises are worried that the intellectualized transformation will increase the current cost pressure. However, the consensus of the industry is that in the long run, accelerating the intelligent transformation is the inevitable choice for the shipbuilding industry to achieve quality change.

Xin Guobin said that the next step is to accelerate the intelligent transformation of the shipbuilding industry, promote the completion of technology chain and industry chain shortboards, establish interconnected networked industrial ecology and the standard system of intelligent manufacturing for shipbuilding assembly from four aspects: filling short boards, consolidating foundation, standard guidance and promoting application.