Expand the scale of exports and marketing channels, and strengthen the follow-up competitiveness (for details, please refer to the 2005.02.16 Economic Daily “Automation Special Issue 1st Edition”) (Reporter Huang Shihua)
Due to the substantial appreciation of the euro, the European region is facing a very strong pressure to purchase equipment, so that many local cutting tool orders have turned to the Asian market, and Taiwan’s high-speed cutting tool manufacturers have also benefited from this wave of the substantial appreciation of the euro. The European market, which was difficult to enter in the past, coupled with the booming demand in the Chinese market, continued to increase orders, but there were some warning signs in this boom.
Tim Chang, head of Nine9 cutting tools, pointed out that Taiwan’s cutting tools have reached the level of European mid-level products, and there are currently no tariff and non-tariff trade barriers to enter the European market, and the price and profit are also better than other regions. A good time for cutting tool manufacturers to seize the market.
However, because domestic companies only pursue mass production and reduce costs, but do not pay attention to sales planning, it is easy to cause the so-called “balloon effect”: the production speed is fast, but the export volume is small, and the rapid oversupply situation will suddenly cause the market price to collapse. , and the tragic situation of bargaining and competing with each other. The top priority of the cutting tool industry is to increase the export scale and marketing channels of sales, and deliver the goods to customers quickly, rather than blindly pursuing cost reduction.
Tim Chang said that in addition to the gradual improvement of the European market, the demand for cutting tools in the Chinese market has not subsided. In particular, Taiwan’s cutting tools have seized the main force of China’s mid-to-high-end products, replacing Japanese and German products. The competition with Korean cutting tools is becoming more and more intense.
Most people think that Taiwan and South Korea only have fierce competition in the 3C, electronics, and panel industries. In fact, Taiwan’s cutting tool industry and South Korean manufacturers have been in fierce confrontation for a long time, and it can be found from major international exhibitions that South Korea’s single cutting tool The scale of the factory is many times larger than that of any one in Taiwan, but the cutting tool industry chain in Taiwan is composed of many small factories, resulting in little difference in overall production volume. However, in terms of sales channels and export scale, Taiwan is far less powerful than Korean factories, and Taiwanese manufacturers seem to spend too much time competing with each other for cheaper prices.
Li Hongwu, general manager of Speed Tiger Tools, said that cutting tools are a very professional industry, not comparable to general-purpose hardware. Various high-speed tungsten steel tools have been widely and important in the mold manufacturing industry in recent years, especially high-speed CNC Multi-axis machining center machines require high-speed super-hard tungsten steel tools, resulting in a sharp increase in the amount of cutting tools. However, due to the serious relocation of domestic industries, the use of domestic cutting tools has declined.
In view of this situation, we hope that the component processing industry such as automobile, motorcycle parts, and heat treatment parts processing industry will grow stronger, and we also hope that the cutting tools used in the production of electronic substrates, semiconductors, and panel industries can be released and handed over to domestic manufacturers. to manufacture production. Taking the equipment used in South Korean semiconductor factories as an example, currently 50% of the tools and equipment use local Korean products, but the equipment of LCD panels and semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan is still in a state of “net inflow”, which is not helpful for the development of other domestic industries. .
Tim Chang believes that in addition to looking forward to the release of the electronics and panel industries, we should concentrate our efforts on single products that are in high demand and urgently have international competitiveness, such as high-precision ball screws, linear sliders, golf heads, etc. To make these industries that require precision machining work hard and make them bigger, once the products are good enough and big enough, buyers from all over the world will naturally list Taiwanese products as their first choice for door-to-door purchases.
When the market expands, the relative amount of cutting tools will also increase significantly, and domestic cutting tool manufacturers can plan their production and processing needs in the form of division of labor and cooperation according to their most specialized and competitive parts. Therefore, it can not only effectively solve the bad habit of haggling with each other in the cutting tool industry, and keep the profits it deserves, but also turn the tit-for-tat position of the cutting tool industry into a partnership of mutual assistance and cooperation. Of course, all of this still requires everyone to give up their prejudices, and at the same time can set up a strong and efficient guild or association to lead.
Although there is a strong demand from markets such as Europe and China, many cutting tool manufacturers have no time to take care of other things, let alone the development of new products, in addition to opening production lines and requiring employees to increase their shifts. However, over-reliance on the immediate market and ignoring warning signals may make Taiwan’s cutting tool industry fall into the danger of “a frog in warm water”, because according to Tim Chang, who visited the Tokyo Machinery Exhibition in Japan last year, the research and development of cutting tool products in Japan has jumped and upgraded. The magnitude is quite obvious, and the distance from the domestic cutting tool industry has widened a lot. The Taiwanese industry should quickly catch up and take root in innovative research and development in order to gain a firm foothold in the fierce competition in the international market.