Schneider Electric, an industrial giant in his 180's, opened up an innovative circle of friends to start-ups

The huge venue was full. In the front row, there were relevant principals from Schneider Electric, Amazon cloud technology, Thunder Software Technology Co.Ltd(300496) , AsiaInfo security and the Global Industry Research Institute of Tsinghua University. Representatives of the international cooperation center of the Ministry of industry and information technology also participated through video connection. They were the examiners of the day. Then, 10 innovative technology enterprises came on the stage one after another to show the digital solutions in manufacturing scenarios such as predictive maintenance of key equipment, production scheduling, unmanned control system and factory digital carbon management.

After more than half a year of training, scene visits and joint scheme development of the win-win plan camp, this defense is equivalent to the "graduation ceremony" of start-ups on the incubation platform. It is the starting point for them to jointly go to the green intelligent manufacturing market with industrial giants, and it is also the epitome of the financing and innovation of large, medium and small enterprises in China.

Once upon a time, the closed innovation of large enterprises was popular: this concept believes that successful innovation requires strong control of the whole process of the enterprise. The enterprise must develop technology, produce and sell products, and provide after-sales service and financial support. This idea uses closed capital supply and limited internal R & D force to ensure the confidentiality and monopoly of technology. Once famous enterprise laboratories such as GE laboratory, Bell laboratory and DuPont laboratory are typical. However, with the acceleration of the overall innovation of the market, the downstream application market is becoming more and more refined and personalized, and the open innovation of large enterprises has become a trend.

"No company has all the innovative technologies and solutions, including us." Pang Xingjian, senior vice president of Schneider Electric and head of industrial automation business in China, told surging news and other media at the Shanghai finals of the green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan held recently. With a history of more than 180 years, the company is one of the largest comprehensive industrial groups in the world. With the in-depth development of industrial digital transformation and further differentiation of application scenarios, the open innovation platform has become an important supplement for giants to maintain their "elephant dancing" ability and strengthen their market position.

Pang Xingjian said that when start-ups join the innovation camp of large enterprises, their status is equal, "it does not mean that small enterprises will lose their advantages and sovereignty. This is a win-win situation, which not only promotes the rapid growth of start-ups, but also promotes the integrity of Schneider Electric in the overall solution."

The segmentation scenes of the industrial field are complex and fragmented. The strength of the old industrial group lies in the global R & D strength, the business portfolio covering a wide end market and throughout the whole life cycle accumulated through decades of M & A, spin off and reorganization, as well as the advantages of market, channel and brand. Start-ups have deeper insight, rapid iteration and more flexible overall technology in some segments that have been focused for a long time, but they lack experience in market development and strategy formulation. Only through vertical and horizontal cooperation and embedded cooperation between large and small enterprises can we get through the "last kilometer" of digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises.

To this end, Schneider Electric has held the "green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan" since 2020. It releases challenging application scenarios for small and medium-sized enterprises every year, which fit the hot spots of the market, and selects the registered enterprises at all levels before entering the acceleration camp. In March 2021, the second green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan was launched. Each co creation team of the win-win plan is composed of a co creation team composed of internal employees of Schneider Electric, expert mentors in the industry and technology fields, start-ups of two co creation partners and customer related personnel participating in joint innovation.

Pang Xingjian said that to build such a platform for entrepreneurship incubation and technological innovation, it is not enough to rely on the strength of Schneider Electric alone. Therefore, a more comprehensive lineup of "mentors" was expanded on the basis of the first session, such as cloud service provider Amazon cloud technology, Thunder Software Technology Co.Ltd(300496) focusing on embedded artificial intelligence algorithms, and network security software provider AsiaInfo security, Academic resources: Global Industry Research Institute of Tsinghua University, etc. the co sponsors of this green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan also include the international economic and technological cooperation center of the Ministry of industry and information technology.

"Mining a number of small and medium-sized enterprises that are 'specialized, special and new\' is very important for the high-quality development of China's manufacturing industry, and it is also one of the objectives of the green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan." Li Yikai, deputy director of the international cooperation center of the Ministry of industry and information technology, said in his speech on the same day that "no matter how strong your own ability is, you can\'t beat a few nails". This time, we have jointly carried out the green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan with Schneider Electric and other partners. One of the objectives is to carry out the practice of synergy, symbiosis, cooperation and sharing, mutual benefit and win-win between the industrial chain, supply chain and value chain, Consciously cultivate an innovation ecosystem based on industrial Internet.

In this green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan, Shanghai Huidu Intelligent System Co., Ltd., which finally won the title, developed a predictive maintenance system for key equipment in the cement industry. After the system was put into operation for a week, the abnormal state of the equipment was analyzed. The customer didn't believe it at first, because the problem was not found during manual patrol inspection, and thought it was a problem with Lianchuang solution. However, when the user cooperates with the field maintenance, it is found that the fault does exist, which also greatly enhances the customer's recognition of the digital system and the degree of active cooperation in the later stage.

In reality, the status of equipment maintenance in cement plant mostly belongs to the mode of "fault emergency repair, regular manual patrol inspection and regular preventive maintenance". Under repair and over repair exist at the same time. Through equipment predictive maintenance, the number of abnormal downtime caused by equipment abnormalities can be reduced and potential production risks can be resisted. Schneider Electric has been providing customers with solutions for cement intelligent factory, but the overall architecture of the intelligent factory lacks an important component, namely equipment predictive maintenance. The joint solution of cooperation with brightness intelligence complements this link.

Xu Yuehua, CEO of brightness intelligence, told surging news that the company is an enterprise focusing on the industrial Internet of things and aiot. The core team is from technical background, but "has been trapped in strong technical thinking in the process of entrepreneurship", "As a start-up, we have many disadvantages. The only advantage is that there are obvious weaknesses in some unique technologies, markets, resources, channels and industry experience in the subdivided industries. We have also served many European customers, but the orders are small, so we are also looking for partners to help us develop the market."

Xu Yuehua believes that in the green intelligent manufacturing win-win plan, Schneider Electric's industry experts and Lianchuang parties provide support in terms of technology, market, channel and brand, and the final product is run in together by Lianchuang team, "Schneider Electric's technical scale is countless times larger than ours, but it is a very equal partnership in the process of joint innovation. There is no distinction between you as a large enterprise, me as a small enterprise or Party A and Party B."

Schneider Electric and start-ups joining the Lianchuang ecosystem will jointly explore the market with flexible cooperation mode. Pang Xingjian introduced that it can not only provide customers with applications or products developed by Lianchuang partners, but also package the products of Lianchuang partners into Schneider Electric's solutions. "The future cooperation mode is both a technical partner and a business partner."

Digitization is inseparable from the "circle of friends", and the innovation of large enterprises needs the circle of friends. Pang Xingjian said that cross-border integration in many fields has become a reality, not just in the industrial field, "No enterprise can play in a circle for a long time. I can\'t come out and no one else can come in. This era has passed. In fact, CO creation is to introduce other partners to provide customers with more overall solutions and delivery when the systems or solutions provided by the original system can\'t meet the customer's update requirements at the moment."

(source: surging News)

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