How should Japanese companies purchase molds in their factories in China?

How should Japanese companies' overseas production bases (mainly in Asia) purchase molds? This is an old and new topic. Especially in China, where the market size is gradually expanding, this problem is even more troublesome. For various reasons, mold users who own factories in China have to increase the local procurement rate, so I hope mold manufacturers can also enter the local area. However, most of the mold manufacturers are small enterprises, and the funds and personnel are unable to meet the demand, and the mold has an aspect related to the equipment industry. Even if the labor cost in China is lower than that in Japan, the benefits of the mold manufacturers cannot catch up with the mold users (product manufacturers and component manufacturer). There are many other reasons. For mold manufacturers, the conditions are more unfavorable than product manufacturers and component manufacturers. As a result, mold users began to purchase molds from local Chinese-funded mold manufacturers, and their evaluations of local manufacturers were different. An operator I recently interviewed has basically given up purchasing from local Chinese manufacturers. There are also business operators who think that the Chinese manufacturer is very worth looking forward to (the manufacturer plans to expand its production base in China). The diametrically opposite evaluation stems from the difference in quality requirements of mold users. Hashimoto Hisagi, a professor at the Graduate School of Policy Studies, roughly estimated that the products of Chinese mold manufacturers are '1/3 the cost and 1/2 the quality' compared with Japanese mold manufacturers. That is to say, according to the different quality requirements, some users will be satisfied with '1/3 the cost, 1/2 the qualityWhether it can meet the '1/2 quality' is the key, but as long as there is technology, this should not pose a problem, the important thing is to use it differently. Therefore, Hashimoto believes that for those unmet needs, even from the Chinese market, they will flow to Japan (to buy Japanese-made molds), but Japanese mold manufacturers are not so optimistic. This is because the mold users entering China have a tendency to make in-house molds. In the recent trend of mold users making molds in-house, Nakari Rong, executive director of the Japan Mold Industry Association, 'felt an unprecedented degree of seriousness'. The reason why mold users make their own molds is very simple: Japanese mold manufacturers do not go to China, and local mold manufacturers in China cannot fully rely on them, so they can only make them themselves. Hearing this, the author thinks of Toyota's measures that were announced at the 'Mold Technician Conference 2007' not long ago. Apart from the realization period, the author felt Toyota's strong will to its own manufacturing. Toyota's goal is to establish a system that can achieve global synchronization and the same and homogenous production of global strategic vehicles, so such measures are indispensable, and Honda's measures were also announced at the meeting, and the acquisition of IGARIMOLD (now Canon). The same ambition can be seen in Canon's approach to mold). However, in-house mold making is not a strategy that every company can adopt. This is because, through layoffs in the 1990s, many companies lost the people, equipment and technology used to make molds in-mold. For manufacturing enterprises, although the in-house mold is good, it is very difficult to stick to it. Moreover, the busy and idle time of the mold fluctuates greatly, which cannot directly bring profits. Only companies that are prepared for this can adopt the strategy of making in-house molds, and there is no guarantee of success. It seems that the procurement of molds from overseas bases will remain an important topic in the future.