Advantech: The Right Path to Factory Intelligence

Founded in 1983, Advantech is a provider of automation product solutions for nearly 40 years. When the concept of intelligent manufacturing has not yet been proposed, its development ideas have begun to work in this direction. As early as 2010, Advantech proposed to "deeply cultivate the Internet of Things and be the promoter of the smart earth"; since 2015, Advantech has been fully promoting the intelligent transformation of its own factories, and has accelerated the promotion of the edge-to-edge technology proposed by Advantech in recent years. Intelligent and WISE-PaaS industrial IoT cloud platform as the core IoT software and hardware solutions, assisting small and medium manufacturers to accelerate the transformation of intelligent manufacturing.

In the view of He Chunsheng, Executive Director of Advantech, the competition in the global manufacturing industry is becoming more and more fierce. It is accelerating its integration into this profound transformation of "smart factories". But for manufacturing enterprises, the real problem lies in how to reasonably realize transformation and upgrading under the premise of a clear general direction.

Intelligent manufacturing "Four Steps"

He Chunsheng said that although intelligent manufacturing sounds very high-end, but how companies should start, in fact, need to follow certain rules. Taking the development of its own factories as an example, it specifically explains the transformation ideas and upgrade paths of intelligent manufacturing.

The first is rationalization and labor saving. The so-called rationalization refers to the rationalization and improvement of the factory assembly line, such as the rational use of production space to make the space more three-dimensional and more flexible in manufacturing, and more products can be produced in a unit space. He Chunsheng told the CEConlines: "In the past, due to the abundance of labor in China, when designing a production line, one person usually looked at a process, and it was common to see that the employees in the on-site assembly line were waiting for the end of the previous process. The assembly line was re-reasonable. Design, so that one person is responsible for two or three processes at the same time, so that people do not have to wait for the process, so that the labor cost can be greatly reduced."

On the basis of rationalization, it is possible to start to implement labor-saving, that is, to emphasize The automation of equipment continues to realize the automation of production and manufacturing. Use automation equipment such as robots and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to replace repetitive, physically demanding jobs, reduce the dependence on manpower and speed up automatic production in factories.

He Chunsheng pointed out that the improvement of rationalization and labor saving can increase the efficiency by 10%-15%. In 2015, Advantech began to gradually introduce automation equipment to promote the intelligent upgrade of its own factories. At that time, the factory had about 2,200 employees. In 2018, after three years of renovation and upgrading, the number of employees in the factory decreased by 2.2%, but the overall output doubled.

The second is digitization, that is, to promote equipment networking and data collection. Collect all kinds of data related to production, such as equipment status, production process, manufacturing site, etc. in real time through sensors and Internet of Things technology, replace the traditional form of manual recording data, control the production process in real time, optimize the production site based on data, and achieve preliminary Production automation based on data self-decision and self-execution.

The production data is transparent and visible, which can help staff find many problems that were difficult to find by manual inspection in the past, help enterprises to more accurately and quickly find out the bottleneck problems on the production site, and seize the entry point for further optimization , the improvement effect far exceeds the previous changes based on empirical judgment. For example, according to CEConlines, it usually takes 5 days for an Advantech factory to start producing materials and deliver them in the early days. When there are many orders, the company's engineers and managers have to go to the front line to support. Factory managers want to shorten the delivery time and improve production efficiency through adjustments. However, when various production data cannot be controlled, it is always impossible to find the key link that really affects efficiency, and it is difficult to adjust based on the experience of the staff to meet expectations. After completing the digitization of the production site, Advantech quickly discovered that the problem was in the testing phase. It turned out that after the assembly, the stay in the testing phase often reached ten or twenty hours, and some even took a day. Advantech optimized the testing process and introduced a test trolley, which can test up to 9 machines at the same time by one person. Compared with the earlier "one person, one test", the test efficiency has been improved by 35%.

The third is the coordination of data, that is, the connection and transmission of various data, including the interconnection of different production links, the interconnection of different equipment, and the interconnection between factories and the outside world. For example, the machine and production information can be integrated and applied through the MES manufacturing production execution system to display real-time factory production status, real-time information analysis and visual presentation, realize manufacturing collaboration, and continuously optimize the production process; or for material supply, establish with partners. Interconnection, realize supply collaboration, and improve the production efficiency of enterprises.

The fourth is the calculation and processing of data, that is, intelligent analysis based on big data. Drive the independent decision-making and intelligent execution of the entire production process through the analysis results, continuously improve products and increase the intelligence of production, and gradually tend to the best independent and intelligent production state, avoid breakpoints in the manufacturing industry, improve efficiency, and improve quality , reduce labor, improve employee satisfaction, and improve customer satisfaction. Continue to realize the customized production of products and promote the "service" of manufacturing.

These "four steps" are actually four stages for manufacturing enterprises to become intelligent: one is preliminary automation. Rationalization focuses on the processes on the production site. The production line is ready. The second is the visualization stage, which focuses on the data collection and preliminary application of various equipment on the production site. The third is the preliminary independent analysis stage, the object begins to expand to the entire factory and even external connections, to achieve a certain degree of internal and external collaborative production. The fourth is the highly intelligent stage, the object vision has risen to the whole of the multi-value chain, and the continuous innovation of the entire production management system has been realized.

He Chunsheng believes that a manufacturing enterprise in transition must clarify which level of the enterprise itself is, and have a comprehensive understanding of itself, and then can further clarify its goals and find out what is consistent with its actual situation. Transformation methods and means.

Take root in oneself, step by step

For manufacturing enterprises, intelligent manufacturing is actually a long-distance race that must be participated. Even if the task direction of each stage is relatively clear, there are still a lot of confusions in the specific transformation of enterprises. For example, most enterprises will fall into certain misunderstandings, that is, they simply think that they have added intelligent equipment, established intelligent production lines, When the intelligent system is launched, the development bottleneck encountered at present can be easily solved.

He Chunsheng said that if manufacturing companies want to make a smooth transformation, they must Identify the problems your business is facing. The most important thing is that the person in charge of the enterprise must clearly express his "intention", and regard the transformation of the company and the upgrading of the factory as a "system engineering". On the basis of firm determination, start from the "internalization" of the enterprise, do a good job of manpower inventory, set targets and missions, and then make bold changes and push patiently.

The so-called "system engineering" has two main points: First, the planning should be "top-to-bottom", with the person in charge of the enterprise taking the lead, leading the comprehensive and long-term planning, and controlling the general direction of transformation. The second is to implement “from the bottom to the top”. The person in charge of the enterprise takes the lead, takes stock of the professional talents related to the enterprise, and forms them into task groups. These task groups together form the transformation team within the enterprise; and then decompose the entire plan into a For each small project, determine the things to be done and the improvement links in each stage, and the task team will promote the implementation step by step. Each time a decomposition project is completed, it will enter the next stage.

"Internalization" mainly means that there is no perfect stylized solution, which can be directly applied by enterprises to achieve transformation. Different enterprises will have different implementations in their respective implementations. way of walking. In He Chunsheng's view, enterprises should be rooted in themselves, rather than relying too much on external resources such as consulting, software and hardware solutions, and external forces only assist enterprises to improve the speed of improvement. "Because companies know their own products, constraints and problems best, and only companies know their real bottlenecks best," explained He Chunsheng.

In terms of factory intelligence, He Chunsheng said that the improvement of manufacturing enterprises must be rooted in their own production sites. For example, if the factory conditions do not allow it, just blindly knowing that the automation equipment is directly connected will not necessarily improve the efficiency, and may even cause new problems and hinder the development of the enterprise.

He took one of Advantech's own factories as an example. At that time, the factory had a need to upgrade equipment, and it was necessary to introduce new equipment to improve the automation level of the factory. However, for this factory of Advantech, there are many kinds of products, and the output of each product is relatively stable. Therefore, automation that completely replaces manual labor is not feasible, otherwise it will greatly reduce the flexible production capacity that is crucial to the factory.

He Chunsheng told the CEConlines that Advantech did not blindly import all kinds of automation equipment for this factory, but emphasized human-machine collaboration instead of pursuing full automation of the entire production site. He further explained that human-machine collaboration can effectively combine the flexibility of people with the efficiency of equipment, improve factory production efficiency without losing flexibility, and help control costs. Advantech has remodeled the production method for this factory, and formed a "human-machine collaboration" work unit for the production links that meet the requirements. Automated equipment solves most of the standardized work, while humans complete the finer and more challenging parts, continuing to achieve efficient and flexible production.

Therefore, manufacturing enterprises must proceed from their own status quo, from their own production sites, and gradually implement transformations that conform to their actual conditions, in order to effectively promote enterprise transformation and gradually move towards intelligent manufacturing.