LED lighting OEM control is not serious

Zang Bo, Deputy Secretary-General of the National Semiconductor Lighting Engineering R&D and Industry Alliance, said that although the inferior quality phenomenon has been greatly improved, it is still a big problem that plagued the LED lighting industry. Failure to be serious will certainly affect the healthy development of the entire industry. "The market's misunderstanding of LED products also comes from quality problems. One of the major advantages of LED products is that they have a much longer life than other lighting products, and some poor quality LED products do not have a long life. These are of low quality. Individual products have seriously affected the reputation of LED in the market."

Sampling 70% of unqualified international giants on the list Last August, the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision released the results of a special provincial supervision and inspection of self-ballasted LED lamp product quality in Guangdong Province. Sampling results show that in the 23 batches of self-ballasted LED inspections, the test failed 17 batches, the failure rate of up to 73.9%.

The spot checks involved self-ballasted LED lamps produced by 21 companies in 7 cities in Guangdong Province. Unqualified items involving protection against accidental contact with live parts, insulation resistance and dielectric strength after moisture treatment, mechanical strength, fault condition, color product tolerance, general color rendering index, disturbance voltage, lamp power, heat resistance, interchangeability Properties, power factor, initial efficacy/light flux, fire protection and flame protection.

Coincidentally, just one month earlier, the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce carried out quality monitoring on the sale of portable general-purpose lamps. After inspection, there were 13 batches of unqualified products, of which famous brands such as Osram and Ops also appeared unexpectedly. On the blacklist. According to the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce, the main focus was on quality monitoring of various types of portable general lighting fixtures, such as incandescent lamps and fluorescent lamps. The problem of unqualified products was mainly focused on the insertion loss/disturbance voltage failure. Aspects. In fact, Osram and Ops have already passed the "black list" of unqualified quality inspections in September 2011.

After the monitoring results came out, Gong Xiaozhi, secretary general of the Shanghai Lighting Electrical Appliance Industry Association, once told the media that the incident had exposed problems such as the lack of strict control of lighting companies. The lighting industry outsources production in large quantities. This time there are problems with multiple batches of products or related issues.

The problem of the detection of multiple batches of products in the lighting industry has also caused the emergence of highly-produced products in the industry.

Zibo said that the foundry industry in the lighting industry is very serious, including many large brand companies have a lot of OEM. According to an expert from the China Illuminating Engineering Society, "The Philips lighting company has taken the lead in the proportion of foundry products, which is the world's largest manufacturer of lighting appliances. In addition, OSRAM and NVC lighting are also foundry. Some big brands such as Philips and OSRAM once had nearly 90% of their foundry capacity.” Zhang Shanduan, deputy director of the Institute of Electric Light Sources at Fudan University, told reporters that the foundry itself is not wrong, because after the business is outsourced, the management of the company’s foundries is somewhat “intimate” , The quality of the produced product is not good to control. Coupled with the current fierce competition in the industry, the cost of the entire industry is on the rise, raw material prices have risen, and the economic downturn and industry competition have also depressed the market price. At the same time, the compression of the industry's profits will also allow companies to squeeze the cost of deregulation and make quality problems.

Zibo believes that the OEM OEM model should have been a win-win situation for both partners - the combination of the international giant's brand technology advantages with the cost control and cheap labor advantages of domestic companies, but it has now become a double lose - The giant lighting company has smashed its own signboards, and domestic companies have not been able to upgrade their technology and have been forced to work for a few processing fees.

The "bottom" fate of foundries At present, in the globalization system, Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea occupy the key position of the global industrial division of labor, other regions are in the middle and low end of the industrial chain, and they are more involved in the form of OEM. Change.

Zibo told reporters that in the current international division of labor in the LED industry, the United States, Europe, and Japan are still in the upper reaches of the industry and hold key technologies. The United States Carey and OSRAM in Germany have mastered the core technology of LED chips; the LED crystals provided by Nichia Chemical and Toyota Synthesizer of Japan are considered to be the best at present, and the two LED chip production capacities account for about 80% of the total output of Japan.

The huge market potential has made the LED industry a "blue ocean" for investment. However, due to the lack of upstream core technologies and equipment, most of the domestic LED companies can only get together in the middle and lower reaches of the investment threshold.

The advantage of the OEM model is that in addition to lowering production costs, it is also possible to make reasonable use of idle production capacity and reduce the company's repeated investment in production. In addition to having the world’s most recognized lighting market with the greatest potential, China also has a relatively cheap labor market worldwide. Therefore, many international lighting brand companies have chosen China as their most important foundry base.

At the same time, Europe, the United States, and Japan have a set of management methods that strictly control the foundries. In general, large companies will send a contractor's inquiry to the foundry. In this document, the brand, quality, and quantity of raw materials have been specified. Subsequent related expenses such as logistics, maintenance, training, employment, etc. have clear and explicit calculations. Customers are only paid to foundry companies at higher labor costs. In short, LED packaging OEMs earn the difference in human cost.

In addition, LED midstream packaging technology is basically in the hands of enterprises in mainland China and Taiwan. Domestic LED packaging export companies are basically doing OEM work for European, American and Japanese companies. However, in the context of globalization, the foundry companies' living environment is also the most difficult. With the increase of labor costs, the profits of LED packaging OEMs have been significantly reduced. The lower the profit, the more profitable they need to rely on. Therefore, they can only expand production capacity and recruit more employees. This kind of business model of relying solely on the seas and seas tactics will be forced by the ever-rising prices, labor costs and exchange rate fluctuations.

Foundry can not be "scapegoat"

Liu Muqing, director of the Institute of Light Sources at the Department of Light Sources and Lighting Engineering at Fudan University, told reporters that since the industry is generally pre-emptively working on the concept of OEM, when brand companies’ products encounter problems, everyone first thinks that the problem lies with the OEM companies. Need the company to make any explanation.

"OEM manufacturers should not be scapegoats for product issues in brand enterprises." Zibo believes that brand companies are often trapped in "quality doors," and brand companies are choosing raw materials, production processes, inspection processes, and even the choice of OEM partners. There is a considerable correlation, brand companies can not be completely responsible for their own responsibility.

Liu Muqing believes that brand companies are frequently trapped in “quality doors” and the core issue is the lack of corporate responsibility. Companies need to be responsible for their own responsibility, responsible for the customer, and do high-quality products. This requires that companies need to establish a sound quality control system; and the government, the introduction of the corresponding accountability system to enhance the responsibility of lighting companies is also very necessary.

"OEM is an important survival method for domestic small and medium-sized lighting companies. Now there will be long-term existence in the future." But Zibo also believes that if it cannot fundamentally reverse the ill-conditioned phenomenon in the current lighting foundry industry, the "quality gate" incident It will be endless, and the entire LED lighting industry will be destroyed by then.