China is a big manufacturing country, especially driven by the wave of national economic development, China’s manufacturing related industries have achieved very good results. In the machinery industry, gears are the most important and indispensable basic components, which are used in various fields of the national economy. The vigorous development of China’s manufacturing industry has driven the rapid progress of the gear industry.

At present, independent innovation has become the main theme of the gear industry, and it has also ushered in a reshuffle period. Nowadays, intelligent manufacturing has become a new policy promoted by the state. The gear industry has the characteristics of standardization and large batches, and it is easier to realize the transformation to intelligent direction. It can be said that the biggest problem of current gear manufacturing enterprises is the urgent need to change the production mode and improve the level of factory automation.

First, the development status of China’s gear industry

The gear industry is the basic industry of China’s equipment manufacturing industry. It has a high degree of industrial correlation, strong employment absorption, and intensive technical capital. It is an important guarantee for the equipment manufacturing industry to achieve industrial upgrading and technological progress.

After 30 years of development, China’s gear industry has been fully integrated into the world’s supporting system, and has formed the most complete industrial system in the world. It has historically realized the transformation from low-end to mid-end, gear technology system and gear technology standard system basically formed. Motorcycle, automobile, wind power and construction machinery industries are the driving force for the development of my country’s gear industry. Driven by these related industries, the income scale of the gear industry shows a rapid growth trend, and the scale of the gear industry continues to expand. Data shows that in 2016, the market output value of my country’s gear industry was about 230 billion yuan, ranking first in the world. In 2017, the output value of gear products reached 236 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.02%, accounting for about 61% of the total output value of general mechanical parts.

According to product use, the gear industry can be subdivided into three categories: vehicle gears, industrial gears and gear-specific equipment; vehicle gear product applications include various automobiles, motorcycles, construction machinery, agricultural machinery and military vehicles, etc.; industrial gear product applications ,The fields of industrial gears include marine, mining, metallurgy, aviation, electric power, etc.,the special gear equipment is mainly gear manufacturing equipment such as special machine tools for gears, cutting tools and so on. 

In China’s huge gear market, the market share of vehicle gears reaches 62%, and industrial gears account for 38%. Among them, automobile gears account for 62% of vehicle gears, that is, 38% of the overall gear market, and other vehicle gears account for the overall gears. 24% of the market. 

From the perspective of production, there are more than 5,000 gear manufacturing enterprises, more than 1,000 enterprises above designated size, and more than 300 key enterprises. According to the grade of gear products, the proportion of high, medium and low-end products is about 35%, 35% and 30%; 

In terms of policy support, “National Medium and Long Term Science and Technology Development Plan Outline (2006-2020)”, “Plan for Adjustment and Revitalization of Equipment Manufacturing Industry”, “Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Machinery Basic Parts, Basic Manufacturing Technology and Basic Materials Industry” “Development Plan” and “Guidelines for the Implementation of Industrial Strong Foundation Projects (2016-2020)” have been released successively, which have played a great role in promoting gear technology and product research and development and their industrialization.

From the consumer point of view, gears are mainly used in various automobiles, motorcycles, agricultural vehicles, power generation equipment, metallurgical building materials equipment, construction machinery, ships, rail transit equipment and robots. These equipments require higher and higher precision, reliability, transmission efficiency and longer service life of gears and gear units. From the perspective of the value of the gears (including gear devices), various vehicle gears account for more than 60%, and other gears account for less than 40%. In 2017, various automobile manufacturers produced and sold about 29 million vehicles, equipped with manual transmissions, automatic transmissions, drive axles and other gear products of about 140 billion yuan. In 2017, 126.61GW of newly installed power generation capacity was added nationwide. Among them, 45.1GW of thermal power installed capacity, 9.13GW of hydropower installed capacity, 16.23GW of grid-connected wind power, 53.99GW of grid-connected solar power, and 2.16GW of nuclear power installed capacity were newly added. These power generation equipment are equipped with gear products such as speed-increasing gearboxes and reducers of billions of yuan.

In recent years, with the support of policies and funds, the innovation capability of the industry has been significantly enhanced. Some leading enterprises in the industry have established innovative R&D platforms such as national enterprise technology centers, enterprise postdoctoral workstations, academician workstations, and enterprise research institutes, laying the foundation for innovative development. The number of authorized patents is high and high quality, especially the number of invention patents has increased significantly. Major breakthroughs have been made in scientific and technological achievements, and the manufacturing technology of high-end gear products such as large-module hard-toothed racks, large-scale heavy-duty planetary gearboxes, and 8AT automatic transmissions for the Three Gorges ship lift has reached the international advanced level. Different enterprises focus on different application fields according to their own characteristics and advantages. A single enterprise occupies a small proportion of the overall market share, and the domestic gear market concentration is low.

2. The future development trend of the gear industry 

Electrification, flexibility, intelligence and light weight are the development trends of future products, which are both challenges and opportunities for traditional gear companies.

Electrification: The electrification of power brings challenges to the traditional gear transmission. The crisis it brings is: on the one hand, the traditional gear transmission is upgraded to a simpler and lighter structure with high speed, low noise, high efficiency, high precision and long life. On the other hand, it faces the subversion of electric direct drive without gear transmission. Therefore, traditional gear transmission companies should not only study how to meet the requirements of electrification for noise control of gear transmission at ultra-high speeds (≥15000rpm), seize the opportunities for the growth of new transmissions generated by the current explosive growth of electric vehicles, but also pay close attention to the future. The revolutionary threat of gearless electric direct drive technology and electromagnetic transmission technology to the traditional gear transmission and gear industry. 

Flexibility: In the future, market competition will become more and more exciting, and the demand for products will tend to be diversified and personalized, but the demand for a single product may not be very large. As a basic industry in the manufacturing industry, the gear industry has to face many downstream fields. Product manufacturing diversity and efficiency put forward higher requirements. Therefore, it is necessary for enterprises to establish a flexible production system to complete the batch production tasks of different varieties through equipment adjustment on the same production line, which not only meets the diversified requirements of multiple varieties, but also minimizes the downtime of the equipment assembly line and realizes flexible production. to build the core competitiveness of enterprises.

Intelligentization: The extensive application of control technology on machines makes the machine automated; the comprehensive application of control technology, information communication technology, and network technology makes machines and manufacturing intelligent. For traditional gear manufacturing enterprises, the challenge is how to intelligentize electrical engineering, electronic engineering, control technology, network technology and integration.

Lightweight: Lightweight and high strength materials, structural weight reduction and surface modification and strengthening require cross-industry cooperation and advanced simulation technology.