Expert Roundtable: The "Most Core Elements" of Digital Transformation

How to start the digital transformation of manufacturing industry is a hot topic nowadays. Under the epidemic, the global manufacturing situation is grim, and all countries hope to seek breakthroughs with the help of new technologies such as automation, digitization, and intelligence, improve the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry, and then promote the development of their own manufacturing industries. So, how should Chinese manufacturing enterprises make use of their own advantages to solve practical problems? What are the opportunities and challenges faced by the digital transformation of enterprises? What are the stages of digital transformation? What challenges does each stage face? This round of experts specially invites professors, doctoral supervisors, senior engineers of Nanjing University, former director of Jiangsu Provincial Development and Reform Commission, chief expert of Jiangsu Coastal Development Research Institute Qian Zhixin, and AI industrial vision expert, Dongsheng Intelligent Technology CEO Han Xu to analyze and answer this , for readers' reference.

CEConlines: How do you view the current digital transformation of traditional enterprises?

Qian Zhixin: The digital transformation of enterprises is not a matter of choice, but the only way out for survival and development. The accelerated development of the new technological revolution has an unprecedented impact on the economy and society. The biggest challenge is uncertainty. An effective countermeasure to deal with uncertainty is to accelerate digital transformation.

Han Xu: The digital factory is one of the prerequisites for the traditional manufacturing industry to move towards intelligent manufacturing. At present, there are almost no enterprises in China's manufacturing industry that have truly reached Industry 4.0. If you want to overtake Europe, America and Japan in the future, you must first establish your own intelligent manufacturing system.

CEConline: Under the tide, domestic small and medium-sized enterprises are now thinking about transformation and upgrading. Why digital transformation? What are the key drivers of digital transformation?

Qian Zhixin: After the new crown pneumonia epidemic, how should enterprises develop countermeasures, some enterprises have a fluke mentality, thinking that according to the old experience and old methods, they will pass. This epidemic is a new change for the development of enterprises. The biggest change is to develop the digital economy and change the way of business operation. The old method cannot survive. The more difficult it is, the more changes are needed to move to a new level of high-quality development.

The most important thing in the current digital transformation of enterprises is the cognition of the digital revolution: first, the cognition of ideas, from unlimited labor to unlimited computing power, digital has become the bottom-level infrastructure of enterprises, and digitalization is not. Tools are decision-making; second, mechanism cognition, from human-driven business to data-driven business, implements all business data and all data business.

Han Xu: In traditional manufacturing, the basic digitization needs to be done first. After the digitization is done, the data is in hand, and then the meaning of the data is mined, and then the machine decision-making is realized, and finally the top management is realized. . It must be subdivided layer by layer, subdivided to the bottom, and then to conquer each node.

CEConline: "Made in China 2025" clearly states: "Promote the intelligentization of the manufacturing process, and pilot the construction of smart factories/digital workshops in key areas." What basic principles should be followed in the construction of digital workshops/factories Principles, what kind of flexible strategies to adopt and precautions in system selection?

Qian Zhixin: Digitalization solves the two major goals of enterprises: expanding the market externally, digitization is customer-oriented, accurately developing customers through digitalization, and accurately meeting customer requirements. A typical case is to use data as customer portraits; internal Improve efficiency, digitally solve non-value activities such as "unconnected, unmatched, uncoordinated, untimely" and other non-value activities of traditional enterprises, greatly eliminate waste, and realize value multiplication, which can generally increase the value by 3 to 5%. In one case, the elevator digital remote operation and maintenance platform can reduce costs by 60% by opening up data.

Intelligent manufacturing is a systematic project, which should be the digitization of the entire value chain, including six modules: product intelligence, R&D design intelligence, supply chain intelligence, production intelligence, service intelligence, and marketing intelligence . The smart factory is only one of the modules, mainly implementing customized and distributed production. The key to intelligent manufacturing is to realize the deep integration of business scenarios, professional technology and digital technology, and provide intelligent solutions. Once 5G is applied in the industrial field, it will become a key enabling technology to support the transformation of intelligent manufacturing. 5G will connect all the people, machines and equipment that are widely distributed and scattered to build a unified Internet network and help manufacturing enterprises get rid of the traditional wireless network technology. The chaotic application state is driving manufacturing enterprises to the mature stage of intelligent manufacturing where "everything is interconnected and everything is controllable".

Han Xu: We still have to start from the most basic points and start from the bottom. Smart factories largely solve the transformation and upgrading of old factories. If a factory with a relatively high degree of automation is built, the factory must fully consider the automation design route when planning. Vision is the "eye" of the industry. With vision, the entire process can be traced from raw materials to finished products. What AI empowers is the standardization of "experience".

The digital factory is a prerequisite for intelligent manufacturing. Manufacturing and process management are all digitalized, and then they are fitted into some standardized products through algorithms and software, and features are extracted, so that its reproducibility is extremely high. One of the pain points of digitalization is vision and hearing. Many factories still rely on manual inspection. Some factories have almost no image information, only monitor information. Few of China's manufacturing industries have really reached the Industry 4.0 standard. If you want to overtake Europe, America and Japan in a corner, you must first establish your own intelligent manufacturing system.

One of the biggest advantages of Chinese manufacturing is that there are too many "experimental fields" and a huge number of industrial scenes. The application level of intelligent manufacturing must come from reality, and all products are oriented to solve the actual needs of the industry.

CEConline: Starting from the current status of China's manufacturing industry, how should traditional manufacturing enterprises carry out digital transformation? What considerations should be made in terms of strategic layout, technology research and development and talent management?

Qian Zhixin: There are two "pain points" in the digitalization of enterprises: lack of data online and lack of talents offline. To solve data, the key is to build an enterprise data brain and realize the large concentration, large coordination and large sharing of data. To solve the problem of talents, the focus is to improve the "digital quotient" of enterprise leaders, introduce digital talents, conduct full-staff training for existing professionals and employees, and vigorously enhance digital literacy and data skills.

Han Xu: Intelligent manufacturing is not so much to replace human beings as to serve human beings. For example, the happiness index of factory workers who use collaborative robots has increased significantly.

So the upgrading of intelligent manufacturing machines and people by enterprises are not antagonistic, but should complement each other. Digital transformation will also force the upgrading of the talent structure. We found a small phenomenon. With the improvement of education in China, the basic quality of employees in the factory has also improved, which is reflected in the upgrading of equipment and technology in the enterprise. Simple and monotonous tasks are assigned to robotic arms, and manpower is separated to do some technology. High-content jobs, on the other hand, the upgrade of the talent structure is promoting the digital transformation of enterprises.

CEConline: What are the common pain points and needs of traditional manufacturing enterprises in digital transformation and upgrading (software and hardware equipment)? how to respond?

Qian Zhixin: The fundamental of enterprise digitalization is to improve the digital capabilities of enterprises. Now digital capabilities have become core capabilities. Through digital capabilities, production capabilities, market capabilities and research capabilities can be empowered. The new value of enterprises = (production Capability + Market Capability + R&D Capability) x Digital Capability. For digital technology applications, you can use cloud services to choose appropriate industrial Internet platforms and professional digital technology companies. To do a good job in the upgrading of digital enterprises starts from three levels: concept, mechanism and technology. The first two problems need to be solved by enterprises themselves, and technical problems can be solved by third-party companies.

Han Xu: If a factory upgrades intelligent manufacturing, it is like a person becomes very intelligent. Vision is to add a pair of eyes to the factory, and hearing allows it to pay attention to every detail. Intelligent manufacturing requires several levels of data, manufacturing data, process manufacturing data, and then visual data and sound data. When multi-dimensional data is integrated, the entire process can be intelligent. The real intelligent manufacturing is to find problems in real time, and analyze whether it is caused by incoming materials or production parameters. If it is caused by production parameters, the production parameters should be adjusted immediately. If it is caused by raw materials, the line should be stopped immediately to find the raw material problems. data as the basis. From production data, to production capacity, logistics supply chain, ERP, MES, when more and more data are analyzed and used, this factory is to some extent a smart factory.

The cutting-edge digital transformation, such as digital twin, digitizes the entire factory modeling, the virtual scene and the real scene are completely integrated, and the digital transformation is completed step by step.

In terms of data, the real-time data generated by large factories every minute and every second is massive, but up to 70% of the data may be useless data, filter out 70% or 50% of the useless data, and extract 30 or 50% of the useful data, the collection and use of effective data to form a closed data loop, whether it is quality data, production data, or performance data, can help companies improve some digital management and control from the side.

CEConline: After digital transformation, there will be innovations in technology, products, and markets, and at the same time, changes in business models and organizational structures will be faced. So, what should be done to manage adaptive changes?

Qian Zhixin: Digitalization is an all-round change. First, we must adjust the organizational structure, implement a network organization of "big platform + micro-organization", and maximize the enthusiasm and creativity of employees; second, we must innovate business models. , customer-centric, community-based, and build a new enterprise ecosystem around value creation. All in all, we need to solve the data problem online and the talent problem offline. Only when these two pain points are solved can the digital upgrade proceed smoothly.

Han Xu: Digital transformation will create many new departments or cross-departmental organizations. For example, if Japanese companies want to upgrade intelligently, they will set up a separate artificial intelligence team, and the team leader is the second-in-command of the factory. There will also be the transfer and flow of talents. In the past, enterprises may not have this department, but now they deploy several excellent people from each department to establish an artificial intelligence department or an intelligent manufacturing department. This department is to serve the digitalization or intelligent manufacturing of enterprises.

Of course, with the changes of the times, the demand for digital management of enterprises is also changing. We attach great importance to this area of enterprises, but it will take some time for the entire industry to grow. The implementation of the smart factory needs to find the pain points of the enterprise. If there is a problem, the immediate problem can be solved first, but there must be a long-term plan.