In the first half of this year, the cumulative growth rate of China's equipment industry added value continued to rise, the growth rate of export delivery value stabilized and rebounded, and demand momentum for intelligent manufacturing equipment was strong.

According to the analysis in the "Analysis and Forecast of China's Equipment Industry Trends in the Second Half of 2014" recently released by CCID Think Tank, China's equipment industry will maintain its recovery trend in the second half of the year, and industries such as industrial robots, service robots, 3D printing and other intelligent equipment, rail transit equipment, and energy-saving and environmental protection equipment will show rapid growth.

"Influenced by the new round of technological revolution, the pace of transformation and upgrading in the equipment industry will be greatly accelerated," said Wang Fengli, a researcher at the Equipment Industry Research Institute of CCID Think Tank.

According to the above report by CCID Think Tank, from January to April this year, the industrial added value of equipment manufacturing enterprises above designated size increased by 11.5% year on year, 0.6 percentage points higher than the national industrial added value growth rate and 2.4 percentage points higher than the growth rate in the same period last year.

Emerging technologies represented by cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing are developing at an accelerated pace. At the same time, due to factors such as the deepening of economic structural adjustment and rising labor costs, the pace of industrial upgrading in equipment manufacturing has accelerated, demand momentum for intelligent manufacturing equipment is strong, and the industry scale is expanding rapidly.

For example, as more and more electronics manufacturing enterprises introduce robotic production lines to promote intelligent and flexible manufacturing processes, application demand for industrial robots continues to expand.

At the same time, 3D printing technology has also begun to be applied to the research and development and production of components with complex spatial structures. In January this year, Factory 699 of the Second Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation applied 3D printing technology in the field of electronics manufacturing; in March, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China successfully produced large aircraft parts using 3D printing technology.

In addition, as more cities formulate special plans for smart city development, equipment related to smart city construction, such as Internet of Things devices, smart grids, and smart instruments and meters, has also ushered in rapid development.

Moreover, Wang Fengli pointed out that with the accelerated advancement of digitalization, networking, and intelligence in manufacturing, the deep integration of IT internet technology and the manufacturing sector is triggering a new industrial revolution, which has a profound impact on accelerating the transformation of production methods and development models in the equipment industry.

Since the beginning of this year, traditional industries in the equipment sector have changed their previous "product-centered" concept in the production process, applied the Internet's "user-demand-centered" thinking, and actively built new corporate ecological value chains. For example, in the traditional CNC machine tool industry, under the impact of Internet thinking, Jiexing CNC built an e-commerce platform and achieved new development for the enterprise in the Internet era. The ARJ21 regional aircraft developed by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China adopted a "main manufacturer + suppliers" management model, realizing networked collaborative research, development, and manufacturing among 104 suppliers in more than ten countries around the world.

Regarding the prospects for the transformation and upgrading of the equipment industry, CCID Think Tank's analysis pointed out that from the perspective of the external environment, major developed countries such as the United States, Germany, and Japan have achieved digitalization across the entire industrial chain from procurement and production to sales and service by adopting advanced Internet of Things technology and building digital factories. However, China still lacks digital manufacturing technologies with independent intellectual property rights in the field of digital manufacturing, forcing China to accelerate the pace of transformation and upgrading in the equipment industry.

From the perspective of the domestic environment, the integration of mobile Internet and manufacturing technology is deepening, driving industrial manufacturing models to evolve from large-scale manufacturing to personalized customization, on-demand manufacturing, customized crowdsourced production, and other forms.

CCID Think Tank predicts that in the second half of the year, changes in production and sales methods in the equipment industry will be more profound, and Internet-based production methods featuring "crowdfunding + presale + customization" will continue to be applied. Wang Fengli believes that the development of equipment industry products must conform to these requirements, so the trend toward high-end and personalized products will become increasingly obvious.