Delta: Green "Lights Up" Smart Manufacturing

In Suzhou on July 24-26, there was a heat wave. Nearby Shanghai, the temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius. 74 teams from home and abroad gathered at the Wujiang production base of Delta Group (hereinafter referred to as "Delta") to participate enthusiastically in the finals of the 4th "Delta Cup" College Automation Competition and compete for the title of "Intelligent Manufacturing Master". This scene has a different meaning for the manufacturing of "green + smart".

Looking at the development of the world's manufacturing industry, it is showing the general trend of the integration of green manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing. Green manufacturing is born in response to the top-level design of the United Nations and governments in response to global climate change. While exploring green business opportunities, it contributes to the control of human beings' own future destiny. Intelligent manufacturing faces the challenges of demographic changes and the opportunities of technological progress, and enhances the competitiveness of enterprises from the two directions of "efficiency" and "efficiency".

As a world-class manufacturer of power management and thermal management solutions, as well as a global leader in the computer, telecommunications, consumer electronics and network communications industries, Delta is firmly at the forefront of this trend .

"Intelligent manufacturing needs to return to 'efficiency' and 'efficiency', which is inseparable from environmental protection and energy conservation." Hai Yingjun, chairman of Delta, told CEConline.

Green Mission

"Environmental protection, energy saving, love the earth" - this is Delta's business mission established many years ago. From a global perspective, the number of companies publishing "sustainability reports" or "corporate social responsibility reports" on a regular or irregular basis is gradually increasing, but few companies take environmental protection and energy conservation as their business mission. Why does Delta do this?

"This starts with Mr. Zheng's founding of Delta in 1971." Mr. Zheng mentioned by Hai Yingjun is Zheng Chonghua, who is known as the "king of electronic products" in the industry, and is currently an honorary director of Delta Group. long. Not long after Delta was founded, the world's first energy crisis broke out, which made Zheng Chonghua deeply aware that energy is a major problem in the future world, and it is also a huge business opportunity for enterprises.

After research, he found that the power conversion efficiency of the power supplies on the market at that time was low, only 50-60%, which meant that half of the power was wasted. So he decided to develop the power supply as the company's main product. Today, the conversion efficiency of the power supplies produced by Delta exceeds 90%, and some even reach 98.8%; and has formed three major businesses, including power supply and components, automation, and infrastructure, which are linked by the core technology of power electronics. .

During this process, Zheng Chonghua led Delta's management team to discuss and establish the catchy business mission of "environmental protection, energy saving and love for the earth". "A management scholar in the United States summarized and studied the business missions of many companies and found that many of them are similar. Delta is one of the few companies that does what it says, and this business mission is also well integrated with Delta's business." Hai said handsome.

At the end of 2015, the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) was held in Paris. Honorary Chairman Zheng Chonghua, Chairman Hai Yingjun, CEO Zheng Ping, Brand Director and Executive Director of Delta Electronic Culture and Education Foundation Guo Shanshan and other Delta Group executives participated in various forums of the conference and shared Delta's progress in energy conservation and environmental protection. with experience.

As one of the important measures to fulfill the corporate mission, Delta launched the 2009-2014 "Five-Year Plan" in 2008 to formulate the power consumption intensity of each group's factories (that is, every 1 million the amount of electricity used by dollar products) is cut in half over these five years. At that time, every factory manager said that this goal was impossible to achieve, but the then chairman Zheng Chonghua was still very insistent and encouraged colleagues to try their best to achieve this goal.

To achieve this goal, Delta has implemented more than 600 large and small projects in total. From the simplest replacement of LED energy-saving lamps, to comprehensive detection and resolution of the problem of air leakage and energy consumption in the long air pressure pipelines of pneumatic production equipment. The progress of this goal is reviewed and promoted at the quarterly meetings of the Group's management. In the end, this daunting goal was achieved. "In 2009, we used 83,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity for every $1 million we produced. By the end of 2014, the electricity intensity was exactly halved," said Hai Yingjun.

The Paris Climate Change Conference, after heated debates and compromises, adopted a new global climate agreement, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Four months later, on April 22, 2016, an "Earth Day" destined to go down in history, more than 100 countries gathered at the United Nations to witness the signing of this agreement. The Chinese government has pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% compared with 2005 levels by 2030.

As a Taiwanese company whose main manufacturing bases are located in mainland China, Delta has set a new goal in the 2015-2020 "Five-Year Plan" to put the entire group (including factories, offices, data centers, etc.) , laboratory, etc.) to reduce the electricity intensity by another 30%. This indirectly supports the Chinese government's emission reduction commitments.

Through large and small projects to implement the business mission of "environmental protection, energy saving, love the earth", Delta's green manufacturing has achieved "double harvest" of economic and social benefits. From the company's establishment to 2016, the compound annual growth rate of the group's total revenue was 31%. Delta has been included in the "DJSI World" in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) for six consecutive years, and has been included in the "DJSI-Emerging Markets" for four consecutive years; the 2016 International Carbon Information Disclosure Project ( Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) annual appraisal, Delta stood out from more than 5,800 large enterprises participating in the appraisal worldwide, and obtained the climate change "Leadership Level" rating.

Upgrade to intelligent manufacturing

In 2013, Germany officially launched "Industry 4.0", which triggered a new round of industrial transformation competition on a global scale. China also released the "Made in China 2025" outline in 2015, which guides and promotes the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry to intelligence.

In recent years, the population structure of mainland China has undergone major changes, labor costs have continued to rise, and products have become cheaper and more expensive, and the operating pressure of enterprises is increasing. At the same time, the advancement of science and technology has enabled the related technologies and equipment of intelligent manufacturing to replace more and more manual work, and the cost is getting lower and lower, which can be afforded by enterprises. This makes upgrading to intelligent manufacturing a feasible and only way for enterprises to enhance their competitiveness, especially for those enterprises with leading conditions.

In this context, Delta Group, led by CEO Zheng Ping, proposed "Delta Smart Manufacturing (DSM, Delta Smart Manufacturing)" two years ago, and began to focus on building Delta's own smart Manufacturing Solutions.

According to Liu Jiarong, general manager of the electromechanical business group who is directly responsible for "Delta's Intelligent Manufacturing", in order to ensure the successful upgrade to intelligent manufacturing, the company has planned an overall development path, "First, the equipment is intelligent, and then the production line. Intelligence, and finally factory intelligence.”

In terms of equipment intelligence, Delta considers how to make the equipment intelligent while introducing automation equipment to the production line. First of all, we will build general-purpose equipment, such as soldering equipment, glue dispensers, and cutting equipment, etc., which can be used for various products such as power supplies and communication power supplies. The next step is how to make these general-purpose equipment intelligent, collect and implant corresponding data and materials, and add functions such as equipment self-maintenance, self-prevention diagnosis, automatic production line replacement, and self-adjustment to the equipment to make the equipment more "smart" , so as to maintain a high level of intelligent operation.

"For example, the solder on our production line is made with robotic arms. In the past, we used to buy solder robotic arms from the market, but every time it had to change the line, we had to teach Where are the solder joints on the PCB board, and the production line needs to be stopped for half a day to adjust the robot arm to solder the tin to the correct place. Now the robot arm we developed by ourselves is embedded with the main control self-controller, we put The corresponding software files are put into the controller to run, and the robotic arm knows where to weld, so there is no need to change lines or wait." Jiarong Liu said that this is how Delta has made the equipment of each workstation on the production line intelligent.

After the equipment is intelligent, it will enter the stage of intelligentization of the entire production line. Delta has developed a visual management platform that collects, analyzes and manages data related to production line productivity (P), product quality (Q), and operating status (M) of machinery and equipment. At present, Delta is adding product design documents to intelligent equipment, so that the equipment can read the product design, skip the interpretation and conversion actions of design engineers, and enable the production line to realize intelligent manufacturing.

Jiarong Liu described the blueprint of Delta's smart factory: the entire factory is intelligent, including from factory managers, placing work orders for factory output, material operations, warehouse management, and finally factory shipments. All become intelligent management, and at the same time connect all customers to the supply chain, and then truly achieve Industry 4.0, which also means that every manufacturer in the entire chain must reach a considerable level of intelligent manufacturing.

"Because our upstream and downstream supply chains may not be able to achieve the same manufacturing capabilities as ours, I often tell customers that if you don't do smart manufacturing, there may be no problems within a few years, but In the future, you will not be able to connect to other people's intelligent manufacturing systems, and you will have no business." Liu Jiarong said.

Every normal operating enterprise that wants to do intelligent manufacturing needs to consider how to make the existing production methods intelligent on the premise of ensuring that the factory continues to deliver to customers. This is also the reason why Delta promotes intelligence in stages from equipment to production lines and then to factories. "We are running while changing clothes." Hai Yingjun said.

In Hai Yingjun's view, Delta has a unique position in smart manufacturing: it has both its own factory and its own automation business. The combination of the two is a bottom-up approach. Methods. By contrast, many companies take a top-down approach. "Nowadays, many companies are not grounded in talking about big data. They have hired a large number of PhDs in mathematics and statistics. From the very beginning, he told you about the cloud, everything is cloud, and everything is big data analysis. You ask him What is a PCB board, he doesn't know."

Hai Yingjun went on to say that only by optimizing the production line bit by bit, can he know what kind of sensors to install on the equipment and production line, and what sensors to install on the production line. Where can we ensure that the sensor collects useful data,” and then transmits it to the system through the communication protocol. Only then will you know whether the results of so many data analysis are helpful to the production line. Moreover, you can always verify back and forth, And that kind of top-down company has no place to verify."

The way of integration

Delta's development can be said to be a process of continuously fulfilling its green mission . The integration of "Delta Smart Manufacturing (DSM)" and green manufacturing is exactly the meaning of enterprise operation.

"When it comes to intelligent manufacturing, many people say 'unmanned factory', it seems that 'unmanned factory' is the most powerful, but it is not necessarily true." Hai Yingjun said, "Japan has a long time ago. There are no unmanned factories. In the end, many unmanned factories also disappeared. Smart manufacturing needs to return to 'efficiency' and 'efficiency', which is inseparable from environmental protection and energy conservation."

In Taiwan In Da's view, intelligent manufacturing itself must be green manufacturing. Smart manufacturing aims to improve efficiency and effectiveness, the key to which is the efficient use of energy and materials. For example, Jiarong Liu said that intelligent manufacturing improves product quality, reduces product defect rates, and accordingly saves energy and material consumption. When he leads the team to help the customer's factory to carry out intelligent transformation, the customer often proposes to install electricity meters on the production line. Through the intelligent method, the electricity consumed by the operation of different equipment on the production line can be easily calculated and provided for energy saving. Useful reference. In Delta's own factories, it is also promoting the intelligent management of all auxiliary factory manufacturing links such as hydropower, oil and gas.

"In the future development of green and intelligent manufacturing, talents are the most important." Hai Yingjun said, first, management talents must cross borders and connect their factories to the systems of customers and suppliers; second, software talents It is very important that with the software, there is no need to perform actions on the hardware at all. One software can upgrade the hardware equipment, and can simulate the operation scene of the equipment and production line, avoiding the high-cost and time-consuming trial production process; Third, the demand for professional technicians will be huge.

And this is the original intention of Delta and universities to cooperate in cultivating talents. "The 'Delta Cup' University Automation Competition is a perfect example." Hai Yingjun said.

Figure/ASKA, DELTA