The hottest transformation of manufacturing indust

The transformation of the manufacturing industry finally soared against the wind

on May 10, 2017, the 2017 International Conference on Intelligent Manufacturing jointly hosted by the Chinese Academy of engineering and the Ministry of industry and information technology was held in Beijing. At the meeting, Miao Wei, Minister of the Ministry of industry and information technology, made a keynote report entitled "further promote intelligent manufacturing and accelerate the cultivation of new drivers of global economic development, whose size is within a specific range or the range specified by the standard"

the transformation from traditional to intelligent manufacturing has been the focus of the manufacturing industry for some time. Under the dual pressure of domestic and foreign markets, many domestic manufacturing enterprises are exploring the path of transformation, hoping to find their own innovation breakthrough

transforming to service, combining Internet thinking, and using new generation technology are the ways we often see. Intelligent manufacturing is not a goal that can be achieved in a short time. As Miao Wei said: intelligent manufacturing is a new thing, and promoting intelligent manufacturing is a complex system engineering. All countries are constantly exploring, and the world is facing a series of common problems and challenges, such as standards, networks, information security, talents and so on

taking the household appliance industry as an example, with the rise of labor costs, the drama of "machine replacement" is frequently performed in labor-intensive household appliance factories. On this basis, "Lian" smart factories began to appear, connecting users, R & D, supply chain and logistics resources, which can speed up inventory turnover, reduce inventory and improve efficiency. Midea, Gree, Haier, etc. regard intelligent manufacturing as a new business opportunity, and thus realize the headwind

smart home on smart cloud

Midea Group is a large-scale comprehensive enterprise group focusing on home appliance manufacturing. It has a complete industrial chain of air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, microwave ovens and dishwashers. At the same time, it also has a complete group of small household appliances and kitchen household appliances. It has more than 60 overseas branches around the world, and its products are exported to more than 200 countries and regions. Midea Group ranks 32nd in the 2015 Fortune 500 list, ranking first in the home appliance industry. With the rapid development of mobile Internet technology and the improvement of user demand, Midea Group released the m-smart strategy in 2014, aiming to realize the intellectualization of Midea's full range of products. In this strategy, Midea smart cloud (the IOT platform of Midea 10 when the second and third groups of experiments need to be done) plays a crucial role. It connects all household appliances through the cloud platform, integrates all kinds of resources, and provides customers with intelligent home services. In addition to providing support for Midea's own device connectivity and intelligence, Midea smart cloud is also an open platform that allows other device manufacturers to access, reduces the cost of their smart products in the cloud, and finally achieves the goal of improving the overall value of the home appliance industry

the goal of Midea m-smart smart home strategy is to realize the connection and automatic control of all kinds of Midea products, and the interactive application of ecological groups such as communities, stores, entertainment, medical treatment, meteorology, etc. The whole system is composed of Midea smart cloud, AP, home appliances and intelligent products, of which the core part is "Midea smart cloud". It is the hub of the whole system. Through cloud computing technology, it provides smart home cloud services for Midea's intelligent household appliances, including equipment interconnection, gradual mutual understanding, device management, user management, intelligent repair, firmware upgrade, big data analysis, etc. at the same time, it also provides efficient, stable Intelligent cloud services and cloud applications

because Midea products have users all over the world, Midea smart cloud is also composed of two parts for domestic and foreign users. Among them, Midea smart cloud for overseas users needs to provide timely, stable and reliable services for users in North America, Europe, the Middle East and other regions. In this case, the biggest challenge for Midea is how to establish a safe, stable, reliable, convenient operation and maintenance, and global smart cloud at a low cost. After a comprehensive evaluation of the performance, service level, automatic operation and maintenance ability, use cost, service scope and other aspects of many cloud platforms, Midea finally chose AWS cloud platform as the IT infrastructure of the overseas part of Midea smart cloud

"the primary reason why we choose AWS is its global coverage." Said Li Qiang, general manager of Midea Smart Home Technology Co., Ltd. Midea smart home appliances has a large number of users in the United States, Brazil, Europe, the Middle East and other regions. The globalization of AWS cloud services enables Midea to quickly build an overseas smart home platform and provide comprehensive services for these users without investing a lot of money to buy machinery and equipment, rent computer rooms and networks

in addition, Midea smart cloud connects users' smart home appliances, and relevant data are stored on Midea smart cloud. According to EU regulations, European countries have strict requirements on data compliance. AWS not only provides a wealth of security management functions, but also has many best practices for system security issues, which can help Midea deploy its own applications overseas, so as to meet the EU's data protection can also adopt the clamping method); Requirements for protection. AWS has passed the corresponding data protection requirements all over the world, so when Midea smart cloud needs to complete cross regional data migration, it can be easily realized by using the corresponding services of AWS

Midea smart cloud connects users' smart appliances. As the number of users increases, Midea smart cloud is bound to carry more loads. AWS cloud platform provides elastic services with superior performance and supports rapid application expansion. It can achieve seamless growth during peak demand to maintain the stable operation of the system, and automatically reduce capacity in the period of flat demand to minimize costs

seek business benefits from intelligence

Haier, which is building an Internet factory, has set its goal on improving efficiency. Chen Lucheng, vice president of Haier home appliance industry group and general manager of supply chain, said that Haier's eight Internet factories make full use of user big data and manufacturing big data. Users participate in creative interaction and product customization, and upstream supply chain resources and downstream logistics distribution resources are also interconnected with factories to achieve rapid response to user needs

in Haier's thinking, the focus of intelligent manufacturing is not only to reduce labor costs, but also to improve product quality and business efficiency. "We combine the needs of users with the production data," Chen Lucheng said. For example, 12% of the air conditioning user data reflect how to solve the noise in the use of air conditioners. "According to the needs of users, we have applied the technology of streaming data for the first time, separated the noise data found in the production process, and completely solved the noise problem by means of intelligent detection."

take Jiaozhou air conditioning interconnection factory as an example. In terms of high precision, 100% of users participate in the design of new product development, and customization accounts for more than 25%; In terms of efficiency, the order delivery cycle is shortened by more than 50%, and the efficiency is improved by 100%. Midea's thinking on smart factories is similar to Haier's. Wu Shoubao, deputy general manager of Midea's air conditioning division, said that Midea's factory intelligence has five characteristics - intelligent equipment, transparent production, intelligent logistics, systematic management, and digitalized decision-making. For example, the Guangzhou Nansha intelligent factory of Midea air conditioning Division has a data room, which connects production equipment through IOT technology, and understands the situation of each data point in real time through intelligence

the "t+3" mode of production according to customer orders is being implemented in major factories under Midea. Wu Shoubao said that due to the interconnection of information on the industrial chain, after the customer places an order, the upstream supplier immediately prepares materials, the factory prepares for production, and the products are delivered immediately after they are offline. This shortens Midea's order lead time by 50%

changes in the factory

"black light factory", "six axis robot"... Gree Electric is conducting in-depth research closely around the two major fields of robots and precision machine tools to complete the transformation and upgrading of Gree's own manufacturing system. In robot products, have "In fact, the right place for garbage is the three core components of resources: motor, servo system, reducer and control system. Gree is carrying out self-research. Among the three core components, reducer is the most difficult field, and the two main types of reducer products are basically monopolized by two Japanese enterprises. In the field of precision machine tools, Gree is also developing CNC machine tools, molds, and laying out non-standard system integration business. In 2016, Gree passed the self The intelligent equipment created by the master has realized production automation, and the overall production efficiency has increased by 10.5%

nevertheless, a survey data from the Industrial Research Institute of high industry shows that the automation rate of the household appliance industry is still low, only about 20%, and most of the applications of robots still remain in the fields of simple loading and unloading, handling and stacking, packaging and assembly. Therefore, whether Midea, Haier or Gree, automation leaves a lot of room for the Chinese home appliance industry to struggle

in addition, Gree also uses big data, IOT and other technologies to invest in all links of production and operation, such as logistics analysis, quality control, production line monitoring, etc

Cai Ying, deputy director of the Information Resources Development Department of the National Information Center, said that through big data to participate in the research and development and manufacturing of products, we have created an ecosystem of linking resources of all parties and creating a win-win situation. The mass customization mode of intelligent interconnected factory has realized the real "user made" and "customer made", and also provided a new idea for the innovation of intelligent manufacturing mode in China's household appliance industry, indicating the new prospect of intelligent application from cost driven to user driven

in the field of intelligent manufacturing, production, sales, service, management... For many enterprises who yearn for intelligent factories, intellectualization seems to run through every link of the intelligent manufacturing industry chain. But which link of intelligence can represent the intelligence of manufacturing industry? Turn to service? Is it "machine replacement"? Or is it the integration of big data, cloud computing and IOT? Enterprises with different ideas may give different answers and even have disputes. In addition to disputes, there are many problems related to technology and management in the process of intelligent manufacturing