In 2018, the shared bicycle industry has passed through a cold winter. Many companies have said that they have fallen, and most of them can still be acquired. The overall development of the market has shown a significant downward trend. However, although the current sluggish sharing economy has brought the industry's development closer to the end, it is undeniable that the fire that shared the bicycle has been so hot, even if it is going to be extinguished, it has left some valuable things to the industry.
 
So, what exactly is this precious thing left by shared bicycles?
 
Manufacturing automation under the myth of sharing bicycles
 
I believe many people have already thought of this precious thing is the automated transformation of the bicycle manufacturing industry. All along, China's bicycle manufacturing industry is a labor-intensive industry, and production relies mainly on cheap labor. However, after the rise of shared bicycles, the increasing demand for bicycles has made China's bicycle manufacturers understand the charm of automated production.
 
Before the myth of sharing bicycles has not been annihilated, we can always see piles of piles of bicycles in the streets of the city. They pile up like mountains and have nowhere to be placed. According to relevant statistics, from the short period of two years from 2016 to 2018, there are nearly one hundred bicycle companies emerging in China, and the number of bicycles put on the market exceeds 10 million, and the development far exceeds the original level of the market.
 
And this will undoubtedly make the upstream manufacturing companies laugh! Because of the rapid development of the downstream market, it has brought more and larger orders to upstream manufacturing companies, giving enterprises a rare opportunity for profit. The person in charge of some foundry companies once said that after the development of shared bicycles, the bicycle industry has been in short supply for a long time. No matter how much upstream OEMs can produce, downstream enterprises such as Ono and Mobai can all accept the receipt.
 
Obviously, the profit opportunities of the upstream foundry companies are in front of them, and what they need to do is to upgrade the production line and increase production capacity to maximize profits. In the past, companies were unable to apply automated production lines such as robots because of the lack of productivity and cost after application due to low production requirements and complex production models. Nowadays, the unified and modular production demand for shared bicycles in large quantities and single models has made the automated production line useful.
 
Therefore, in the past two years, many domestic bicycle manufacturers have begun to use robots to achieve automated production. Among them, Guangzhou Trinidad, as one of the foundries of Mobai, applied a total of 28 sets of robotic welding systems from Yaskawa. Fujitsu has directly installed nearly 80 sets of robot welding systems for the orders of ofo. The full power of these robots has greatly reduced the cost of bicycle production and greatly improved the efficiency, which has made the company feel the powerful charm of automation.
 
What is the automation of the market after the silence?
 
“The first step in the automation transformation of Chinese bicycle companies is driven by shared bicycles.” It is very appropriate to use the words of one person in the industry to summarize the development of manufacturing automation under the shared bicycle myth.
 
On the basis of this point of view, some people think that the first step of the automation upgrade will have the second step, the third step, and the next continuous step; but some people think that this wave brought by the shared bicycle The escalation of the automation upgrade is only a temporary one. After the market is calm, the road to automated transformation will also be stagnant. So, which view is correct?
 
On this issue, the author prefers the former. Since sharing bicycles has opened the way for industrial automation, we have no reason to go back. Even if there is no push for the explosive growth of shared bicycles, the automation development of China's bicycle industry should continue to move forward in response to rising labor costs and aging.
 
Some people may think that the market for shared bicycles is silent, and the automated production line has no room for value again. This is not the case. Although the development of shared bicycles in China has stopped, its development in Europe, America, India, Southeast Asia and other countries is still good. The existing automated production lines of enterprises can fully serve foreign markets.
 
As many current shared bicycle foundries have expressed, the future labor-intensive low-end production lines will migrate to India and Southeast Asia, and only the high-end models will be preserved in China. Under such circumstances, whether it is the preemption of foreign markets or the lack of domestic high-end technical personnel, it is necessary to continue to insist on the deepening of automation.
 
Therefore, the automation of the industry is a development step that must be carried out sooner or later. Sharing bicycles only provides an important opportunity to start, and will not affect the final result of its development. As long as you want to understand this, perhaps everyone's views on the future automation of the bicycle industry can be more unified.