Opportunity
China’s GNP reaches 17 trillion US dollars, the No.6 in the world.
Chinese manufacturing industry has undergone a huge revolution, transforming from providing low quality and cheep “inferior goods” to manufacturing hi-tech and high quality “superior goods”. Economists and media from home and abroad unanimously use the concept of “world factory” to praise this revolution. This “world factory” is OEM（Original Equipment Manufacturer）, whose core content is “ OEM Manufacture”.
However, this kind of voice is rare to be heard: China, a big country which influenced the development of the world by its four great inventions and five thousand years’ history of culture and technology, is acting as a “labor worker” in the stage of 21st century. Is it our ultimate dream? In the future civilization pattern, are we willing to accept the division of “OEM Manufacture” for a long term?
The practice has proved that OEM should not be the developing strategy of China’s manufacturing industry: 1. OEM solidifies the image of “cheap” Chinese goods. 2. OEM is a high demanding but low rewarding operation mode; 3. OEM ruins enterprises’ innovation spirit.
Only OBM（Original Brand Manufacturing）is the strategic orientation of the development of China’s manufacturing industry. “Original Brand Manufacturing” is the feature of OBM. Both governmental policy and social public opinion direction should actively adopt measures to shorten the transition period of China’s manufacturing industry from OEM to OBM and step into a new era of “Chinese Brand” at an early date.
Only the production processed by self-owned brand can balance “R&D”, “manufacturing” and “sales” to the full extent and gradually promote the international status of Chinese products, which not only maximize the add-value of products, but also influence the operation principles of enterprises themselves.
What is “brand”? The theory circle has numerous explanations of this question.
As far as manufacturing industry is concerned, I think: brand is the embodiment of the multi-value of the product. It is remembered by costumers through visual method (brand symbol). Through continuous innovation and cultural progress, it realizes customers’ longings for the future; through lasting quality, it wins the trust and loyalty of customers; through proper pricing, it creates value sense that is hidden in the deep hearts of particular customers.
A lot of world famous brand we see today, such as “Benze cars”, “IBM computers”, “Sony electrical equipments”, “IKEA’s furniture”, “LV’s bags” and “Nike Sports”, are inevitably bearing the profound technical and cultural values.
Design Innovation
Enterprises operated by OBM mode will pay great attention to the simultaneous promotion of design innovation ability and manufacturing production ability. This kind of enterprises will pay more attention to the design innovation and quality guarantee rather than taking “cheap price” as their sole competitive edge or “lower the cost” by cutting down the R&D investment and scarifying the quality of products.
For medium and small manufacturing enterprises, they are more flexible to change the strategy from OEM to OBM, since this kind of enterprises does not have the pressure to maintain the operation of huge manufacturing machines and the “survival” of large-scale companies. They can patiently research the market, find potential demand according to their manufacturing ability and technical features, and create “promising” new markets for medium and small enterprises.
Under current competitive environment, challenges that enterprises confronted are not only how to lower the operation and production cost, but more importantly, how to make products innovation. “If 10% of the annual turnover of a company does not come from innovation, it will be cleaned out of its industry in five years.” Apparently, innovation is the key to maintain and improve enterprises’ competitive edge.
Industrial design is an important driving force for products innovation, products value promotion and brand creation.
Numerous economic losses will be caused if the indispensable effect of industrial design lacks in the products area.
Industrial design is a developing activity full of imagination, which meets human material demand and mental desire.
If there is no invention, the design will lose its value; if there is no innovation, products will lose its vitality.
If the goal of industrial design is to follow the fashion of the market and rapidly change the appearance of products, it is only lingering in the superficial aspect of the product. Without researches and innovation of the content of the products, enterprises can not create “good design” at essential level.
A new era is about to come. The rudiment of industrial design R&D has already formed in the Yangtze Delta and Pearl River Delta. When the cry for transition to OBM is rising day by day, the industrial design itself also needs to adjust its principles and seek new thoughts about operation mode. Designing companies should establish great goals, considering the continuous promotion of innovation ability and levels and improvement of service quality as their No. One priority and “guarantee the designing quality’ as their base of survival, reconstructing their relationship with manufacturing industry by using the principle of “growing together with brand”.
In the course of China’s manufacturing industry moving towards OBM, it is far from enough for designing companies to provide single designing cooperation to customers or do one-time business with customers and look after short term profit. They should establish long-term cooperative friendship and strategic alliance share the joy of successful brand and realize their creative value in the course of jointly researching market trend, exploiting original products and creating the culture content of the product.
The great nation revitalization plan requires China’s manufacturing industrial to finish the transforming from “Made in China” to “Create in China” as soon as possible, enabling Chinese products to fully harvest their creative value. Only when Chinese brands are listed as world famous brand by its designing innovation and excellent quality can “Made in China” win the respect of all the people.
Education Design
At the end of 20 century, the higher education of Chinese mainland underwent a cross-century development. In the year 1999 and 2003, the ministry of education issued Higher Education Invigorating Plan for twice. The report of Sixteenth People’s Conference of the Communist Party requires us to “strive to train hundreds of millions high quality labors, tens of millions specialized talents and a large sum of outstanding innovative talents.”
The achievement of 15% enrollment rate, 19% in 2004, enables our country to enter into the developing stage of popular high education. Currently, our country has already become a country with largest higher education scale in the world.
Among over two thousand academies under the Ministry of education, more than 1700 are common colleges, among which nearly 1200 colleges set up industrial design, artistic design and relative majors. These majors have become another attractive professional area followed by hot majors like Chinese, foreign languages and international trade.
If we assume that every college enrolls 150 students majored in industrial design and artistic design per year, this number will reach 170,000. If we calculate from the year 2001 when the enlargement of college enrolling began, there will be 1.14 million people graduated and enter into artistic design area.
The enrollment of Chinese Academy of Art in 1980, 1990, 1996, 2000 and 2004 is 70, 120, 200, 1000 and 1600 respectively. The student enrollment is about 80000.
Industrial design has already transformed from concerning the dimension, structure and shape of single machine and product to the pursuit of more extensive systematic value. The industrial design education of Chinese Academy of Art has shifted from “production-oriented” designing form to “consumption-guided” designing principles. The range of problems that industrial designers have to solve also become more extensive and society and enterprises also put forward higher demand on industrial designers’ knowledge structure and comprehensive quality.
The subject construction direction of the industrial design of Chinese Academy of Art will have the following features:
1. Face to the social economical features of post-industrial era. To sum up, it takes social development as its basic orientation rather than considering the production efficiency as its sole orientation; it takes rich experience as its comprehensive goal rather than consider the functional demand as its only standard.
2. Face to responsible product developing mode full of social, economic and humanistic awareness, and shoulder innovation value and responsibility for a designer from angles of social value, economic value, environmental value and humanistic caring.
3. Face to the Chinese industrial development under the context of globalization, critically facing global integrated quality developing mode, which is represented by multinational corporations, and simultaneously pay attention to regional production developing mode and social economic developing mode featuring multi-culture, multi-resources and multi-ways of production.
The professional direction of the industrial design of Chinese Academy of Art will be developed in the following four directions:
1、People and communication
Digital design manufacture and digital products is changing today’s industrialization, such as IT products, interface design, etc.
2、People and Mobility
All kinds of transportation tools, from single wheel to multi wheels and no wheel, such as bicycle, car, plane and steamboat, etc
3、People and Living
The appliances used in the urban external space and internal space, on which people depend to live and work, such as furniture, appliance, urban furniture, etc.
4、People and Leisure
From the design of traveling products, the development of traveling projects to the recycle of resources, such as tour, toys and articles for use.