Servo, as one of the important executive components of industrial automation, plays an important role in the automated production process. In recent years, driven by the country's overall manufacturing transformation and upgrading tide, the domestic servo industry has been in a state of rapid development. In addition to the increasing application demand of traditional industries such as numerical control, textile, and packaging, the rise of emerging markets such as industrial robots, smart wearable devices, and new energy vehicles has also opened up a new world for the future developments of the servo industry.

Hangzhou Zhishan Motion Control Co., Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise integrating R & D, manufacturing, sales, and service with all-digital intelligent servo, stepping, and other motion control units as core products. This year, ZSMC was successfully included in the list of the top 100 most technologically advanced enterprises in Zhejiang Province. The company has maintained a steady growth in technological innovation and growth indicators in recent years. Recently, this magazine interviewed Mr. Wang Gangzhi, the general manager of the company, and invited him to share the company's development positioning, follow-up business strategy, and customized development direction.

Create domestic high-cost performance servo products

Speaking of the current status of the domestic servo market, Mr. Wang Gangzhi said that with the gradual improvement of automation application levels in recent years, users' requirements for servo systems have become increasingly clear. Therefore, the market has formed distinctive differences around these users needs. "In the ordinary low-end market, in addition to ensuring the reliability and practicability of products, users are more sensitive to prices and require products with higher cost performance; and in the professional market, users have higher requirements on the quality and performance of products and require technical solutions that can really help them solve practical application difficulties. "He said.

Given market development, ZSMC has positioned itself as a service provider of cost-effective motion control products at the beginning of the establishment, that is, based on providing servo products for customers, through the integration of related products, technology solutions, response support, etc. to provide customers with services that exceed expectations as much as possible. In the process of transition from a traditional product provider to a service provider, ZSMC is focusing on improving product serialization and as well as steadily improving product functions and performance.

For example, ZSMC has newly launched G2, K1, K2, K / iK single and dual axis, K / iK high voltage, low voltage DC series servo drive products. Based on the original basic products, the products has been subdivided according to the application environment, debugging convenience, dynamic In response to needs, and the product has jumped a step in terms of convenience, ease of use, and simplified debugging. This year, ZSMC will also launch products supporting bus communication protocols such as POWERLINK, EtherCAT, MECHATROLINK-III; Besides, ZSMC will strive to promote the industrialization of integrated servos and develop drivers, encoders, and motors. The integrated solution lays a foundation for product growth for the company's next development.

Figure 1 &Figure 2 : ZSMC newly launched G2, K1, K2, K / iK single and dual axis, K / iK high voltage, low voltage DC series servo drive products

Facing the increasingly fierce market competition, Mr. Wang Gangzhi added that ZSMC ’s emphasis on "providing cost-effective products" is not simply to reduce product prices or compress manufacturing costs, but to maintain the principle of making "good" products. Taking the market as the mainline and adhering to the standards of high reliability and high consistency of products, we strive to achieve breakthroughs in the program, strengthen the R & D response to solve the specific application requirements of users and technical problems, and bring new value-added application value to reflects the comprehensive cost-effective advantage of ZSMC servo products.

Connect with the market and solve the "pain points" of industry applications

Another important business growth point of ZSMC comes from the customized development of the industry market. According to reports, this year's key development areas of ZSMC include machine tools, industrial robots, VR (virtual reality) equipment markets, etc. In the future, it will also penetrate the photovoltaic and service robot markets, which requires a lot of automation solutions centered on customer applications.

Mr. Wang Gangzhi pointed out that more and more industry users are beginning to favor some technical solutions that can solve their practical application difficulties and "pain points". This may also be a major growth breakthrough path for domestic small and medium-sized servo companies, especially for Non-standard automation and "machine substitution" projects. Customized development requires servo companies to be able to participate in the entire design and development process of automated equipment, from transmission, motion control, to overall equipment compatibility, especially in technology research and development strength, market demand research, and service support capabilities. These are also a big test for domestic servo companies.

In the process of developing industry solutions, ZSMC first started with the organizational structure of the enterprise. By adopting the project engineer system, it conducted in-depth research around industry applications to find technical breakthroughs and help customers achieve technological upgrades. For example, Hangzhou Zhishan Motion Control Co., Ltd. ’s energy-saving high-speed and high-efficiency servo system launched for knitting equipment last year is to effectively improve machine operation efficiency, reduce machine head vibration, and make the machine head run more smoothly. Greatly improve the customer's production efficiency.

"When carrying out industrial development, enterprises should concentrate on studying the user's production status and demand goals, combining mechanical engineering and motion control technology, conscientiously thinking about products, achieving customized response and differentiated product development, and striving for innovation and breakthroughs in servo technology to benefit the long-term sustainable development of enterprises." Mr. Wang Gangzhi said.

High-quality manufacture guarantees user confidence

The servo industry is still evolving. In terms of technology, the development of the driver is subject to the needs of the client's upper computer, especially after entering the era of the bus system, different manufacturers have their communication protocol standards, so the development of the driver should meet the application requirements of different users. For this, Mr. Wang Gangzhi believes that the more important thing for domestic servos is to master the functions and performance requirements of future smart manufacturing and interconnection development products and to do the basic work of the upstream and downstream interconnection of the industrial chain, to truly adapt to the current market use demand. Besides, to improve the ease of use and debuggability of the product, for the high performance of the servo system, such as integration of drive and control, self-adaptive / self-diagnostic ability, etc., it also requires domestic companies to persist in research and development for a long time, and constantly accumulate development results to improve users Product satisfaction.

Looking to the future, Mr. Wang Gangzhi said: "In the future, industry competition will be more concentrated on the production process and equipment automation production capacity of the enterprise. The process needs to be accumulated and the manufacturing needs to be invested. This is also an important direction for ZSMC to strive to improve. At present, the enterprise already has relatively complete type test instruments and equipment, which can fully guarantee the reliability of the product under design. In the future, it will continue to learn advanced enterprises in manufacturing and technology, increase investment in basic equipment, and ensure product reliability, under the premise of practicability and consistency, users' confidence in the use of ZSMC products is enhanced. "

In terms of service support to the market, in addition to the normalized basic service items and product selection advice for customers on mechanical structure, transmission control, and matching of related components, the company also cooperates with partners through the case library sharing to provide service support for customers. When the partner is conducting business, ZSMC will inquire about the customer's type and usage requirements in details, find past successful applications in its case library and provide partners with recommended content such as device configuration and application focus and ssist partners to serve end-users more accurately.

——This article is transferred from the third issue of “Servo and Motion Control” in 2016.