With intelligent manufacturing as the main direction, the industrial model and enterprise form of China’s manufacturing industry are undergoing fundamental changes.
As a programmatic document for the transformation and upgrading of China’s manufacturing industry, recently, a “14th five year plan for intelligent manufacturing development” (hereinafter referred to as the “plan”) jointly issued by the Ministry of industry and information technology and other eight departments put forward a series of specific goals, including “building more than 500 intelligent manufacturing demonstration plants leading the development of the industry” by 2025.
Therefore, Wang Baoyou, chief engineer of China Industrial Internet Research Institute, said in an interview with China first finance and economics that from the perspective of objectives, the plan has made clear guidance on the promotion and application, supply capacity and basic support of intelligent manufacturing. On the one hand, it is problem-oriented and should solve the existing problems of Intelligent Manufacturing in China, At the same time, it is also a plan made according to the current development situation, which has positive guiding significance for solving practical problems, promoting financing development and building industrial ecology.
How to implement the above specific objectives step by step? What principles should manufacturing industries and enterprises practice according to? Wang Baoyou said that at this stage, the intelligence level of Chinese manufacturing enterprises is uneven, and the technological development and regional development are also uneven. Some excellent enterprises have taken the lead in promoting intelligent manufacturing, but many enterprises are still in the stage of developing automation and informatization. For some small and medium-sized enterprises, the current standards can meet their own development needs and have good benefits. It is unrealistic for them to spend more cost on more advanced intelligent construction.
“Therefore, in order to speed up the intelligent transformation, we need to further promote it at different levels and gradients, and gradually migrate the digital and intelligent capabilities of leading enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises. On the premise that leading enterprises realize intelligence themselves, we should strive to promote the cooperation between upstream and downstream enterprises and provide more centralized solutions and pilot demonstrations such as scene and production line.”
how to build an intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory
What is “intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory”? Wang Baoyou explained that the intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory is an important carrier to realize intelligent manufacturing. It mainly realizes the intellectualization of the production process by building intelligent production systems and networked distributed production facilities. Its essence is to realize the mutual coordination and cooperation between people and machines.
“The intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory is composed of many intelligent manufacturing equipment, control and information systems.” Wang Baoyou said that several core elements of building such factories include: first, equipment networking and management. Through the network infrastructure with low delay and large bandwidth, we can realize the integrated workshop networking environment, solve the networking problems between different equipment, and carry out efficient transmission and management.
Second, data acquisition and analysis, automatic data acquisition through sensors and CNC system, display the real-time production status, and realize the cooperation between processes and flexible automatic production.
Third, the management of production quality realizes automatic detection, recording, analysis and continuous improvement through intelligent equipment, including intelligent production equipment and intelligent monitoring equipment.
Fourth, intelligent manufacturing uses manufacturing execution system (MES) and advanced planning and scheduling system (APS) to improve the efficiency of the whole cycle and process.
In addition, we can also use digital twin technology, CPS (Information Physics system) and other technologies to realize the integration of virtual and real.
From the practice of manufacturing enterprises, in the process of intelligent manufacturing factory construction, business pain points and product demand are the focus of consideration. To this end, Yang Hong, vice president of Shanghai Electric Group Company Limited(601727) group, told the reporter: “for the ‘Haili refrigerator compressor’ under our group, the product has been standardized at the manufacturing end, and the digital energy is to further reduce the cost; another example is our wind power sector, due to general wind power (factory) The city is located in a vast and sparsely populated site, and the cost of regular operation and maintenance is very high. Therefore, in the process of integrating into digitization, this sector has played a role in remote monitoring. Sitting at the headquarters of Caobao road in Shanghai, we can also analyze the operation status of local wind power (factory), including diagnosing its faults and putting forward corresponding maintenance plans. “
What weaknesses do enterprises need to overcome in the construction of intelligent manufacturing plants? Zheng maokuan, director of the digital economy research center of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, told reporters that at present, the intelligent manufacturing monomer factories (composed of intelligent equipment, control and management) of some large enterprises are doing very well, among which automation equipment is more common; The weak link of enterprises is the interconnection of data. “Outside the factory, data interconnection includes: quality data tracking and feedback after product delivery to the market; in the factory, data interconnection includes: whether the production data across workshops and production lines can be opened; in addition, whether the production lines built in different years and time can be transferred when needed, so it is necessary to do intelligent updating and transformation for traditional production lines. ”
how can suppliers and platforms enable
According to the main objectives of the plan, by 2025, we will cultivate more than 150 intelligent manufacturing system solution suppliers with high professional level and strong service ability; Build more than 120 industrial Internet platforms with industrial and regional influence.
How to understand the above concepts? Wang Baoyou said that the industrial Internet platform is a downward connection of massive industrial equipment and upward connection of optimized applications for various industrial scenes, playing a key role in the aggregation and allocation of industrial resources. Therefore, the industrial Internet platform must have the ability to integrate various resources, including integrated control system, communication protocol, production equipment, execution system, management tools, professional software, etc; At the same time, the platform also needs to have strong basic technical capability, excellent application service capability, sustainable input-output capability, etc.
Wang Baoyou further told reporters that whether it is suppliers or platforms, they not only simply apply networks and data in industry, but also need to be deeply integrated with the real economy, reshape the enterprise form, industrial chain and industrial chain, solve the actual production problems for enterprises, reduce costs, increase efficiency and upgrade products.
How can suppliers and platforms give full play to their own advantages? Wang Baoyou said that suppliers and platforms need accurate positioning. On the one hand, we should provide high-quality and differentiated services; On the other hand, it is necessary to match the industrial application scenarios of different objects.
Wang Baoyou suggested that a cross industry and cross field comprehensive platform can realize technological innovation and industrial upgrading by pooling industrial resources; Characteristic platforms in specific industries and regions can serve key industries such as equipment, consumer goods, energy, electronic information and regions with urgent needs for industrial transformation; A professional platform for single point technology breakthrough and integration needs to promote the integration and innovation of cutting-edge technologies and industrial mechanism models in the fields of digital twins, industrial big data analysis, edge computing and remote monitoring, so as to solve the problems of manufacturing industries and enterprises in design, manufacturing and management.
There are different strategies for different enterprises. Wang Baoyou said that for head enterprises, suppliers and platforms can open up the internal data channels of enterprises, carry out collaborative design, shared manufacturing, supply chain coordination and unified resource scheduling, accelerate enterprise innovation and build new profit growth points. For small and medium-sized enterprises, it can provide lightweight services of “low cost, fast deployment, easy operation and maintenance and strong security”, enable small and medium-sized enterprises to quickly form their own digital ability and effectively reduce the threshold of digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Therefore, Zheng maokuan also said in combination with practice that in fact, the industrial Internet platform includes providing system solutions for enterprises. However, from the practical operation level of enterprises in the past, due to the low reuse rate of enterprise intelligent manufacturing solutions, the capital turnover rate for suppliers will also be low (it takes more than 6 months from design to delivery), The implementation cost of industrial Internet in this field is very high.
Zheng maokuan told first finance that small and medium-sized enterprises can use some open “low code platforms” to purchase the application modules they need for intelligent manufacturing transformation and upgrading. These modules have strong drag and drop functions and cover production planning, quality analysis, warehouse management, etc. In this way, small and medium-sized enterprises have low cost, short module development cycle and relatively simple operation, which is a trend at present.
How will suppliers and platforms innovate? Wang Baoyou believes that suppliers and platforms should not only accept policy support and investment, but also explore new business models to achieve sustainable operation. Platforms, system integrators and industrial software service providers jointly provide solutions for enabling enterprises and share them; It can also release the value potential of data assets, such as service subscription fees, data transactions, model transactions, etc.
realize the “talent integration” between it and ot
In the process of investigating a number of manufacturing enterprises, the reporter also learned that to successfully carry out digital and intelligent transformation, the integration and connection of technical talents and business talents is also a major challenge.
Dai Zheng, deputy director and chief engineer of Shanghai Aerospace Precision Machinery Research Institute, told China first finance and economics that in the construction process of his “aerospace discrete collaborative manufacturing industrial Internet platform”, only the framework demonstration link, the Institute has established a professional team covering the core personnel of informatization, business departments and consulting companies, with more than 70 people and nearly 20 units conducting intensive research and verification, After nearly 30 architecture demonstration discussions and technical exchanges, the system solution can be finalized.
Combined with the practice of manufacturing enterprises, Wang Baoyou said that the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industry requires not only ot (operation technology) and it (Information Technology) compound talents, but also multi-dimensional and multi-level talents such as enterprise management talents, industry leaders, professional and technical talents and industrial workers. When carrying out industry application, it is also necessary to master the relevant processes of specific industries Business process, engineering experience and other industry characteristics.
At this stage, the supply of industrial Internet compound talents is very scarce, and the training is facing many difficulties. The reasons are: first, the degree of post standardization is low, resulting in the low matching between talent supply and demand. Second, the industrial Internet talent training system has not been formed. Some colleges and universities actively explore talent training in this field, but the teaching process is facing great difficulties due to the lack of courses, teaching materials, teachers and special training environment. Third, the matching degree of industrial Internet related majors, undergraduate and graduate majors and occupations needs to be further improved. In terms of the matching rate between industrial Internet related majors and occupational categories, the data show that the matching rate of specialized education, undergraduate education and graduate education is 33.3%, 39.4% and 34.1% respectively, which needs to be further improved.
To this end, Wang Baoyou said that on the one hand, it is necessary to strengthen the integration of industry and education, gather research institutes, enterprises, social organizations, industry education integration solution suppliers and other co construction of talent training ecology; On the other hand, we should give full play to the role of vocational education, strengthen the training of high-quality and technical skills applied talents, innovate the school enterprise cooperation mode of vocational education, and meet the structural demand for talents in the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry. In addition, industrial Internet related professionals can continuously improve their career matching through enterprise on-the-job training, continuing education and learning.
