On October 1, 1949, the first military parade after the founding of New China, the planes, tanks, and cannons were all from the seized income. The specifications of the weapons held by the infantry formations were not uniform. .
Military equipment is inseparable from steel, and more than 80% of the parts from research and development to production need the support of steel and special steel.
When the People’s Republic of China was founded, China’s per capita steel output was not enough to beat a kitchen knife.
In the past 10 years, in the urgent desire to establish an independent and complete national defense industrial system, New China started from scratch and leaped from nothing to something.
Ten years later, in 1959, the number of domestically produced weapons that China participated in the military parade increased year by year, and giant steel bulls rumbled.
This important cornerstone of the national economy, infrastructure construction, manufacturing, energy, and national defense industries, has moved from a large agricultural country to an industrial power. Steel stands on the rocky foundation of China’s industry to show its confidence.
Today, China’s crude steel output has ranked first in the world for 25 consecutive years. The strength of steel supports a strong China.
The times are changing, the environment is changing, and the difficulties are also changing. Today’s China no longer lacks steel or iron, but the development of the steel industry has reached a difficult stage of rusting.
Iron and Steel Curse: There is a gun in the back and sugar in the front
Through decades of research, Chinese Iron Man has broken through a large number of neck-blocking technologies and equipment abroad.
The “infrastructure maniac” is accompanied by the roar of China’s high-speed economic operation. China’s per capita steel output has changed from less than a kitchen knife/less than 10 tons to the world’s largest crude steel output.
In the 1990s, the major steel mills that rose wildly were uneven and randomly distributed. The steel industry has experienced unrestrained expansion for more than 30 years.
When the economy is gradually slowing down, the steel industry has been unable to stop for a long time, and China has entered a stage of long-term overcapacity.
Protracted international trade wars, global economic slowdown, insufficient external demand, and restricted exports.
Overcapacity is a flaw in China’s steel industry.
In recent years, reducing production capacity and reducing inventory has been the main theme at the national level.
Overcapacity is worldwide. Experts pointed out that the root cause of this round is the global economic recession triggered by the international financial crisis in 2008 and the decline in steel demand.
“Inefficiency, layoffs, pollution, unsalable” have become key words in the steel industry in recent years.
path dependent. The overcapacity most directly affects the price drop, the decline in the revenue of steel enterprises, and indirectly leads to low prices and disorderly competition in the market, thus forming a vicious circle.
Many steel enterprises have changed from being a “pillar industry” to “surviving on subsidies”. According to the statistics of China Iron and Steel Association, the sales profit rate of the industry was 2.4% in 2011, and only 0.9% in 2014. In the first half of 2014, Baosteel Co., Ltd., Xinxing Cast Pipe Co., Ltd. and Chongqing Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. received financial subsidies of 130 million yuan, 397 million yuan and 509 million yuan respectively.
In the first quarter of 2020, among the 34 A-share listed steel companies, except for 7 steel companies whose net profit increased year-on-year, the rest showed a significant decline
5 companies suffered losses.
Of course, there are no signs of recovery due to the impact of the new crown, but it is an indisputable fact that the era of extensive steel has really passed.
stop?
Under the background of the era of “GDP only theory”, expanding production capacity has become the fastest way for local governments to make political achievements and improve performance.
The whole country ran wildly to enclose land and expand production capacity.
The iron and steel industry is related to the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and it is capital-intensive, making it difficult to enter and exit.
The production capacity is extremely scattered and the industry concentration is low.
According to the data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there are 305 steel enterprises with more than 1 million tons of steel, an average of 10 in a province.
“There is no such a dispersed production capacity in the world.” Some people in the industry said.
The data shows that in 2019, the industry concentration rate of the top 10 iron and steel enterprises in my country was only 36.8%, and the concentration rate of the steel industry with more than 10 million tons was only 52.38%. In contrast, the concentration rate of the cement industry is as high as 64%, so the profit of cement can be maintained at 17.5%.
It breeds vicious competition and local government protectionism, reduces industry profits, and makes it very difficult to promote environmental protection. Enterprise cost pressure is high. Raw materials are rising, and profit margins are small.
Insufficient exit mechanism makes it difficult for enterprises to exit.
Many companies have suffered serious losses, but there are no relevant precedents in the industry, lack of relevant policies, and exit channels have not been opened up. In addition, local governments are considering economic and social stability. Even if the capital chain is broken and reduced to a “zombie enterprise”, it is still difficult to exit.
Large state-owned enterprises can be regulated, and local private enterprises are linked to local GDP, which involves more complicated social issues such as employment rate and placement of tens of thousands of workers.
Absence of key and core steel technology and technology dependence.
Most Chinese people are proud of being “No. 1 in the world”, but they don’t know the hidden dangers of “dependence on high-end steel imports”.
Biggest ≠ strongest, China’s steel industry is big but not strong.
The demand for crude steel in the infrastructure construction of Chinese steel enterprises ignores the long-term investment in research and development of high-end steel products, and their innovation capabilities are insufficient.
Steel products in key fields such as key projects, major equipment, and national defense and military industries have high quality requirements and high research and development difficulties.
In the past, China has been in the stage of imitating and following for a long time, and many technologies were directly imported.
In terms of thinking and consciousness, I am used to achieving leapfrog development in a short period of time by introducing or learning a certain technology.
For example, technologies such as low-carbon metallurgy, near-net shape manufacturing, and intelligent manufacturing are still in a state of follow-up, and some core testing and control equipment still rely on imports.
High-end special steel technologies such as aircraft carriers are still in the hands of a few countries such as the United States, Japan, and Russia. With the title of “big steel producing country”, China still has 20% of steel products that have not yet been independently controlled and rely on imports.
During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, the basic structure of China’s iron and steel industry is still overcapacity.
When the market size is difficult to grow significantly, the path of scale expansion fails. In the past two years, the market has started the sand washing mode, eliminated backward production capacity, and moved towards a strategy of less but better.
Severe overcapacity, chaotic market order, severely low efficiency, raw material and fuel price cuts are lower than steel price cuts, state-owned iron and steel enterprises have high additional costs, and private iron and steel enterprises have lost their low-cost advantages formed by low investment in environmental governance and energy waste. The seriousness of e-commerce is taking shape, the product quality needs to be improved, the product sales model needs to be improved, the proportion of direct sales and direct supply of products is low, and the reduction of logistics costs in e-commerce needs to be standardized.
It is particularly appropriate to describe the steel industry as waiting for death without transformation. No one can run against the tide of the times. “If you don’t reform yourself, you will be reformed.”
There is a gun behind and a light ahead.
The mighty energy tide is coming after all.
“Strive to reach carbon peak in 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality in 2060”.
This is China’s “double carbon” goal that spans decades.
Immediately after the two sessions, carbon neutrality was written into the government work report for the first time, and it was set as one of the eight major work priorities in 2021.
“Double carbon” has been upgraded to a national strategy, and the first year of “carbon neutrality” has officially opened.
Energy and manufacturing are facing the trio of national strategic orientation, industry reform pressure and huge market potential.
Among them, steel, coal, electric power, petrochemical and other major carbon emitters have the heaviest tasks and the greatest responsibilities in the industry, and will be the main position and the main force of the dual-carbon strategy.
China is the world’s largest steel producer, and its annual steel production exceeds half of the world’s total. According to statistics, China’s crude steel output exceeded 900 million tons in 2018, accounting for about 51.3% of the world’s total. Carbon emissions can be imagined, astronomical.
According to statistics, in 2020, steel carbon emissions accounted for about 15% of the country’s total emissions, ranking first in the manufacturing industry. The pressure to achieve the “double carbon” goal is also self-evident.
To put it bluntly, “Double Carbon” is not only about energy saving and emission reduction, but also an industry upgrading revolution involving a wide range of aspects.
Large carbon emitters are the winners and losers in achieving the dual carbon goals. Digitalization has become the clearest direction for the transformation of China’s steel industry.
And on this low-carbon, intelligent, and digital road, there are unprecedented market gold mines.
At present, the industrial Internet in the United States, Industry 4.0 in Germany, Smart Manufacturing 2025 in China, and Blueprint 5.0 in Japan, the world is moving towards smart manufacturing.
As the “backbone” of the manufacturing industry and the “food” of the industry, the transformation of steel is even more urgent.
The iron and steel industry has strong cyclical attributes, fierce homogeneous competition, and harsh operating environments. In the future, lower overall costs, higher product added value, and differentiated services will be the core competitiveness of enterprises to stand out from the encirclement.
The strength of steel, the strength of steel
In 2020, the digitalization rate of enterprises in China’s iron and steel industry is only 30%.
The iron and steel industry chain involves mining, smelting, rolling, rolling, processing, and consumption horizontally, and vertically involves multiple links such as procurement, production (energy, logistics, quality, maintenance, labor), sales, and supply chain, with real-time information It is characterized by high requirements, many variables in the production process, and complex elements at both ends of procurement and sales. It has long been plagued by problems such as “island control”, “line division”, “interface seams” and “extensive connection”.
1. The production process is complicated.
The production of iron and steel products includes three links of ironmaking, steelmaking and steel rolling. Each link involves multiple production systems, industrial control systems and supply chain levels. The system is huge, resources are wasted, and production capacity is limited.
2. Different data standards and low data utilization.
There are many types of equipment and many application scenarios. The iron and steel industry contains a large amount of data resources. However, different equipment and environmental industrial protocols are not uniform. The data formats generated in the production process are very different. It is difficult for systems and data to be compatible, and the value of massive data resources is difficult to mine.
3. There are many potential safety hazards.
Steelmaking is a high-risk operation, and equipment failure, because it brings not only the loss of material and financial resources, but also the possibility of casualties.
4. Low level of technology and digitization.
In the era of Industry 3.0, the informatization foundation of the iron and steel industry is relatively weak. The core technologies such as the underlying operating system and key software of the iron and steel industry rely on foreign countries. The lack of core patents makes the development of iron and steel very slow.
There are also problems such as overcapacity, difficult quality control, many dangerous scenarios, high equipment maintenance costs, increasingly personalized downstream demand, and increasing pressure on environmental protection.
It is not easy for the steel industry to remove the stereotype of “high temperature, high risk, and backward production capacity”.
The more difficult it is, the more difficult it is to understand the transformation of the industry.
Steel digitization is on the way
In the future, production capacity is profit, and whoever can maximize the utilization rate of energy consumption will gain the upper hand in the energy revolution.
“Increasing production capacity” is a simple word, but behind it is a multi-party game of industry, technology, and cost.
There are many difficulties in the current digitalization of steel, such as the traditional steel industry, overcapacity, complex production process, difficult quality control, lack of data standards, and many dangerous scenarios.
For multiple production lines, partly scattered, and large systems, centralized production control is carried out, and through perception + big data, it can be seen, judged and controlled.
At the control level, Hikvision disassembled the process into four levels: emergency management, scheduling management, quality management, and production management, and achieved “centralized control” by breaking through IoT perception technologies such as image brightness processing and high frame rate imaging.
In terms of visualization, Hikvision adopts technologies such as 3D fusion and voice control to assist in the realization of “centralized view” of operation analysis data, production statistics, production operation status, and equipment status, and realizes “screen” movement and simple management. .
For highly streamlined equipment operation and maintenance work, complex production environment, high operational risk, and heavy inspection tasks, Hikvision uses AI + thermal imaging technology to improve management and control efficiency in equipment management.
In the past, people in the industry used “waiting for a rabbit” to describe this work.
Taking the spot inspection of equipment in a cold-rolling plant as an example, when it comes to point-checking and maintenance of equipment failures, it is necessary to take turns on duty 24 hours a day to check whether there are any abnormalities in the parameters of the equipment. Often there will be a phenomenon of “the failure occurs as soon as the operator leaves” , could not catch this “rabbit” in time.
At the same time, the authenticity of data cannot be guaranteed due to traditional manual entry; it is difficult to archive paper records, and it is cumbersome to trace historical details; the tasks are arduous and dangerous, and manual inspections are difficult to cover everything.
For online real-time monitoring of key equipment, Hikvision uses thermal imaging technology that is good at real-time online monitoring of hot air stoves. In addition, AI pickups and vibration sensors can remotely control the operation of enterprise equipment through the intelligent online detection and inspection engine of equipment. Status and inspection reports form a business closed-loop that detects problems in a timely manner and quickly handles them, providing effective data for the equipment predictive maintenance database.
Through remote inspection, the monitoring center can complete online inspection tasks, reduce the frequency of inspection personnel entering the production area, reduce hidden dangers in production, ensure the safety of staff, and reduce the frequency of inspections in dangerous places. Workers no longer have to sit on the sidelines.
Throughout the process, vision plays an important role. In the auxiliary production link, AI+radar+OCR can realize the identification of key information in the production and transportation process and improve business efficiency.
The original manual counting of machinery is difficult to guarantee efficiency and accuracy. It is gradually replaced by technologies such as AI, radar, and OCR. During the packaging, circulation, and transportation of materials or finished products, key information can be identified and recorded to facilitate information traceability. and statistics, greatly improving business efficiency. For example, the one-button counting function can be linked to trigger visual analysis. After the analysis results are checked with the weighing count and the quantity of the manifest, the system can automatically print the label, which is efficient and convenient.
In terms of safety management, Hikvision uses multi-dimensional perception technology to intelligently control the vehicles in the factory area. For example, through the LeTV all-in-one machine to detect vehicle violations, provide safety supervision departments with feedback on vehicle violations and abnormal conditions in the factory area, discover potential risks in vehicle transportation in advance, and greatly increase the traceability rate of illegal vehicles.
Image-based deep learning technology can realize intelligent detection of hidden dangers, intelligent analysis of video images, real-time analysis, alarm and processing of unsafe behaviors of people, unsafe states of objects, and unsafe environments Controllable, controllable, controllable.
This is also a problem that Dahua has discovered in the past few years when it went deep into the leading steel enterprises. For the complex process of steel, Dahua has in-depth insight into business scenarios from the five latitudes of “people, machine, material, method, and environment”, and has targeted Enabled by different technologies.
In the field of industrial safety, “people” is an extremely important safety variable in all manufacturing industries. Dahua uses intelligent algorithms to carry out intelligent monitoring and early warning such as wearing safety and safe operation behavior management to ensure the safety of employees and reduce potential safety hazards.
In the field of industrial production, the combination of intelligence and “machine” can realize visualization, automation, dataization and intelligence in the production process. Dahua detects the transmission belt of the raw material factory through visualization technology, detects deviation, material blockage, and foreign object equipment status in real time, and realizes equipment status supervision. Through meter identification, inspections are carried out for other production equipment, and machines are used instead of humans to reduce human work intensity and personnel costs.
For high-temperature and high-risk equipment such as ladles, converters, and blast furnaces, high-temperature and strong light in steel operation scenes, Dahua uses infrared thermal imaging, high-temperature protection and other technologies to not only identify problems in advance and in time, but also improve equipment through intelligent detection and analysis. Use online rate.
In the production of raw materials, the combination of intelligence and “materials”, based on the AI visual intelligent recognition algorithm, Dahua carries out remote and intelligent steel scrap judgment, which has changed the traditional manual on-site long-term grading mode, and also reduced the errors caused by human judgment errors. Raw material cost loss.
In terms of operation and management, the combination of intelligence and “law”, with the help of visual slicing technology, can realize accurate association with orders, trace and manage the entire process of incoming materials, production, quality inspection, and storage of the entire production business, and improve management capabilities.
For complex production processes, Dahua’s machine vision starts from the overall process, from train number recognition and ladle number recognition in raw material processing, to steel billet surface defect detection in steelmaking plants, to automatic counting of final steel storage And positioning marking, to overcome by category, to improve the production process.
Of course, environmental protection requirements are indispensable for large carbon emitters. Dahua added a touch of green to the green factory through black smoke detection and five-element analysis of the environment.
After countless days and nights of experience in the front line of the steel industry, Dahua, which has continuously polished its technology, has refined such a set of solutions that optimize the process and process from the entire production process, reduce production costs, and speed up production efficiency.
Summarize
Steel, the backbone of China’s economy, accounts for about 8% of China’s total GDP.
There are many upstream and downstream related industries in the industry, which occupy a pivotal position in the entire economic layout.
In the world famous book “How Steel Was Tempered”, the protagonist Paul Korchagin’s process of experiencing the hardships of life is compared to the process of growing into a steel warrior. I have experienced the tenacity of the protagonist, and I also know that it is not easy to make steel.
Today, we can still feel the power that transcends the times and directly affects people’s hearts, but the steel industry has undergone earth-shaking changes.
In 1966, the first furnace of molten steel at Shaogang was released, and now Shaogang has an annual steel production capacity of 8 million tons.
Digital production capacity is just the tip of the iceberg in the digital transformation of the steel industry. Under the wave of intelligence, steel enterprises have become the helmsman of the digitalization of thousands of industries, and they have built a “one headquarters with multiple bases” on the “cross-industry, cross-base” industrial Internet architecture. The intercommunication and fusion of “cross-space” and “cross-man-machine interface”, smart manufacturing 2.0 issued a low and powerful whistle. Leifeng.com Leifeng.com
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