Although the Chinese market has been hit hard by the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, it has recovered rapidly. It is expected that China's industrial production and capital investment will grow by more than 5% in 2021, and machine tool consumption may achieve a strong growth of 10%. "Germany is the largest supplier to China's machine tool industry after Japan, with a high-tech position. Its technology is widely used in various customer fields in China, such as automotive and aerospace, as well as mechanical engineering, power generation and other broad-based machine tool users." At the 17th China International Machine Tool Exhibition (CIMT2021), Shane Sun from the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association (VDW) China in Frankfurt explained.

On April 12, at the CIMT2021 press conference of the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association, Dr. Wilfried Sch?fer, Managing Director of the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association (VDW) in Frankfurt, said: "Due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the German manufacturers will be mainly represented by their subsidiaries in China".

"Finally, we once again ushered in a sense of the trade show." Exhibitors and visitors gathered at the booth for face-to-face discussions, which is what many German machine tool manufacturers are looking forward to CIMT2021.

CIMT is a new starting point for umati to enter China

From 2020 onwards, orders for German machine tools from China began to stabilize, and even increased by 17% in the fourth quarter, reaching double-digit growth. In 2021, there are multiple signs that the global economy will continue to grow. Wilfried Sch?fer judged: "The development in 2021 will be even more encouraging, because we should have already ushered in a turnaround."

China Industry News found that VDW has a umati booth at CIMT. UMATII (Universal Mechanical Technology Interface) is a community of the mechanical engineering industry and its customers for the promotion and dissemination of open, standardized interfaces based on OPC UA. The purpose of the presentation at CIMT is to introduce to the Chinese industry the interface specifications for machine tools to communicate with higher-level IT systems and to demonstrate the convenience of their work. Six companies (also exhibitors in the German Pavilion) have already connected their respective machines. "Unfortunately, the consequences of the new crown pandemic have prevented more companies from joining our activities." Dr. Broos, Director of Research and Technology at VDW, Alexander responsible for OPC UA's activities in the machine tool industry, regrets.

To enable umati to fully enter china, the advanced manufacturing technology center (amtc) of tongji university is providing support for its technological infrastructure in beijing. "We are also very happy to connect machines and services with China's machine tool interconnection initiative NC Link, which is a continuation of the successful cooperation at EMO Hanover in 2019." Alexander Broos said.

at that time, a batch of chinese cnc machine tool manufacturers had already established contacts with umati. Alexander Broos says that the NC Link team has now connected the OPC UA infrastructure to its own installation. The core element of Umati's participation in CIMT is the umati demonstrator, which consists of a data center connected to computers in real time and a dedicated dashboard.

German machine tool supplier is an important partner of Chinese industry

For many years, the German machine tool industry has been a valuable partner for Chinese industrial customers, and China has become the sales market for the German machine tool industry. In the past two years, German exports have decreased by nearly 45%, from 2.3 billion euros to 1.3 billion euros, involving processing centers, grinders, parts, lathes and so on. In contrast, China's imports have not been hit so hard, falling by only 28% in 2020, and most of the imported products delivered are parts and accessories. Wilfried Sch?fer believes that China's demand for modern production technology is still huge, especially because the next step for Chinese industry is to launch higher-quality products that can also meet the needs of the global market.

Wilfried Sch?fer concluded: "The China International Machine Tool Exhibition is a very good platform, on which Chinese customers will trust and choose the products displayed by German manufacturers, and the China International Machine Tool Exhibition will make more contributions to the promotion of bilateral business development.

In fact, the same is true of the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association. For many years, the German Machine Tool Manufacturers Association has been applying to the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology to set up a German joint booth at the China International Machine Tool Exhibition and is responsible for the implementation of the project. At present, Germany has become the 17th China International Machine Tool Exhibition (CIMT 2021) overseas exhibitors, there are 150 companies on display a variety of machine tools, cutting tools, clamping technology, measuring technology, molds and CNC systems and software, the total exhibition area of 7,500 square meters.

"Participating in the exhibition is a good opportunity for us to enable umati to gain popularity and experience abroad." Alexander Broos concludes, "We expect this to happen again in other markets soon."