Domestic industrial software, where is the armor?

Although there is still a big gap between domestic industrial software and overseas manufacturers in 3D CAD and other fields, we still have the opportunity and confidence to catch up and even surpass.

China is the only country in the world with all industrial categories, and the wave of digital intelligence has spawned a large number of demands. As a basic industrial software, the application demand of 3D CAD, especially in the field of high-end manufacturing, will be greatly stimulated. For the consideration of safety and long-term development, more and more enterprises tend to prefer domestic brands, and whether “autonomous and controllable” has become an important indicator of their selection.

On the other hand, the national level has given higher attention to industrial software and more policy support. In 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will implement the industrial base reconstruction project, which will rank the industrial basic software with the basic materials, basic parts, basic processes and industrial technology foundations as “five bases”; In 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “14th Five-Year Intelligent Manufacturing Development Plan”, which clarified the core supporting role of industrial software for intelligent manufacturing. This has also accelerated the influx of sensitive capital into the industrial software field.

At the right time and in the right place, how to break through the domestic industrial software manufacturers in the tuyere will be the key to the next stage. And its core is to focus on the core technology, including the autonomous core engine, from the root to solve the risk of congestion.

First of all, we must have a tough determination to invest in research and development to overcome technical difficulties.

Building is better than buying, heavy hard light soft is a problem left by the limitations of historical development. Today, in the face of the threat of the neck and the important threshold of the national manufacturing upgrade needs, to conquer and master key core technologies such as the kernel has become an unavoidable reality. Due to the high technical barriers in the industry and the long return cycle, it may lead to fraud in one move or overtaking on a corner. This requires domestic manufacturers to persevere, with the determination to invest in research and development and innovation, grasp the key technologies such as geometric modeling engines, in order to consolidate the core competitiveness of enterprises and products, and truly form a positive cycle between the “technology-market” in order to go more stable and further.

Fortunately, we see that strengthening research and development investment has become the consensus of some domestic manufacturers. According to public data, in recent years, Zhongwang has invested 30% of its revenue in research and development, and the proportion of research and development investment in the first three quarters of this year is as high as 57.03% of revenue, while the average proportion of science and technology board companies in 2022 is only 16%. Haochen Software’s prospectus also disclosed that its research and development expenses increased by 43.7% in the first half of 2023 compared with the same period last year. The investment of real money is the most authentic feedback on what the enterprise is doing and what to do.

Secondly, we should have the confidence that the more we use the better, and constantly polish the product in the real industrial scene.

CAD software needs to be tested, validated and optimized in rich, real industrial scenarios in order to achieve internal performance. After more than 20 years of grinding and technical accumulation, the maturity of domestic industrial software has made great progress. Taking the domestic CAD leader Zhongwang as an example, its products have been sold to more than 90 countries and regions, and the legitimate users have exceeded 1.4 million, involving engineering construction, manufacturing and other industries, and can be tempered in diversified and complex practical application scenarios, and constantly optimize performance and mature. Its autonomous Overdrive kernel not only supports Zhongwang’s products, but also has been successfully commercialized and withstood the test.

Finally, we must have long-term patience and grow together with the industry and users.

Of course, the bottleneck problem requires industry efforts, the support of the industrial chain, and more open scenarios for industry users to polish together. We were surprised to see that CSSC, CRRC Group, BOE and other companies purchased the products of Zhongwang 3D CAD, and Kesheng Long, Nanjing Ailong and other companies chose Xindi 3D products. In this way, domestic CAD manufacturers have obtained the industry’s blood transfusion, they can continue to grow in the process of accompanying users and partners, and can also help improve the quality and efficiency of research and development manufacturing production, and ultimately form a virtuous cycle of two-way promotion. In addition, the industry and soft industry talent requirements are high, the gap is large, in addition to the introduction from outside, domestic manufacturers also need to take the initiative to shoulder the heavy responsibility of talent training, adhere to the long-term concept of talent training.

The weakness of industrial software is the pain that has been repeatedly mentioned and reflected on in the past decades, and the breakthrough in the future is doomed to be full of thorns.

But the road is long and the task is difficult. But compared with the cheap expression of the slogan type, compared with the way of spending money to buy authorization, down-to-earth investment in the research and development of independent technology, insisting on polishing products with customers in the scene is the most promising way to turn the soft side into armor and crack the dilemma of domestic industrial software being jammed.