How do domestic scientific instruments break through?

In more than 10 years, China has independently developed more than 300 kinds of instruments and equipment, and inexpensive domestic instruments have quickly occupied the domestic market. New breakthroughs have also been made in the fields of environmental monitoring and food and drug monitoring. However, the market share is far from being comparable to that of foreign companies. The phenomenon of domestically-manufactured equipment is not satisfactory.

Since the "toxic capsule" incident was exposed in May of this year, Li Yuan, general manager of Beifen Rayleigh Instrument Group (hereinafter referred to as Beifen Ruili), has experienced a series of ups and downs.

It is arguable that Beifen Ruili is the largest manufacturer of testing instruments in the country. Its products are inconsistent with the “toxic capsules” and cannot be tangled in this connection. However, the spectrometer developed by this company was fast and accurate for the detection of "toxic capsules" of heavy metal chromium. And compared with foreign products, the cost advantage is obvious. However, in the domestic market share ranking is always to accompany the last place. The relevant authorities of the country issued a document requesting the implementation of the "approval and inspection of drugs" and strictly preventing heavy metal chromium. The products of Beifen Rayleigh did take a ride on the policy and doubled the monthly production. However, some institutions and companies have turned a blind eye to domestically-made equipment that can fully meet the testing requirements, but have purchased foreign instruments that cost 30% more. The reason is that the performance and quality of domestically produced instruments cannot be met. In the face of this status quo, “We are very worried and helpless to these domestic equipment manufacturers. We always advocate independent research and development of technology equipment and equipment, but we don’t pay enough attention to how to promote and sell.”

Ten years after its accession to the WTO, China has always been unable to shake off the blue-collar image of the “world factory” in the competition in the international market. It is true that some of the core technologies of domestically-manufactured equipment have not been passed and the quality is unsatisfactory. However, some foreign companies have ignored the progress of Chinese products and deliberately exaggerated the insufficiency of domestically produced equipment. In addition, their governments have repeatedly resorted to "double reactions" ( Anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, and the gloomy mentality reflected by the big sticks are causing us to be vigilant, and we should choose countermeasures and lay out in advance.

During the “Ninth Five-Year Plan” period, the Ministry of Science and Technology gave special support to the independent development of equipment and equipment in the science and technology support program, and achieved significant results: In more than 10 years, China has independently developed more than 300 kinds of equipment and equipment, which is inexpensive and affordable. Domestic instruments have quickly occupied the domestic market. Among them, the market share of medium and low-end spectroscopy and chromatographic instruments with large demand in the field of food safety and environmental monitoring rose from 13% in the early period of the “Ninth Five-Year Plan” period to more than 45% in the final period of the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan”. Relevant experts have confirmed that the spectral and chromatographic instruments required by China in the field of food safety and environmental monitoring can meet the needs of 90% of the equipment regardless of the function of the equipment or the output.

However, the fact is that today, in the above-mentioned fields, the domestic equipment has not yet exceeded 60%.

Is the market saturated? This judgment obviously has lost its level. In recent years, with the increasing supervision of food safety and environmental monitoring in China, the demand for related equipment in these areas will inevitably rise. The data from the Customs also showed that China's imports of instruments in the above areas have increased significantly, and most of them are low-end spectroscopy and chromatographic instruments that China can produce autonomously. Even some of the county-level testing agencies have also sought to go further and choose foreign instruments.

Facing this status quo, the reason for being able to get on the table is that domestic quality still needs to be improved. In this regard, the R&D institutions and manufacturers of many domestic related instruments are quite disapproving. Even if you do not even use the programs, you believe that the quality of domestic equipment is not high.

Looking for short-term thinking on the popularity of home-made equipment, it is impossible for us to bypass the multinational instrument companies that have become successful in the Chinese market. Different from domestic companies, these companies generally attach great importance to the application methods of their products and new product demonstrations. They have chosen to set up joint application laboratories in well-known research institutes in target countries and gather scientists in target countries to localize their products. Applied method research. In order to effectively solve the problem that the product is difficult to popularize in the target country. Entering China's earliest Japanese instrument manufacturer, Shimadzu Corporation has established joint laboratories and display platforms with top domestic academic institutions such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Chemistry, Dalian Chemical Institute, etc. to carry out the application of its products in China. Research and use promotion.

“In the field of innovation economics, research on product application methods and demonstration platform construction is an important node on the roadmap for technological innovation. Unfortunately, we once ignored it.” A researcher at the Great Wall Institute of Strategic Studies pointed out that in the government’s science and technology In the plan, there are special support experiences for the R&D, technology development, and industrial R&D of scientific instruments and equipment, while there are few records of national project support for the application of products. Set up an instrument and equipment display platform. This kind of behavior has obvious external characteristics. There is no government guidance in the early stages, and it is very difficult for enterprises to make a difference.

After some investigation and reflection, in 2009 the Ministry of Science and Technology took the lead in initiating the pilot work on the demonstration of scientific equipment and application with independent intellectual property rights. The National Science Instrument Demonstration Center (referred to as the Guoyi Center) was established in Beijing, Shaanxi, Liaoning, and Tsinghua University and other universities and colleges.

Although the exploration of the application and display of domestically-made instruments started late, compared with the mode of operation of multinationals that are very familiar with, the operation and management of these several national centers has been somewhat immature. However, the localized geographical advantage and the concept of innovation quickly led the National Instrument Center to find a way forward: introducing the theory and research results of innovative methods, focusing on the application of domestic equipment and equipment innovation practice, and exploring the adoption of domestic scientific instruments and equipment. Applied research, quality evaluation and application demonstration, build a complete chain of independent innovation of scientific instruments from principle research, technology development, industrialization research and application demonstration.

The specific methods include establishing a display platform for domestic scientific instrument achievements, forming a window for our country's user systems to understand and understand the domestic scientific instruments and equipment, establishing a platform for the comparison of internal and external scientific instruments, promoting users to correctly understand and evaluate scientific instruments at home and abroad, and constructing users and domestic scientific instruments. The equipment enterprise interactive communication platform provides consulting and technical support for domestic equipment manufacturers to continuously improve product quality and application level; establishes an objective and fair third party quality evaluation system, provides technical support for government procurement of domestic scientific instruments and equipment, and gradually establishes and improves domestic science The instrument testing technician training system lays the talent base for the extensive application of domestic scientific instruments.

Three years of exploration and practice have enabled the construction of the National Instruments Center to get better. Based on the physical and chemical analysis center of Beijing Institute of Science and Technology, Beijing Guoyi Center is the first domestic demonstration service platform for demonstration, application, demonstration, training, and evaluation of domestic scientific instruments and equipment. It is used in food safety and environmental monitoring. Pharmaceutical research and other professional fields use domestically produced equipment to conduct research on application methods and demonstrations and explore significant results.

For example, under the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology's innovative method work, the center combines the needs of current food safety testing and related national testing standards, and utilizes a microwave digestion instrument produced by Shanghai Xinyi Microwave Chemistry Technology Co., Ltd. for microwave saponification and gas chromatography. Determination of Cholesterol Content in Vegetable Oils and High Fat Foods by Mass Spectrometry . After many tests, the best instrument conditions for microwave saponification were obtained. The microwave saponification method has remarkable advantages such as rapid and effective compared with the conventional national standard method. At present, this method has been applied to the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation project, “Using Infrared Spectroscopy Technology for Rapid Identification of Edible Oil Authenticity and Adulteration”.

There are many optional cases. The Chinese Instrument Application and Demonstration Center has also established its own brand, which has provided a powerful boost for independent innovative scientific instruments. In fact, the concepts and theories of research and application of innovative methods, application and display of scientific instruments are exotic, but they are good at learning to introduce advanced concepts and knowledge from abroad, combining with China’s national conditions to refine and sublimate, and breaking through the bottleneck of the promotion and application of independent and innovative scientific instruments, and then change. Domestic equipment applauds the situation. This method of innovation and exploration of home-grown instrument management path is a more intelligent choice.