Industrial 4.0 must go through these ten"

Don't you see, many companies have lost their way in an environment where concepts such as "industrial 4.0, intelligent manufacturing, and the Internet" are flying everywhere. They don't know how to start, blindly follow the trend, watch others invest in automation, follow them, watch others go to informatization, and follow them. It is very likely that they have been tossed to death by themselves before seeing the landing of intelligent manufacturing.

In fact, smart manufacturing and smart factories have their own implementation conditions and paths. There are no shortcuts. Different industries and different enterprises have different roads. Generally speaking, the following ten path directions are the only way for Chinese industry to move from manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing, but for different industries and different enterprises, due to different market demand patterns, different product processes, different management bases, and so on, the focus is different, but you can always find a few feasible ways to intelligent manufacturing.

/1. Standardization/

Standardization is the basis of automation and the premise of intelligent manufacturing.

Domestic enterprises lament the high degree of automation in the automobile industry. Why can cars be used for such complex products, but not for simple products such as household appliances? One of the important reasons is standardization.

The common strategies adopted by the automotive industry, such as common platforms and common parts, have greatly reduced product costs. By changing the original production of parts according to the whole vehicle to the method of producing the whole vehicle according to the parts, that is to say, the standardized parts are mass produced, and the cost is successfully reduced.

Domestic enterprises do not attach importance to or do not realize the importance of standardization. For example, there are dozens of hundreds of specifications for simple screws and packaging cartons, and the cost of inventory and parts is high. From the beginning of R & D design, there is no control at all. When a new product is developed or a new person is changed, new parts are added at will, and there is a lack of a standardized process and product database.

Standardization, of course, also includes standardized operating procedures and operating methods. With standardization, automation can be developed accordingly, such as automatic welding and automatic assembly. Assuming that parts are ever-changing and operating methods are not fixed, automation will be difficult to achieve, even if the implementation cost is high.

/2. Lean/

Lean production was first designed for the personalized needs of many varieties and small batches. Its two pillars are "just-in-time" and "intelligent automation".

So far, lean has evolved into a lean management concept and method involving marketing, research and development, supply chain, production, process and even entrepreneurship, which has led to the transformation of global industries, from manufacturing to service industries. The ideas, methods and tools of "creating value and eliminating waste" have promoted the optimal allocation of production resources and achieved rapid improvement in quality, efficiency and response speed.

According to our experience in coaching enterprises, as long as enterprises persist in doing so, most of them can get 50% or more room for improvement. Unfortunately, Lean has not been effectively implemented in most enterprises in China. Most of them only talk about it verbally, because they are eager for quick success and lack of experience and methods to import, they cannot persist and give up halfway. Walking into these enterprises, you will find waste everywhere, high inventory, repeated handling, high-intensity manual work, intermittent production mode, shoddy quality, long delivery cycle and so on. In the electronics industry, the average inventory turnaround time for Chinese companies is 51 days, compared with 8 days in the United States; in the textile and apparel industry, the average inventory turnaround time for Chinese companies is 120 days. In other words, even if the profit margin is the same, the return on investment will be low.

Smart manufacturing cannot be built on this inefficient production model. Lean is the first step that must be taken, and it is the path with the highest return on investment. Because lean requires little additional investment from the company, it can reap unimaginable returns by simply reallocating production resources on an existing basis.

The successful implementation of lean is not difficult, the key lies in the leadership's determination and the change of management's concept.

/3, automation/

Automation is the most talked about in intelligent manufacturing. Many local governments and enterprises vividly call it "machine substitution", and they have made continuous attempts, with successes and failures.

Through independent innovation, enterprises can integrate the original discrete processing methods of raw material processing, connect the original independent processes together through automated production lines, and implement lean continuous production, eliminating the loading, storage and handling of intermediate links, and production speed And production efficiency will be improved.

However, there are also found that the cost has not decreased but increased significantly after it was put into production. Although the number of operators has decreased, the number of equipment maintenance personnel has increased. Due to the economic downturn and the market decline, the lack of production capacity has led to a sharp increase in depreciation and energy consumption costs. It is difficult to recover the investment and face the pressure of loss.

Automation and information technology is the largest part of the investment in intelligent manufacturing. Enterprises must be careful before doing automation transformation. Why should they upgrade automation? What is the return on investment (reasonable return on investment period should be controlled below 5 years)? What is the reliability of automation equipment? What are the risks? Can they adapt to the upgrading of products? Be sure to think clearly, otherwise the cost will rise instead of falling. Many enterprises only found that the equipment was immature and had frequent failures after investing, or the equipment on the horse was not easy to use, which was not as flexible and convenient as manual operation. As a result, hundreds of thousands or millions of invested equipment were shelved willfully, and this ineffective investment would even bring down the enterprise.

With the advancement of technology and the increase of labor cost, automation is an irreversible trend. For different industries and different enterprises, some have mature automation programs, and some do not, enterprises need to combine their own situation to plan the direction of automation. Starting from the part with the greatest return on investment and the easiest to achieve, of course, we must also combine the standardization and modularization mentioned above, and meet the requirements of lean production, optimize the corresponding production process, and advance step by step, and do not rush and blindly follow suit.

/4. Modular/

Automobiles and computers are the first industries to achieve modularity. From modular design, modular procurement to modular production, modularity is also the key to whether intelligent manufacturing can achieve low cost to meet personalized consumption. If it is realized, truly personalized products will become possible, such as mobile phones. Everyone's mobile phone can be unique, and people can combine their favorite mobile phones like assembling building blocks.

Modularization reduces the complexity from design, procurement to production, standardized interfaces and connections increase versatility, reduce manufacturing costs and cycles, and automate production, logistics and information communication more easily. As before, the chargers of each mobile phone brand are different, and all the mobile phones are thrown away when changing, causing great waste. Now there is an improvement.

Modularization is relatively difficult to implement. It involves industry and enterprise standards and requires the participation of upstream and downstream enterprises. This is a long-term work, so it is particularly important to build a lean strategic partnership with each other.

/5, personalized/

In the past 30 years, the variety of commodities in the market has expanded rapidly by several 10. and hundreds of times. This is an era of personalized consumption. Everyone can have their own blog, microblog, wechat and so on to spread their own voice.

Personalization itself is not a new word. As early as more than 100 years ago, people made personalized products through manual workshops. The difficulty of personalization lies in the low cost and high quality of mass production.

Consumers place orders directly online or by phone, choose their favorite styles, and enterprises produce and deliver goods according to customized orders. It will effectively reduce inventory and operating costs by more than half.

The realization of high quality and low-cost personalization depends first and foremost on your level of lean production, which is "value comes from the pull of real customer demand" as advocated by lean ". Personalization implementation depends secondly on your standardized and modular design. The rapid development of information technology such as the Internet provides support for it, making it easy to achieve personalized.

At this stage, personalization or limited conditions of personalization, can not achieve complete personalization, whether it is cars, computers, mobile phones or clothing and other goods, personalization is selected within a certain range.

Each enterprise needs to decide its own personalized mode according to its own lean level, standardization/modularization level and informatization level. It is not that the more personalized the better, it is based on certain implementation conditions. Perhaps the future development of 3D printing and artificial intelligence can provide a possibility for complete personalization.

/6. Servitization/

At present, China has more than 0.6 billion Internet users and 0.7 billion intelligent terminals. The vigorous development of mobile Internet has accelerated the transformation from manufacturing to service. The "Industrial Internet" advocated by the United States connects people, data and machines to form an open and global industrial network. Its connotation has gone beyond the manufacturing process and the manufacturing industry itself, spanning the entire value chain of the product life cycle, covering aviation, energy, Transportation, medical and more industrial fields.

In addition, manufacturers can also monitor, analyze and improve the design and manufacture of equipment through the networked data of equipment to improve product reliability and efficiency.

Of course, different products in the industry are different, and the content that can be served is also very different. Under the Internet model, traditional enterprises need to constantly innovate business models to find a suitable service method to impress customers.

/7, ecological/

The competition of enterprises is gradually changing from the competition between individual enterprises to the competition between supply chains and even between ecosystems. Kevin. Kelly wrote in "Out of Control": "The tide of alliances between big companies, especially in the information and network industries, is another aspect of the growing co-evolution of the world economy. Instead of eating or competing with rivals, it is better to form alliances-symbiosis... The future of control is: partnership, collaborative control, man-machine hybrid control, and human beings share control with our creations."

/8. Globalization/

In today's interconnected world, when your company achieves a certain scale, you need to consider globalization to allocate resources to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Global resources include market resources, design resources, procurement resources and production resources.

China's "One Belt, One Road" strategy is to find global market resources and export our surplus production capacity, including high-speed rail technology. Design resources are to set up R & D technology centers abroad to develop products close to the local area or to make up for the lack of domestic design capabilities. It can also form a global 24-hour uninterrupted product development to shorten the R & D cycle. Companies such as Huawei, Haier, and Lenovo are all abroad. Established R & D institutions.

Procurement and production resources are looking for better quality and lower cost global material supply places. In addition to considering the unit price of procurement and manufacturing, it is also necessary to consider the increase of transportation cost, complexity of supply chain, visualization of supply chain, longer delivery cycle, higher inventory, environmental carbon emission, quality stability, local labor policy and exchange rate fluctuation.

/9, digital/

Digitalization is closely related to informatization. Like automation, this is the largest investment in intelligent manufacturing transformation. With the rapid development of information technology, everything can be digitized, from people, products to equipment, to achieve all things connected.

People can be identified through face recognition technology, which used to be static, but now you can be identified while walking.

Products can be digitized through PLM/ERP software, from product development and design, material procurement to production and delivery. Every product drawing, every material information and every production process are digitally connected.

Equipment can transmit operating data to MES, Internet and other networks through PLC, sensors, etc., so GE can optimize its operating parameters through data analysis sent back by aircraft engines to reduce fuel costs, and Google can realize unmanned driving of cars.

This means that in the era of "industrial 4.0", for the first time, it is possible to connect resources, information, goods and people through digitalization! This communication includes the exchange of information between people, people and products, people and machines, products and machines, machines and machines.

Imagine that in the future you will place a personalized product order through APP, the manufacturer will receive the order information through CRM/ERP, the order information will be transmitted to PLM system, the product simulation model will be designed, the product and material information will enter ERP and MES system, and the supplier will start producing materials. After the materials are produced, they will be sent to the factory through the Internet of Things and enter the automatic production line. The equipment will be processed according to the instructions of MES system, after the finished product is offline, it is delivered to you through the Internet of Things.

"Industrial 4.0" is the digitalization and networking of manufacturing. Through the combination of IT technology and manufacturing technology, intelligent factories are created to make production highly flexible and personalized, and improve production efficiency and resource utilization efficiency. The Germans declared that "the real arrival of industrial 4.0 may take about 20 years." For China, this time is estimated to be longer. Many of our companies are still in the 2.0 and 3.0 stages. I think it will take at least 30 years.

Whether it is digitalization or "industrial 4.0", this is a major trend. Although only people-to-people communication is currently realized, other communication still requires many conditions, such as the standardization of data transmission protocols and measurement standards, and strong Infrastructure, data transmission security, legal protection, talent reserve, etc., but the emergence of self-driving cars gives us hope.

The characteristics of each industry are different from the enterprise base, and the order of digitization is different. I think that for those process-oriented manufacturing industries such as food and beverage, papermaking, chemical industry, electric power, etc., they can take the lead, because most of their manufacturing processes have been connected, and the degree of automation is high, and some equipment data can be automatically collected. The difficulty of digitization is relatively small.

For discrete manufacturing industries such as machinery and equipment, textiles and clothing, electronic appliances, household goods, etc., because the manufacturing processes and parts are scattered, and the number is large, it is really difficult to achieve connection, even if the cost will be very large. The feasible approach for these industries is not to be in place in one step and to be realized step by step. First apply lean continuous production techniques to connect the main processes and materials. For example, the first connection between expressways and high-speed rail must be first-and second-tier cities, followed by third-and fourth-tier cities. You can set up digital access points between factories first, then between workshops, between key processes, between key materials, and finally between each process and each material.

Due to the immaturity of technology and the huge investment, each enterprise needs to weigh the timing of the import, as with automation, comprehensive consideration of return on investment, system reliability, information security risks, talent reserves and other issues.

/10, intelligent/

Intelligence contains two meanings, one is the intelligence of the product, and the other is the intelligence of the manufacturing process.

First of all, let's talk about the intelligence of the product. According to statistics from Credit Suisse's 2015 Global Wealth Report, the total wealth of Chinese households reached US $22.8 trillion in 2015, an increase of US $1.5 trillion from last year, surpassing Japan to rank second in the world, second only to the United States, and the Chinese middle class (With a wealth of US $100000) reached 0.109 billion people, surpassing the 92 million of the United States and ranking first in the world. These data show that China will usher in a big outbreak of consumption upgrading. Some time ago, the rush to Japan for toilet seats and rice cookers is a typical example. Intelligence provides a direction for the upgrading of these industrial products and consumer goods. Moreover, my country has become the world's largest Internet country, and the government continues to promote network speed and fee reduction, providing a network environment for hardware intelligence.

Everything is ready, only the "traditional product intelligence", from smart phones, smart TVs, wearable products, smart water cups to smart cars, smart robots, etc., companies need to continuously carry out technological innovation and invest in the intelligence of products. Such as Haier, Gree, Midea are investing in smart appliances.

Compared with the intelligence of consumer goods, the intelligence of industrial products is actually more urgent. All equipment needs to join the intelligent control module, automatic collection, analysis and control of processing data, equipped with standard data interface, can be connected with enterprise MES system or other information systems, these industrial big data through intelligent software system operation analysis will help improve operational efficiency, reduce failure, reduce energy consumption.

The intelligence of the manufacturing process is more complex. You need to complete the transformation of lean, standardization, modularization, automation and digitization mentioned above. The investment in automation and digitization will also be large.

Intelligent manufacturing is a complex system. Every enterprise in every industry should find out its own mode. You don't have to do it in one step. You can gradually improve the level of lean, standardization, modularization, automation and digitization. It is important to find out why you do this and the appropriate return on investment.

Made in China has gone through 30 years of rapid development and has become the world's largest manufacturing country, but we still can't come up with a truly world-class product. In the next 30 years, China's manufacturing needs to change from emphasizing speed and light quality to emphasizing quality and light speed. It needs to carry out continuous innovation in the above ten areas, and realize the transformation from business model, technology and management to China's intelligent manufacturing.