Expert roundtable: How should China cultivate intelligent manufacturing talents?

In the process of China vigorously promoting the transformation of the manufacturing industry to intelligent manufacturing, the shortage of intelligent manufacturing talents and the lag in talent training have become more and more prominent. For example, in enterprises, talent problems such as the improvement of the quality of talents in traditional industries and the slow progress of job transfer, and the disconnection between talent training and the actual needs of enterprises are common. The lack of intelligent manufacturing talents has become a major obstacle to the transformation of enterprises. To solve this problem, it is inseparable from the enterprise's own emphasis on human resources and socialized vocational education. The joint efforts of all parties can solve this dilemma. The CEConlines' roundtable interviewed Chen Ming, a professor of Tongji University, a member of the Electronic Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and Director of the Industry 4.0 Learning Factory Laboratory of Tongji University, and Lin Xiaoxia, Vice President of TÜV Rheinland Greater China Rheinland College and Life Care. Cultivate analysis and discussion.

Enterprise Changes and Responses

CEConline: In your opinion, what new requirements do enterprises place on talents in promoting the development of intelligent manufacturing? In the future, the manufacturing industry will fully enter the intelligent manufacturing. What kind of talents are the most important?

Chen Ming: With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, the Industrial Internet and intelligent manufacturing have brought a huge impact on the industry. There are many typical scenarios of changes in the industrial world, such as: quality management driven by big data, robot-assisted production, unmanned driving, predictive maintenance, additive manufacturing of precision parts, self-organizing production, and so on.

Changes in industry have brought about changes in the demand for talent. Like now, many simple and repetitive low-skilled jobs will disappear, and middle-skilled jobs such as production planning, maintenance and repair will be reduced, and some jobs will remain but the content has changed, such as information technology and data integration, software development, human-machine The demand for positions such as interface design will increase significantly, and many new positions will also be created, such as: intelligent manufacturing system architects and system engineers, data scientists, data analysts, etc. Therefore, this also puts forward new requirements for the ability of talents. In addition to increasing capabilities in big data, artificial intelligence, mobile communication, etc., it also emphasizes the requirements for cognitive ability, system integration ability and ability to solve complex problems.

So what kind of talents should we focus on? The first is professionals facing new technologies; at the same time, there will be more and more demand for interdisciplinary talents. At present, interdisciplinary majors include mechatronics engineering, industrial engineering, industrial software, etc. Over time, more and more interdisciplinary majors will appear to meet the needs of industry talents. Industry 4.0 emphasizes "system of systems". Today's systems are complex, including hardware and software, so system-level talents are most in short supply.

Lin Xiaoxia: Industry 4.0, or intelligent manufacturing, is the complete integration of information technology and operational technology, the physical world and the virtual world. It is a technological revolution and a change in production methods, which will inevitably place higher demands on talents. There are three main categories of talents who promote the development of intelligent manufacturing.

First, more professional technical talents are needed. At present, the nine core technical fields of Industry 4.0, which are relatively recognized in the industry, are the development direction of intelligent manufacturing talents in the future. The nine core technologies are robotics/humanoid robots, IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (HMI), additive manufacturing/3D printing, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems (CPS), system security (IT), and big data. analyze.

The second is the need for interdisciplinary talents with a high degree of integration required by intelligent manufacturing. Compound talents not only require practitioners to have professionalism, initiative, flexibility and collaboration, but also to be able to sort out the entire intelligent manufacturing process and internal business of the enterprise from a professional perspective, clarify the needs, and have the skills of planning and overall operation at the same time. .

Third, high-end talents with both management and technology can highly grasp the planning and route of enterprise upgrading and transformation. Strong management and leadership skills. This type of talent is also the most in short supply and the most difficult to cultivate in the future.

CEConline: Facing the ongoing transformation of intelligent manufacturing, how should enterprises re-understand human resource management, and what kind of talent management thinking should they have? Establish a talent training model suitable for the new production method of intelligent manufacturing?

Chen Ming: For enterprises, a reasonable intelligent manufacturing strategy can be formulated according to the characteristics of the industry, the status of the enterprise in the industry, and the existing talent pool of the enterprise, including the talent strategy. From the perspective of the major classification of talents, there are nothing more than engineering and technical talents, vocational and technical talents, management talents and business talents. All these must be included in the talent management team, that is, to meet the talent needs of the current enterprise, but also to consider the needs of the enterprise in the next five to ten years, to formulate the company's intelligent manufacturing and talent strategy. Enterprises will find that the demand for different positions will decrease or increase, and there will also be demand for talents that are not currently in reserve.

For the talent pool, we must combine internal and external, internal talent training and appropriate job transfer, and external talent introduction. Because there are many new technologies that are not available within the company, external resources are needed; at the same time, it is necessary to combine external training content with internal actual projects and work, and recommend training for corporate personnel to obtain certification certificates, such as German third-party certification agencies The "Industry 4.0 Application Engineer Certification System" certificate from TüV Rheinland; at the same time, China's intelligent manufacturing certification system has also been launched, and these training certification systems are standardized. After completing the training and obtaining the certificate, employees should combine the acquired ability with internal projects, and further improve their work ability through practice. At the same time, enterprises should also establish a corresponding salary system and incentive mechanism, encourage employees to carry out certification training, stimulate and promote the improvement of employees' own abilities, and respond to the company's talent reserve strategy.

Lin Xiaoxia: Many companies are more willing to introduce or invest in intelligent manufacturing equipment and processes, but they ignore the reserve of human resources, the construction and improvement of talent capabilities, and fail to upgrade the concept of talent management in time. , it is easy to lead to the lack of talent introduction and training mechanism corresponding to the transformation of intelligent manufacturing.

In the process of transformation, enterprises must first adjust the relevant human resource strategies in a timely manner according to changes in the external environment, and reposition the future direction of talent development, so as to effectively assist the implementation of the enterprise's future intelligent manufacturing development strategy. Secondly, at the current specific implementation level, enterprises should now start to establish a series of organized and planned training mechanisms for employees to improve the basic skills and qualities of existing employees. Furthermore, it is necessary to activate the new kinetic energy of human resource management, and human resource management should become digital and intelligent, such as establishing an intelligent and digital talent evaluation model, and creating a new engine for intelligent manufacturing.

How to do socialized vocational education?

World managers: In the face of today's demand for talent training socialization, it is difficult for research universities to cultivate intelligent manufacturing talents alone. In school-enterprise cooperation, how should enterprises better participate in production? Teaching integration?

Chen Ming: At present, most of the teachers in colleges and universities are scholars, that is, many have no experience in working in enterprises, which is different from Germany. Our university engineering is not an engineer training future engineers. In this industrial revolution, the industry is ahead of the universities, so it must rely on the industry.

Colleges and enterprises cooperate to cultivate talents and establish a base for the integration of production and education. In this regard, we need to learn from Germany and introduce the concept of "learning factory". In domestic colleges and universities, there are internship factories, which are generally basic metalworking internships; many laboratories have practical training, but they are far away from the industrial world, and there is no real production line. They are all trained for a certain ability. Students who practice in production enterprises often fail to get particularly good results, because the goal of the enterprise is to focus on production rather than learning.

To bridge this gap, we need to build learning factories. The learning factory is almost the same as the actual production factory, including products, production lines, production processes and production management organizations. But the learning factory is not for the purpose of producing profit, but the main purpose of cultivating students' skills and innovation ability.

Therefore, enterprises should take the demand for talents and deeply participate in the construction of learning factories; at the same time, learning factories should cooperate with multiple enterprises to integrate the advantages of multiple enterprises. For example, the Industry 4.0 Learning Factory of Tongji University uses Siemens industrial software (product life cycle management software and production system simulation software, etc.), Omron and Siemens automation technology, Carl Zeiss geometric measurement technology, and National Instruments NI data acquisition. Integrated with key technologies such as processing. Therefore, the abilities acquired by the trainees in the training factory are actually higher than the abilities acquired by the trainees through individual training in any company. At the same time, the trainees are also trained in the factory. At this time, they will work in the production factory of the company and will achieve very good results.

Lin Xiaoxia: In fact, China already has a very good foundation, especially the number of large and medium-sized industrial enterprises above designated size is very large, and the cooperation with colleges and universities is becoming more and more close.

The integration of production and education has different cooperation modes according to different cooperation depths. The simplest or most common is the cooperation of production and practice; the highly customized enterprise order-based training model; the co-construction of training centers or training bases for technical cooperation; These are typical models of the integration of production and education. Enterprises should choose a cooperation model that matches their own according to their current development status.

In 2019, the State Council also released the "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan", also known as the "Twenty Regulations for Vocational Education", including the establishment of national standards for vocational education and the launch of the 1+X certificate system pilot Work, build a diversified school-running pattern, and improve the guarantee policy for technical and skilled personnel. Twenty measures were put forward from seven aspects, and the implementation plan was very maneuverable. After the promulgation, all regions began to follow up.

The implementation plan clearly points out the methods and goals for enterprises to participate in vocational education, and there are various guiding policies and incentives, which is good news for enterprises. For example, the "dual" education of schools and enterprises to promote the integration of production and education mentioned in the plan; another example is some specific indicators in the future goals mentioned in the plan, "By 2022, the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate in vocational education will be greatly improved, and the cultivation of Tens of thousands of enterprises integrating production and education have created a number of excellent vocational education and training evaluation organizations, and promoted the construction of 300 high-level professional production and education integration training bases with a radiant and leading role.”

Therefore In terms of promoting the development of vocational education integrating production and education, the government is also vigorously attracting enterprises to participate more actively. By seizing the opportunity of the policy, on the one hand, the enterprise can reduce the cost of training employees and reduce the pressure on the enterprise; because the enterprise is actually facing the problem of labor shortage, and the labor shortage is not only in quantity, but more in terms of labor shortage. Not enough qualified, applicable employees. On the other hand, the cooperation model of the integration of production and education can also better draw on and learn from some excellent experiences in the industry.

CEConline: In recent years, my country's vocational education for intelligent manufacturing talents is also developing rapidly. What talent gaps should my country's vocational education for intelligent manufacturing talents focus on? On the whole, what are the main shortcomings of China's vocational education in this area?

Chen Ming: After the vigorous development of vocational education in recent years, the quality and quantity of talents cultivated are constantly improving, but in the face of the fourth industrial revolution, the structure seems to be unreasonable. Of course, Germany, which has a very developed industry, also admits that there is a shortage of talents for Industry 4.0, especially for us.

Where is the talent gap in the face of Industry 4.0? The root of this industrial revolution is the deep integration of a new generation of information technology and manufacturing, and our current skilled workers are insufficient in new technologies. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the existing traditional majors, which majors will disappear; which majors should be retained, and new technologies should be enriched and transformed, such as adding quality inspectors of machine vision and artificial intelligence technology, based on VR/ Maintenance technicians of AR technology, etc. At the same time, new professions and positions will be created, such as: industrial big data analysts, machine vision equipment operators and maintenance workers, etc. At present, "Tongji University Industry 4.0 Learning Factory" has cooperated with "Machine Industry Vocational Skills Appraisal and Guidance Center", and presided over or participated in the formulation of 6 new job standards.

Lin Xiaoxia: It depends on what stage the company is in now. When talking about intelligent manufacturing, we are actually discussing in a future direction: what changes will happen to the manufacturing industry? However, it must be based on the immediate needs of most companies. The company may be in Industry 2.0 or Industry 3.0. Even if the foundation is not well laid, it is necessary to enter 4.0. The risk is very high, and it is impossible to have a leap in development.

For example, the cooperation between TüV Rheinland and vocational colleges is also aimed at the needs of future intelligent manufacturing, taking into account the existing talent training and manufacturing foundation, and then planning the route of talent development. Therefore, we should start from the specific needs of different fields, define the direction with relevant parties, and plan the implementation path based on the current various foundations to achieve future goals.

World managers: Many companies are also building vocational education platforms for intelligent manufacturing talents. Such enterprises, traditional training institutions, science colleges, etc., are creating vocational education for intelligent manufacturing talents. What are the characteristics of each platform? How can the two sides cooperate better?

Chen Ming: When an enterprise builds a vocational education platform, it starts from the actual needs of the enterprise, and at the same time considers its future talent needs for vocational education training. The training platform and base not only conduct internal training for the company's own employees, but also for vocational colleges. For example, Haier, in addition to having an on-site training base in Qingdao, has also established training bases in Guangdong, Nanjing, Shanghai and Tianjin, including software and hardware. Generally, such training platforms have several characteristics: first, it is based on the obvious characteristics of the actual industry and enterprise; second, training is closely related to production practice, so it is more pragmatic and practical; third, under certain conditions , After completing the training, students can go directly to the production line of the factory for on-the-job internship, and those who perform well can directly stay in the company to work.

The school has done a good job in the system of ability training system, and will also consider the needs of many enterprises and the application of key technologies. However, at present, there is still a "last mile" from the ability cultivated by many training bases in colleges and universities to the ability of actual factories, but this kilometer is not a flat road, but a muddy trail, which may still be swampy in some areas. "Learning Factory" is to cross this last mile.

It can be seen from this that the talent training of enterprises is inseparable from colleges and universities, and the training of talents in colleges and universities is inseparable from enterprises; both parties should jointly build a talent cultivation ecosystem and give full play to their respective advantages.

Lin Xiaoxia: In fact, there is another category, like TüV Rheinland, TüV is the German abbreviation of Technical Supervision Association. On the one hand, it is an independent third-party organization that can identify, evaluate and issue certificates for technology, enterprise and personnel qualifications; it combines the characteristics of colleges and enterprises.

The education or training platform created by robot companies will be closer to the industry and market than traditional colleges and universities. strong advantage. They have their own equipment and products, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage, because the scope of services will be relatively focused on their own products and technologies. Traditional institutions maintain the neutrality of their academic fields and focus more on the cultivation of students' comprehensive knowledge. An independent third-party organization like TüV Rheinland is neutral in technology selection and does not favor a certain brand of technology. It has the ability to evaluate the pros and cons of different technologies and make targeted choices according to the needs of enterprises or students .

The three are mainly in the relationship of integration, complementarity and cooperation, but there is a certain degree of competition at a very individual level, and their respective positions are also very clear, and jointly promote the development of Chinese vocational education.

CEConline: There have been many Sino-German cooperation projects in recent years in terms of international cooperation in the cultivation of intelligent manufacturing talents. In your opinion, what are the main experiences of Germany in the cultivation of intelligent manufacturing talents that China can learn from?

Chen Ming: Germany is a traditional industrial power. Germany's continuous development in the industry has maintained its leading position, which is directly related to Germany's talent training. Dual education in Germany has always been a role model for the international community, including China.

First of all, in terms of cultivating teachers, for engineering colleges, teachers are engineers, and engineers are cultivating future engineers; for vocational schools, technicians are cultivating future technicians.

Secondly, both engineering higher education and vocational education are geared towards the industrial world. For example, in the process of cultivating engineers, there will be experts from the enterprise taking classes in the university, and the projects of the enterprise will be carried out in colleges and universities. Students must go to the enterprise for an internship, and the students' graduation thesis can be completed in the enterprise and the school together. Students must first be recognized by the business in order to graduate in school. In the field of intelligent manufacturing, students improve their comprehensive ability by doing practical projects given by enterprises to colleges and universities, as well as practicing in enterprises. For dual vocational education, students study theory in school and practice projects in enterprises. In terms of time, they may spend 2 days in school and 3 days in enterprises. In many cases, when the school enrolls students, the students are already linked to the positions of the enterprises. Whether it is the training of engineers or technicians, students have multiple instructors from different majors to cultivate and exercise students' interdisciplinary ability.

Germany has a set of strict vocational qualification certification system and certificates. In the initial stage of Industry 4.0, China can learn from this system of Germany. IHK (German Chamber of Commerce and Industry), TüV and HWK (Association of German Handicrafts) already have certifications for some positions in China. In September last year, TüV Rheinland has released the "Industry 4.0 Engineer Certification System" and plans to continue to release the "Industry 4.0 Skilled Worker Certification" this year, which is a very good way for us to benchmark German vocational education.

In 2014, the Prime Ministers of China and Germany signed the "China-Germany Cooperation Action Plan: Co-Shaping Innovation", which started the in-depth cooperation between the Chinese and German governments in the field of Industry 4.0/Intelligent The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) jointly promoted the establishment of the Sino-German Intelligent Manufacturing Cooperation Enterprise Dialogue Platform (AGU). The platform established four Sino-German expert working groups in 2018, among which the "Intelligent Manufacturing Talent Education and Training Expert Group" is dedicated to the exchange of talent training standards between the two countries. It is believed that through the joint efforts and cooperation of China and Germany, China will be more pragmatic in the cultivation of intelligent manufacturing talents, and further open a new chapter of internationalization.

Lin Xiaoxia: The Sino-German cooperation in intelligent manufacturing is now more prominent. Germany proposed the concept of Industry 4.0 in 2013, and China proposed the strategy of transforming intelligent manufacturing in 2015. There are commonalities in concepts, directions and frameworks, so when discussing how to improve intelligent cooperation in manufacturing, it is easier to reach an agreement.

Germany is at the forefront of the world in the concept, knowledge system, professional setting, teaching material development, and talent evaluation of intelligent manufacturing talent training. In addition, Germany's distinctive "dual system" vocational education model is a very good foundation and soil for the cultivation of technical talents. How to make the German "dual system" education system better in China is worthy of the Chinese government and enterprises. As well as vocational and technical colleges to learn and think.