The CIMT (China International Machine Tool Show) in Beijing is one of the world’s largest and most influential trade exhibitions for the machine tools industry.
From April 15 through April 20, 2019 all leading mechanical engineering companies were present to exhibit innovative technologies at the 16th CIMT show. This year’s show theme was “Win the Smart Future Together”. Visitors were able to obtain valuable answers to current issues, thus enabling them to meet future challenges. Ever since its founding 30 years ago, the CIMT has focused on presenting the world’s most cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, attracting over 1,700 companies from 28 countries and regions. They included 874 international and 838 domestic exhibitors, with each group occupying around 50% of the exhibition space. All the top machine tool manufacturers had booths at the show, that had a total display area of 142,000 square meters.
Trends and Developments in the Machine Tool Industry
The 2019 machine tool industry has undergone far-reaching changes. Innovative manufacturing processes that integrate the new generation of IT technology, big data, and cloud technology are key factors in achieving profitability, re-defining competitive advantages, and exploiting new competences. “Intelligent manufacturing” has become the central issue for the machine tool industry of the future. The new generation of information technology, robots, the Internet, and big data have accelerated integration in the manufacturing industry, spawning many new technologies and sectors.
Development of the Chinese Market
China’s market for consumption of machine tools and tools experienced an upswing in early 2018, subsequently followed by a downturn with weak performance at the end of the year. Annual consumption of metalworking machinery totaled 29.13 billion US dollars, a decline of 2.8% over the previous year. At 23.46 billion US dollars the total production volume fell by 4.3% compared to 2017; however, total exports accounted for 4.0 billion US dollars, an increase of 21.6% over the previous year. The total volume of imports amounted to 9.67 billion US dollars, representing growth of 10.6% in comparison to the previous year. Analysis of this data on consumption, production, import, and export indicates that China’s metalworking industry still has potential, while the demand structure is continuing to grow.
How Was the CIMT for RÖHM?
“The mood at CIMT was very good,” reports Philipp Bock (Head of Sales – Asia and Eastern Europe). “The quality of visitors to our booth was excellent, making the exhibition by far the best CIMT ever for RÖHM. Visitor attendance in all halls was high and exceeded my expectations following visitor figures at the last leading German exhibition, the AMB in Stuttgart, by a double-digit percentage. In comparison to previous shows in China, the quality of the discussions we had was significantly improved, with RÖHM able to welcome more decision-makers to the booth. The majority of discussions related to clamping concepts for entire projects and this trend is set to continue in China in coming years. RÖHM is the market specialist for implementation of customer-specific project solutions and also excellently positioned to meet future challenges in China,” continues Philipp Bock.
RÖHM showed customized components for clamping solutions live in action both at its own booth and also on the machines of diverse, prestigious machine tool manufacturers around the exhibition grounds.
“We were particularly pleased to win the MM Award for our new DURO-A RC power chuck. Visitors to the RÖHM booth were able to experience it and its quick jaw change system, that has been honored multiple times, in operation and see for themselves both how simple it is to operate and how great its quality is. Each day a prize was awarded to a set-up time champion. To remain competitive, the machining industry must continuously optimize processes in its production facilities. The goal is to reduce machining and machine-idle times. The DURO-A RC is an optimum product solution for this purpose, guaranteeing time savings in the double-digit percentage range compared to conventional technologies and competitor products,” says Philipp Bock.
This year’s CIMT set new standards for innovative technologies and provided a positive outlook on development of the Chinese economy.