Continuously Step up Technical Innovation to Promote Marine and Offshore Engineering Equipment Upgrading

Wu Xiuxia

Since the reform and opening up 30 years ago, the Chinese shipbuilding industry has realized the two-way leapfrogging of "system reform" and"technological catch-up", and has assumed the dual mission of civilian ship export and military ship upgrading,and generations of shipbuilders have worked hard, seized the opportunity and made China become the largest country of shipbuilding tonnage in the world.However, with the continuous changes in the world economic structure, the demand for transport vessels has been greatly reduced, and there is a lack of competitive advantage in many aspects,such as high performance environmentfriendly vessels, engineering vessels,marine equipment and ocean development. The matching rate of hightech marine right protection equipment is not enough, the formation construction of large marine ships is just beginning, and the protection facilities towards the blue ocean are seriously lacking. The Chinese shipbuilding industry is facing a new round of challenges. At the 2018 Marine Technology and Equipment Development Forum held in Dalian a few days ago, Fang Shujia, chief expert of the Chinese Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers(CSNAME), said that China's shipbuilding and marine equipment industries should adapt to the new requirements of the development of the new era and make good use of the three elements -- "strategy,science and technology, and experience",summing up the past, designing the future,with scientific planning, persisting in scientific and technological innovation,increasing the marine equipment supply capacity, expanding production capacity,taking into account new requirements of ocean freight, ocean-going fisheries, ocean engineering, marine rights protection,marine scientific research, and coastal tourism, improving the added value of products and technology, keeping up with the national strategy, giving full play to the bridge role of the shipbuilding industry in the strategic progress.

Amidst Intensified Competition Industry Faces Grim Situation

In recent years, the international economic pattern has been constantly changing. Under the new situation, the United States, the European Union, Japan and developing countries have formulated and issued related policies in the development of traditional manufacturing industry. The American government has set up the banners of "intelligence","new energy" and "reindustrialization",using high technology and policies to attract American enterprises to move back from China and Asia, and to cause Chinese private enterprises to follow up on the outward migration. The European Union, in response to the financial crisis and the high unemployment rate, closely followed the United States in formulating policies to support the development of enterprises, and planned the direction of science and technology to revive traditional industries and reduce imports of middle-and low-end household goods. Limited by local resources,Japan foreign investment continues to increase, there is a rising trend of the agile and efficient shipbuilding industry driven by environmental protection,energy saving and new information technology, and ship receiving order share has seen a significant increase in recent years. Developing countries in Asia have made great efforts to develop traditional manufacturing industries,using the advantages of low cost, such as land, labor, and raw materials, to divert the share of low-end products and international investment capital in the international market, establishing themselves as a new force in the traditional manufacturing industry.

Shipbuilding, as a traditional manufacturing industry, is facing cruel competition under the new situation of international economic pattern, the problem of overcapacity has not been solved, and the pressure of capital is increasing day by day. As a result of overcapacity, shipbuilding enterprises taking ship orders at low-costs led to vicious competition, and dragged down some backbone shipbuilding enterprises.The pattern of China as "world factory"has been divided, shipping market shrinking demand for new ships has been significantly reduced. At present,ship safety, environmental protection,energy conservation and efficiency have become topics of concern to shipowners,especially due to the energy conservation and environmental protection norms issued by the IMO for phased compulsory execution as well as shipowners’ own economic interests, shipowners will give priority to choose energy saving,environmental protection, intelligent, safe,downsizing and efficient ship products.

In addition, offshore oil and gas projects backlog a lot of money of the shipbuilding industry. In the past few years, the spring-up of the offshore oil and gas exploration industry and offshore platform development have opened up a rich upstream market for shipbuilding.However, during the period of severe decline in the marine transportation industry, when world oil and gas prices fell again and again, the investment in the offshore oil and gas industry dropped again and again, not only did the orders for offshore oil and gas platforms decrease significantly, but also owners were unable to accept built platforms. There was a backlog of money on both sides. Relevant data show that, in recent years, the backlog of marine engineering in China's shipbuilding enterprises amounted to 40 billion US dollars. However, the offshore oil and gas projects in China only accounted for 20% of the necessary facilities made in China. The shipbuilding industry is mainly responsible for the design and manufacture of steel platform,while platform drilling, logging, well sealing equipment and system, power plant engineering, electrical engineering,dynamic positioning system and so on almost all rely on imports from abroad,the additional value of local marine equipment technology is not high.Therefore, under the influence of many factors, China's shipbuilding, marine engineering and equipment supporting industries are facing a severe industrial situation.

Under Policy Escort, Opportunities Come out for Emerging Markets

At present, the world economy recovers slowly, the development is divided. Military conflicts and trade conflicts, terrorist activities occur from time to time, "nuclear possession" and"nuclear limitation" have become the new fronts of anti-terrorism. The "intellectual property economy" of the developed countries has encountered a huge bubble,the economy is weak, and the pressure of social employment is great, which makes the "post-industrialization" be adjusted to "intelligence-led re-industrialization".The pattern of international investment and trade and the rules of multilateral investment trade have been substantially adjusted, and energy and environmental protection have become a constant hot spot. Developing countries have been hit by "reindustrialization" in Europe and the United States, and the advantages of human resources and manufacturing industries have been restrained, and the international market is facing re-shuffling,"manufacturing intelligence" gap is widened, and the pace of development is slowing down.

At the same time, the pattern of"world factory" has changed, China pressure of overcapacity, limited export,and employment has increased, with high dependence of oil and gas resources and mineral resources on foreign countries.Industry and infrastructure are so concentrated on the coast that there is a serious economic imbalance between the east and the west. Meddlesome countries in the world are making trouble, stirring up disturbance and causing disputes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea,and trying to siege Chinese diplomatic,economic, military, scientific and technological activities. In addition, China has 9.6 million square kilometers of land and 3 million square kilometers of marine territory. More than 90% of the land boundary has been delimited, and there is only 590000 square kilometers of maritime territory with completely no dispute, the disputed area or facing claim right area is 2.41 million square kilometers. The Chinese marine space is in urgent need of protection. It is not enough to rely on the armed right protection alone, and the marine resources must be exploited,utilized, constructed and protected.

Fang Shujia said: General Secretary Xi Jinping's proposal to jointly build"Belt and Road" is in line with the trend of world multipolarization, economic globalization and diversification of the status quo, with cohesion of people's minds, and leading Chinese enterprises to further reform and open up and go out for common development at home and abroad. He said that the Maritime Silk Road must go to the sea, scientifically understand the ocean, understand its implications, explore its mechanism,trace its history, and forecast the future of the ocean. Developing and utilizing the ocean and building all kinds of offshore platforms are opportunities for the development of the shipbuilding industry and a new market for the shipbuilding industry. On the one hand, energy sector needs offshore oil and gas exploration and production platforms; ocean wind energy,wave energy, tidal energy, temperature difference energy development and utilization equipment; energy development related engineering ships, installation ships, transport ships, life support ships.On the other hand, ocean-going fishing vessels, large marine pastures, intelligent breeding farms of high-grade fish, and high-value marine biological culture bases in modern fisheries. Marine tourism needs large floating bodies at sea airports and port hubs, leisure vacation life reef construction, matching passenger ro/ro ships, cruise ships, yachts,sailboats, submersibles. In addition, the construction of sea and air, sea surface,undersea passage, the construction of marine data network, logistics and transportation channels running through the ocean port, and so on.

Adjusting Product Mix to Promote Intelligent Manufacturing

"The service orientation of the shipbuilding industry should be expanded, the product structure should be adjusted, the traditional production capacity should be transferred, the overstocking should be unbuckled, the intelligent manufacturing should be advanced, and the intelligent ship should be put ahead." Fang Shujia said that the shipbuilding industry structure is being adjusted, the marine equipment industry should show flexibility, follow suit by adjusting the product structure.At the same time, the emphasis of supply-side reform of shipbuilding and offshore engineering industries is product transformation, increasing added value and expanding service area. Under the initiative of "Belt and Road" and the strategy of "ocean power", the market is constantly developed and strengthened.

Fang Shujia said that building the Belt and Road's platform and focusing on marine engineering is the mission of the shipbuilding industry to adapt to the new era. Under the guidance of new emission regulations, ballast water treatment, natural energy utilization and other technologies, environmental protection, energy saving, efficient new ship form; with design informatization and manufacturing agility as leverage,achieve efficient shipbuilding. At the same time, pay attention to the development of intelligent ocean,deal with the relationship between intelligentization demand, intelligent products and intelligent manufacturing.He pointed out that the intelligent ocean is the ideal form for human beings to use the ocean; intelligent manufacturing is the need of the development of the new era; it is the guarantee of high performance, high quality, and high efficiency of ship products;and it is also An important route for shipbuilding enterprises to improve their competitiveness. Therefore, intelligent ocean and ship industry intelligentization must follow up in an orderly manner. In addition, the shipbuilding and marine engineering manufacturing industries are a very complex project with very large and overweight products, which is mainly made of individual parts and supplemented by batches. Intelligent manufacturing is not intelligent processing production, intelligent processing production line is not all of intelligent manufacturing, as intelligent manufacturing includes intelligent product development, intelligent processing production, intelligent highvalue applications, and intelligent management of product life cycle. For complex ship products and large scale ship manufacturing process, intelligent manufacturing is a long-term mission,whether priority is given to product or production capacity, shipowners or shipyards, needs to be prudent and careful choice.

"Ship products are engineering products with high one-piece value and long lead time from receipt to delivery.The world economic pattern is changing,the ship market and the oil and gas marine engineering platform market are both undergoing tremendous changes. The shipbuilding industry should respond in a new way and adapt to the new normal of rapid changes in the market in the new era." Fang Shua said, first of all,clean up inventory, completely change the idea formed in the era of material shortage of "with goods in the warehouse,no panicking". Second, the new era needs the information-based guarantee of "zero inventory", to develop in "rapid logistics". Inventory should be cleared,conditions created, first used, in case the enterprise can not use it in the short term, it can use the network to send back selling information, even resort to disassembly, separation, or price reduction treatment. In order to reduce the backlog of enterprise capital as soon as possible,identify the responsibility of backlog of finished products through negotiation,explore appropriate price reduction,transfer of Party A, leasing of finished product, function change, disassembly and separation, and so on, so as to release the funds. In addition, the "supplyside" reform should be implemented in the adjustment of product structure to increase the added value of technology and enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises. Actively adjust the product structure, serve ships oriented to the marine environment knowledge base and related to marine tourism, develop large trawlers, large and medium-sized purse seine fishing vessels, fishing equipment and other multi-purpose fishing vessels and new marine aquaculture facilities.

Fang Shujia pointed out the necessity to adjust the structure of ships and marine industrial products and expand the market orientation.First, it is important to use strategies to cope with the complex and changeable market situation, inject new technologies into new products, and participate in marine construction with new ideas,build a bridge between shipbuilding capacity and the development of marine economy. Second, continue to innovate,combine extensively, give play to their technological advantages and potential capacity, select the right direction,adjust the structure, broaden the market, and develop healthily. Third,overcome the market fluctuations of a single product, develop the "common line", "adjacent line" of many main industries, combined with the needs of marine development, dare to use science and technology to lead the construction of the market, support the transformation of capacity with technology. Fourth, use the opportunity of industrial structure adjustment to develop high-tech products and improve the added value of product technology and product connotation benefit. Fifth,we should take the initiative to adapt,actively respond with strategic thinking,increase technological innovation,strengthen the technological foundation,use technological advantages to establish discourse power, and use solid foundations to carry the mission of becoming bigger and stronger.