Desktop computers solve the problem of high production costs for enterprises

With the gradual improvement of people's living standards, sweater design has shown a trend towards outward dressing, personalization, and high-end development. This trend has also put forward higher requirements for production technology and equipment, and traditional hand cranked horizontal knitting machines are no longer able to meet this production demand. In a sense, whether sweater companies extensively adopt fully automatic computerized flat knitting machines has become the key to their survival and growth. The market demand for desktop computers will become increasingly large.

There are over 50000 various types of sweater production enterprises in China, including nearly a thousand enterprises above designated size. The annual production of various knitted sweaters is about 2 billion pieces, and the sweater production capacity accounts for 70% of the global market share. From the perspective of equipment, there are over one million hand cranked horizontal machines in China, mainly used for producing shaped woolen sweater pieces; More than 120000 electric and semi-automatic flat knitting machines are used, mainly for producing molded sweater pieces and T-shirt leaders; More than 40000 fully automatic computerized flat knitting machines, of which domestic computerized flat knitting machines account for about 30%, mainly producing molded sweater pieces, fully molded sweaters (woven and wearable), T-shirt leaders, etc. From this perspective, the utilization rate of fully computerized flatbed knitting machines in China's sweater enterprises is still relatively low, and there is huge room for equipment upgrades. Enterprises using computerized flatbed machines to produce goods will greatly improve efficiency.

Desktop computers have the advantages of low labor and high efficiency, which can bring tangible benefits to enterprises. This is one of the main reasons for their recent sales boom. Zhejiang Chunfeng Milanou Clothing Co., Ltd. started as a small family workshop. Nowadays, this enterprise has developed into a leading knitting enterprise with an output value of 150 million yuan and an annual output value increasing by 20 million yuan. The main reason for the rapid development of the company is that computer work has replaced manual work, greatly improving production efficiency and reducing production costs. For example, in the past, workers operated hand cranked horizontal machines. A worker can only operate one machine and has to work three shifts, which is very hard. Now, through computer horizontal machine operation, one worker can control four or five computer machines. The cost of shaking a piece of clothing has greatly decreased, only 1/10 of what it used to be. Excluding the equipment cost of computerized flatbed machines and the depreciation cost of machine usage, the total cost of each piece of clothing is now only one-third of what it used to be. In this way, our profits will have a significant improvement, and it was only through one of my improvements that we were able to achieve such a fast pace of development.

Rapid development and growth opportunities still exist

At present, there are nearly 50 flat knitting machine manufacturing enterprises in China, which can produce more than 40000 computerized flat knitting machines annually. The production areas are mainly concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong regions such as Changshu, Zhangjiagang, Nantong, Ningbo, Taizhou, Shaoxing, and Dongguan.

After less than a few years, domestic computerized flat knitting machines have made a leap forward in development, with machine speeds surpassing the previous highest speed of 1.2 meters per second. Some machines can also produce fabrics of similar specifications, with the function of being versatile. Such computerized flat knitting machines can bring greater benefits to enterprises. The economical single system and single-stage needle selection computerized flat knitting machines have been put into mass production and have become new selling points in the market due to their price advantages. Due to the rapid development of China's sweater industry, the demand for computerized flat knitting machines has shown a geometric increase, which has also driven the rapid development of domestic flat knitting machine manufacturing enterprises. After more than 7 years of development, in May of this year, Dongguan Qianlima Knitting Machinery Co., Ltd. had an oversupply of orders. The company's sales general manager, Manager Luo, said that based on the current sales situation, the company's sales volume is expected to exceed 5000 units in 2010, and the sales revenue is expected to reach 500 million yuan.

Analysts believe that the industry is currently undergoing a clear period of transformation. On the one hand, domestic computer flatbed machines are on the rise, with technology, quality, and service gradually maturing, costs significantly lower than imported products, and customer investment recovery cycles greatly shortened; On the other hand, sweater enterprises are in a critical period of transformation and upgrading. In the process of transforming from hand cranked and electric flat knitting machines to fully computerized flat knitting machines, the demand for mid to high end equipment will gradually increase. Therefore, the demand for computerized flat knitting machines will continue to maintain a high growth trend for a long time in the future. However, there are also great challenges when this opportunity comes. The quality of computerized flat knitting machines in the future will become increasingly high, which will require high requirements for manufacturers of computerized flat knitting machines and high technical assessments.

The gap still exists, and we cannot wait for the transformation

Computerized flat knitting machine is a highly integrated and intelligent product in textile machinery, which also puts forward new requirements for the technology, mechanical performance, and technological content of computerized flat knitting machine production enterprises. How to narrow the technological gap with foreign manufacturers has become an unavoidable issue for many domestic flat knitting machine manufacturers.

Many people often sigh when it comes to domestic desktop computers, thinking that they are not as good as imported desktop computers. They would rather spend hundreds of thousands of yuan to buy imported desktop computers. In fact, what makes countrymen sigh is not the backward technology, but some patchwork machines, which have damaged the reputation of the whole domestic computerized flat knitting machine and plunged the industry into a vicious circle of bad development. Some domestic woolen sweater processing companies have reported that there are still some unsatisfactory aspects of domestic computerized flat knitting machines compared to advanced foreign levels, mainly reflected in low machining accuracy, poor material quality of mechanical and electrical components, poor wear resistance and durability, low stability and reliability of computer control systems, poor functionality and ease of use of plate making systems, and unsatisfactory after-sales service.

At present, except for a few enterprises with strong research and development capabilities and awareness, many domestic enterprises are carrying out repetitive and homogeneous production work, competing with whose products are priced lower. The product quality of these manufacturing enterprises varies greatly, with a service life generally ranging from 1 to 3 years, far less than the 8-year service life of computer flatbed machines. Faced with this situation, experts predict that in the next two to three years, a group of computer flatbed machine factories will face bankruptcy due to poor product quality, insufficient funding, and a lack of their own research results. When these factories go bankrupt, the machines of those sweater production enterprises will be a pile of scrap metal, and no matter how cheap they are, there will be no next buyer to take over.

Although there is a huge market for desktop computers in China with different customer groups, the vicious price war caused by product homogenization will greatly squeeze the profit margins of manufacturers, thereby reducing investment and scale in new product research and development, which is somewhat unsettling. Equally worrying is that as the localization process of products continues to advance, world-class manufacturing companies have also launched economical computerized flatbed machines for the Chinese market, and the cost-effectiveness advantage of domestic equipment is gradually disappearing. Experts point out that it is time to make a decision to change the development model that used to focus solely on reducing costs and immediate benefits.