This article**: People**Overseas Edition.
Technology empowerment, digital transformation, and overseas sales
"Small ceramics" broke out of the "big market" (small commodities, big industry).
Reporter Wu Xuecong.
People** Overseas Edition (December 22, 2023 10th Edition).
When you think of porcelain, what comes to mind?
Perhaps it is an ancient hand-made scene: adobe spinning, red furnace blazing, beating, air drying, fire refining and other procedures are displayed in turn;
Perhaps it is a magnificent heirloom cultural relic: as bright as jade, touching the warmth, blue and white, pastel, thin tire and other techniques compete for beauty.
Thousands of years later, the Chinese porcelain industry has broken through people's traditional imagination. 5G base stations, aerospace communications, medicine and health, new energy vehicles, ......New ceramic materials frequently appear in many high-tech fields. In the modern porcelain factory, large and small robotic arms, automated assembly lines, and large smart screens with constantly rolling numbers constitute a new landscape. The porcelain industry is not only the art of "clay and earth", but also the magic of "light and electricity".
Traditional ceramics are given a new look.
Today, ceramic production is more technological.
Dozens of white lines, winding, bending, and upward, like branches. At first glance, the folds on the vessel, as if it were made of plaster or plastic. Actually, this is a real ceramic work.
This is a 3D printed ceramic flower pot!Huang Quande, head of Tongxin Ceramics Intelligent Manufacturing Center, introduced that the previous ceramic flower pots were mostly round and square, and now with the help of 3D printing, hard, brittle and fragile ceramic materials can be better cut, and the degree of freedom in modeling design is greater.
Tongxin ceramics is located in Dehua County, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province. Dehua is most famous for its white porcelain of "white as snow, bright as a mirror, moist as jade, and transparent as silk". Taking advantage of the new technology, many traditional daily-use porcelain enterprises in the county have a new look.
When I was a child, I played in a ceramic factory, and no matter what color shoes I worn, they were all white. The ceramic factory in Huang Quande's memory is full of white porcelain powder, and the walls are blackened by the kiln fire. Since 2016, Tongxin Ceramics has carried out industrial upgrading, introducing 8 firing kilns, 20 automatic glazing production lines, multiple ceramic 3D printers and other equipment. The plant is clean, the production capacity has been increased, and in the molding and rolling process, one person can complete the workload of 16 people in the past.
Today, ceramics are healthier.
Don't look at the appearance, it is just an ordinary ceramic plate, its surface actually has a thin layer of silver ions. Talking about the company's self-developed "self-sterilization" technology, Zhang Jiyi, chairman of Chongqing Jinhui Ceramics, is full of pride.
A humid environment is a breeding ground for bacteria. After 3 years and thousands of experiments, Jinhui Ceramics has developed a "self-sterilizing" ceramic, which can effectively inhibit bacteria attached to the surface of the utensils. The killing rate of this technology against Helicobacter pylori is 8765%, the killing rate of 5 kinds of bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella is more than 95%.
Zhang Jiyi told the reporter to calculate the account: "Our ceramic plate has been tested for 500 times of destructive acid etching, and the sterilization effect is still significant, which is equivalent to more than 100,000 times of household washing with clean water." According to three meals a day and 365 days a year, the service life can reach more than 91 years. ”
Today, ceramics are used more widely.
In the unmanned quality inspection room, yellow, white, and blue lights are staggered and flickering. Take a closer look, and you'll see miniature components lined up in a tight row on a circular turntable. It only takes 1 second, and the electrical performance test data of each part is transmitted to the enterprise background ...... in real time
Such a scene appears in Hunan Province Meicheng Ceramic Technology *** The production here is not ordinary ceramics, but special ceramics.
What are specialty ceramics?Different from ordinary ceramics with natural minerals as raw materials, special ceramics use synthetic powders such as oxides and nitrides as starting materials, and have special properties in magnetism, electricity, sound, and light. It can "go to the sky and enter the sea", and is widely used in machinery, optical fiber, military industry, aerospace and other fields.
Xinhua County, Loudi City, Hunan Province, is known as the "hometown of China's special ceramics". This county town in the ravine is inconvenient and does not have the natural endowment of porcelain clay, but after decades of development, it has incubated two national-level specialized and new "little giant" enterprises. At present, the annual output value of Xinhua electronic ceramics has reached 17 billion yuan, and the annual export volume has stabilized at more than 40 million US dollars.
For thousands of years, the Chinese have been inseparable from ceramics. Ceramics is a market material with strong vitality, which can be continuously iterated with technological progress to meet the new needs of human social development. Cao Jianping, chairman of Xinxing Electronic Ceramics Co., Ltd., said.
Seek change and innovation, and overcome difficulties.
Millennial ceramics, how to rejuvenate?The answer lies in "innovation".
Innovation, the difficulty is to keep up with market demand. Initially, Xinxing Electric Ceramics' products only had a single ceramic gas discharge tube. Later, due to policy adjustments, ceramic gas discharge tubes became eliminated prohibited products. For a time, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Suddenly there were no customers in the market who needed this product. Cao Jianping recalled.
What to do?The only way to change is to change. Xinxing Electric Pottery turned his gaze to the thermostat. At that time, Japanese companies were in a leading position in the production technology of thermostat ceramic housings. Xinxing Electric Ceramics immersed itself in research and developed the overall hot-pressed four-corner shell technology. Compared with Japan's original split production and rebonding technology, the new technology of Xinxing Electric Ceramics has obvious advantages: the quality of the process products is more consistent, and the cost control is more reasonable.
Now there are not only thermostats, but also metallized ceramic substrates, bathroom valves, quartz crystal resonators and other products, and the variety is much richer. Cao Jianping said.
Technological difficulties are another ravine on the road of innovation. "The first laboratory samples of 'self-sterilizing' ceramics were available at the beginning of 2021, but they have not been mass-produced for a long time because of the color. Zhang Jiyi said that the formula changed, and the aesthetics of the glaze were reduced: the finely grainy "meteorite black" turned into a black gray, and the gorgeous "pepper red" also seemed to be mixed with water and turned into a sparse light red.
In this way, all glaze recipes have to be broken and reset. "The charm of porcelain is that it can remain tough even in high temperatures. Looking at the porcelain quenched by the kiln fire, Zhang Ji told himself that if he couldn't bear it, he wouldn't be able to form it. Subsequently, the technical team spent nearly 3 years repeatedly trying the color. If it's shallow, it's adjusted over and over again;Deep, a little more proof. In the end, the team restored the best effect of each glaze color, and achieved mass production of "self-sterilizing" ceramics in September this year.
Innovation in Tongxin ceramics is also reflected in the transformation of thinking. With the expansion of the company's scale, proofing, production arrangement, standard operation and other affairs have increased dramatically, and manual management alone has been stretched. Since 2021, Tongxin Ceramics has explored digital transformation and purchased software such as ERP, MES, WMS and so on. However, the road to transformation has not been easy.
There are many masters in the factory, who have worked for half their lives with experience and feeling, and are 'masters' in ceramic technology, but they are difficult to face computers and data, and some people are reluctant to try new things. Huang Quande said.
For enterprises, equipment, software, and services can be bought, but people's old concepts are the most difficult to transform. Huang Quande introduced that at that time, the company learned over and over again, grinding little by little, and the old employees slowly realized the importance of data. Through digital transformation, the production cycle of Tongxin ceramics has been greatly shortened, from the original 45 days to less than 30 days.
Set sail to the sea to continue the glory.
Porcelain is the same as "China" in English. For thousands of years, Chinese porcelain has sailed with merchant ships, "traveling in the nine regions and applying to foreign oceans". Today, Chinese porcelain has set sail with a new look.
In April this year, the 133rd China Import and Export Fair opened to welcome visitors. Jingdezhen ceramics, Dehua white porcelain, Liling ceramics and other well-known brands have appeared. Many foreign businessmen and guests stopped to watch in front of the exquisite ceramic products and negotiated cooperation with the merchants at the exhibition site. At this Canton Fair, the online and offline turnover of 61 daily-use ceramic enterprises in Liling City, Hunan Province alone reached 4300 million yuan.
In terms of craftsmanship, we have confidence. The design level, formula ability and cultural heritage of domestic daily-use porcelain are leading in the world. Zhang Jiyi said.
China's ancient porcelain is famous in the world, how can modern porcelain enterprises continue to write glory?Each company has its own "mind" to build a brand.
When a brand goes to sea, its reputation must be "loud". "At the end of the last century, when we first started, the network was not developed, and we could only turn the first yellow pages in every place, and use this stupid way to open up the market. When it comes to the past, Cao Jianping still remembers it vividly.
It's too much of a headache to pull customers, we take the initiative to attack, Xinxing Electric Ceramics is the first ceramic enterprise in Xinhua County to go abroad to participate in the exhibition. In 1998, Xinxing Electric Ceramics participated in the international exhibition for the first time, and the first foreign trade order was traded the following year, "only 500 US dollars, but I was happy at that time." Cao Jianping said.
Xinxing Electric Ceramics, which tasted the sweetness, continued to use the exhibition to broaden its brand influence. Now, Xinxing Electric Ceramics is a frequent visitor to international exhibitions such as the Canton Fair and the Munich Electronics Show, and foreign trade orders account for 20% of the company's business, and special ceramics are exported to the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and other places.
When the brand goes to sea, it must also "sell well". "Tongxin ceramics just started to take some detours. Colleagues from the company's foreign trade department racked their brains to hope that more patterns, colors, and vessel types that present traditional Chinese cultural elements were selected by foreign parties, but none of them were selected. Huang Quande said.
Is there a difference in aesthetics between China and foreign countries?Looking through the history, among the Chinese porcelains that have been sold overseas, the "heraldic porcelain" is printed with the coats of arms of European nobles, cities, and groups, and the "twig pattern" is derived from Islamic culture. It turns out that the integration of Chinese and Western is a way!
We chose some styles that few people in China are interested in to each other, but I didn't expect foreign businessmen to like it very much. Huang Quande introduced that since then, the design of Tongxin ceramics has paid more attention to combining local culture and living habits, and specially sent designers to overseas flower and home furnishing market research. Today, the flower pots produced by Tongxin ceramics have been sold to more than 30 countries and regions.
Small ceramics "break out of the "big market". China is a major producer of ceramics, ranking first in the world in terms of annual output and exports. According to the data, from January to October this year, China's export volume of ceramic products was 15.48 million tonsThe output value of China's industrial ceramics currently exceeds 150 billion yuan. Whether it is the ingenious exhibition porcelain, the home porcelain of daily life, or the special ceramics full of science and technology, China's ceramic industry is accelerating the upgrading of quality and quenching in the millennium kiln fire.