Since this year, Taiyang Town has continued to deepen the “Xiangyang Intelligent Assistance” action, focusing on the pain points of the development of characteristic hardware industries, focusing on solving the problems of corporate technology research and development investment, and making precise efforts from three aspects: product innovation, production line upgrades, and policy empowerment to promote the transformation of the traditional hardware industry into an intelligent and innovative one.
In the first quarter, the town’s hardware tool industry bucked the trend and rose, with total orders increasing by more than 10% year-on-year. The two-wheel drive of “intelligent transformation and digital transformation” and R&D innovation achieved remarkable results.
Walking into the Taiyang Town Hardware Industry Agglomeration Area, the forging workshop of Hangzhou Linan Pliers Co., Ltd. is busy.
In the workshop, the new forging machine tools are roaring in operation, and the red metal parts are forged and shaped again and again under the operation of the workers. The production rhythm is compact and efficient.
Thanks to the iterative upgrade of intelligent equipment, two workers can easily control the entire production line, creating an atmosphere of automation and intelligence.
As a long-established hardware company established in 1998, the company has successively won many honors such as National High-tech Enterprise, Zhejiang Provincial Specialized and New Enterprise, and Hangzhou Technology R&D Center. In recent years, it has continued to promote intelligent transformation and digital transformation, reducing costs and improving quality through production line upgrades, while improving the operating environment and demonstrating the effectiveness of transformation.
“We will start preparations in October 2024, and officially implement the equipment update in December. In mid-March 2025, two fully automatic production lines with a total investment of more than 5 million yuan will be officially put into production.” Hangzhou Lin’an Tong Making Co., Ltd.
Shen Weikang, the person in charge of the company, said that the investment in the production line has changed the previous single-mode single-chip production model and upgraded it to one-mode dual-wafer production, doubling the production capacity. Not only has the output increased, the quality has improved, but the income of employees has also increased simultaneously, and production costs have also been effectively saved.
Today, Lin’an pliers making has formed a two-way development layout at home and abroad, with a rich range of products sold overseas.
Relying on the advantages accumulated through intelligent transformation, the company is focusing on the future and plans to further increase investment in intelligence in the field of finishing and move towards the high-end product market.
“We plan to fully utilize laser manufacturing technology in the finishing process of hand tool products. Not only will the accuracy be higher, but the selling price of finished products will also be increased by at least 30%. In the future, domestic factories will focus on promoting intelligent transformation of finishing processing and simultaneously improve the level of back-end polishing technology.” Shen Weikang said.
While tool manufacturing companies are accelerating the upgrading of production lines, a group of specialized and new companies are deeply engaged in the research and development of new materials and seize the high-end market with technological innovation.
Walking into the production workshop of Hangzhou Lin’an Dongfang Sliding Bearing Co., Ltd., technicians are focusing on testing new products. A variety of independently developed sliding bearings and hydraulic accessories are neatly displayed.
At present, companies are focusing on iterative optimization of polymer coating processes, striving to break production bottlenecks through process upgrades, and steadily improve product stability and production efficiency.
“The surface of the product is prone to strain problems after the original process. After technological improvements, this problem has been completely solved.” Xu Fang, project manager of Hangzhou Lin’an Oriental Sliding Bearing Co., Ltd., said that a new process route is currently being verified, and the bonding fastness and thickness indicators have reached the standard. The next step will be to promote the implementation of automated production lines.
The product qualification rate increased from the original 40% to 95%, achieving a double leap in production capacity and quality.
As a national high-tech enterprise, the company has always regarded R&D and innovation as its core competitiveness, focusing on the research and development of new materials and new products. It has participated in the formulation of about 30 national standards, holds more than 30 patents, and masters core technologies in the field of precision manufacturing of sliding bearings.
This year, relying on the policy support of Taiyang Town, the company has increased its research and development efforts and launched a variety of crankshaft thrust plates and hydraulic accessories side plates suitable for high-end equipment and new energy fields, covering more than 1,000 models in 10 categories.
“The company is currently focusing on the entire industry chain. On the one hand, it is deeply involved in the research and development of front-end raw materials, and develops new anti-wear and anti-wear materials; on the other hand, it optimizes the back-end deep processing technology, improves product performance throughout the entire process, and accurately matches market demand.” said Chai Yulin, head of the quality department of Hangzhou Lin’an Dongfang Sliding Bearing Co., Ltd.
In the next step, the company will continue to increase investment in research and development, and plans to add two provincial-level R&D centers, focusing on breakthroughs in key technologies such as automated detection of surface defects in sliding bearings and high-precision grinding, to further enhance market competitiveness.
One company focuses on technological transformation and efficiency improvement, while the other focuses on R&D and innovation. The differentiated development of the two companies is a vivid epitome of the high-quality development of the Taiyang Town hardware industry.
In recent years, the hardware tool industry in Taiyang Town has been booming, its scale has continued to increase, and the industrial added value output above designated size has increased continuously in the past three years.
Next, Taiyang Town will continue to deepen the “Xiangyang Intelligent Assistance” action, guide by enterprise needs, strengthen technological empowerment, policy support, and service guarantee, continue to promote the iterative upgrading of the traditional hardware industry, and inject strong momentum into the high-quality development of regional manufacturing.
Zhang Peng, director of the Economic Development Office of Taiyang Town, said, “We will continue to make efforts from three aspects. First, we will focus on making good products and convert R&D capabilities into order growth momentum; second, we will focus on making refined production lines and steadily promote the ‘intelligent transformation to digital transformation’. At present, we have completed the transformation of 6 automated finishing robot arm production lines.
There are 7 intelligent technological transformation enterprises;
the third is to focus on the introduction of policies into enterprises, and provide training on R&D expense collection, scientific innovation preferential policies, and additional value-added tax deductions for 25 enterprises, and the company will invest more than 1.4 million yuan in R&D to build a virtuous cycle of “innovation-production-efficiency.”
