In 2017, the brain hole is wide open to re-understand "intelligent manufacturing"

Recently, Steven L. Blue, president and CEO of American expert Miller Ingenuity, threw out an interesting point: "I don't think smart manufacturing can save American manufacturing at all." He claimed to have smart factories , from distribution to lighting systems, to automated CNC machine tools using the latest technology, and even from order inquiry to accounts receivable, digital seamless connection has been achieved. But he believes that this does not mean that he has embarked on the road of a manufacturing revolution.

As a business owner, Steven L. Blue put forward a very novel view. He believes that smart manufacturing needs to start from the top, not the bottom; smart manufacturing starts with establishing new contracts with employees; smart manufacturing starts with people , not a machine!

"The problem that many bosses face is that they give up on the amazing potential that people have and turn to automation technology. Big mistake!" Steven L. Blue emphasizes the development of smart manufacturing, only in the factory information It is obviously wrong to focus on automatization and automation.

"What's the problem. Because these bosses see their employees as sacrificial assets. What they should be doing is seeing them as a renewable resource that's constantly renewed. "Steven L. Blue points to his solution: First, build leadership credibility from the top. Second, leaders need to respect their employees. Third, leadership needs to have the quality of integrity.

From Steven L. Blue's point of view, factory informatization, automation technology and human resource construction are all essential. While upgrading intelligent manufacturing equipment and technology, it is necessary to enhance employees' innovative ideas and train new employees. Skill matching is very important, which shows the role of talent in the process of manufacturing innovation.

Talents are the key to intelligent manufacturing

Trends: From an international horizontal perspective, in 2013, Oxford University conducted a survey of 702 types of jobs in the United States, and they predicted that in the next 10 to 20 years, 47% of employees will definitely be replaced by machines; the German government plans to improve the intelligence level of its own manufacturing industry and build smart factories, which will not only realize product intelligence, but also realize the fully intelligent 4.0 industry of production processes.

Can machines really replace people? After all, machines are still controlled by humans. Let’s imagine with an “open mind” that 20 years ago, there were various types of jobs such as milling workers and fitters in the manufacturing industry. In the new era, will there be new types of jobs such as “robot craftsmen”? Will there be a fully smart factory depicted in sci-fi movies? The basic starting point of the imagination is that the future will generally be presented in a combination of "human + robot" labor, and the manufacturing industry needs more senior technicians and even executives who can "dance with machines" - if you do not understand intelligent manufacturing, It will be difficult to configure production resources.

"Intelligent manufacturing does not mean replacing humans with machines." Gu Jiandang, president of Phoenix (China) Investment Co., Ltd., believes that robots cannot completely replace labor, and the development of intelligent manufacturing and robots cannot be separated from professional technicians , and the new industrial ecology it spawns requires a lot of suitable labor. Therefore, if the support of intelligent talents cannot be formed, enterprises may fall into the transformation trap: there are smart factories, but no one operates them.

The analysis of the United States in the advanced manufacturing innovation network points out that compared with Germany and Japan, the United States lacks 1 to 1.5 generations of craftsman-level engineers who understand manufacturing technology. Therefore, the United States has developed a plan to shorten the entire process by bringing knowledge to production technology directly through innovation alliances.

Innovative talents are the most scarce resource

Intelligent manufacturing is a high-tech production method with full coverage of upstream and downstream and full process customization ”, which sets a new benchmark for future manufacturing development and puts forward higher requirements. Talent is the key to intelligent manufacturing. A passage in "The Second Machine Revolution" is impressive: innovative talents are the most scarce resource, they can create new products, new services or new business models, which are becoming the market's main dominant force. How to supply sufficient and suitable talents to meet the "rigid demand" of a large number of talents is probably the most urgent problem.

Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei said at the meeting that the development of intelligent manufacturing requires overall and systematic advancement in terms of personnel training, concept renewal, equipment advancement, process improvement, network support, and environmental security.

Xu Jiabin, professor of industrial economics at the Business School of Renmin University of China and member of the Strategic Advisory Committee for the Construction of a National Manufacturing Power, pointed out: "In the process of intelligent manufacturing, although we can integrate it systematically, we are in the process of key products. , key technologies, and key processes rely heavily on foreign imports, often in the process of realizing major projects and realizing industrial innovation, they are controlled by others, they must look at other people's faces, and they are severely restricted by safety."

At the World Intelligent Manufacturing Cooperation Summit Forum held on December 7, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the national "Intelligent Manufacturing Development Plan (2016-2020)". The "Plan" specifically proposes ten key tasks. Including accelerating the development of intelligent manufacturing equipment; strengthening key common technology innovation; building a standard system for intelligent manufacturing; building the foundation of the industrial Internet; increasing the demonstration and promotion of intelligent manufacturing pilots; promoting intelligent transformation in key areas; promoting the intelligent transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises; system; promote the coordinated development of regional intelligent manufacturing; build an intelligent manufacturing talent team, etc.

In simple terms, smart manufacturing is about connecting people, data and machines. It can be seen that innovative talents are the most critical link in the industrial chain of intelligent manufacturing - the first of the four elements of intelligent manufacturing: intelligent people, the evolution of the Internet from a two-dimensional Internet world to a three-dimensional virtual world, the most important Roles are human intellectual resources.

The difficulty of 30% of enterprises' intelligentization lies in talents

The "Report on the Status Quo of Intelligent Manufacturing of Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises" pointed out that 87% of enterprises admit that their production lines are facing the pressure of rising labor costs. The transformation of industrial robots into production lines has become the primary response plan for companies to deal with rising labor costs, followed by the hope to increase added value by strengthening research and development. 85% of them believe that it is possible to introduce smart manufacturing equipment within the next year. Among enterprises preparing to introduce intelligent manufacturing equipment, 37% will use robots for production, 23% will invest in digital monitoring and control systems, 10% want to introduce digital intelligent machine tools, and 9% will use 3D printing technology . And they are willing to invest boldly. We found that 51% of the respondents will spend at least 10% or more of their overall investment on so-called smart manufacturing. In addition, there are more extremes, such as almost a quarter of the surveyed companies will spend more than 20% of their overall investment on it. They hope to reduce costs, improve efficiency, improve production processes, improve quality, and promote technological innovation and upgrading through the use of smart devices.

Since intelligent manufacturing can enable enterprises to achieve small batches and multiple varieties of products, shorten production cycles, reduce prices, optimize resources, improve energy efficiency, and return on investment, why does 90% of domestic Are SMEs still less intelligent? In addition to the cost of intelligent upgrades, what other concerns do enterprises have?

According to the survey data, nearly 30% of the enterprises surveyed are worried that the existing basic measures or talents cannot be matched and adapted to these new production processes; because the machines are not only replacing simple workers who sell their physical strength, enterprises What is needed are skilled workers, especially workers who can independently operate various intelligent robots and senior technicians who repair machines.

The role of people in the intelligent manufacturing process will be changed from service providers and operators to planners, coordinators, evaluators, and decision makers. Not only professional and technical personnel are required to undertake the design, installation, and modification of intelligent equipment , maintenance work, but also need to maintain related information physical systems, new network components.

In addition, intelligent production requires continuous optimization of the production equipment model, framework structure, and regulations, and the corresponding management level requirements are much higher than before.

As the roles and roles of people in manufacturing change, intelligent manufacturing requires higher and higher professional level of employees; more emphasis is placed on technical expertise, the number of skilled jobs is gradually reduced, and the number of active positions is increasing. more. In order to better introduce intelligent equipment to improve production efficiency, enterprises need to reserve and cultivate more highly skilled and management talents in data science, software development, hardware engineering, testing, operations and marketing.

In the critical stage of transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industries, more and more enterprises will face the embarrassing situation of "easy to obtain equipment and hard to find talents". This is the core of Steven L. Blue's view - having a smart factory doesn't mean you're on the road to a manufacturing revolution.

Therefore, the cultivation of intelligent manufacturing talents must be the first step. The "wisdom" of intelligent manufacturing is informatization and digitization, and the "ability" is the ability of lean manufacturing. The core of intelligent manufacturing is the cultivation of intelligent talents. From the cultivation of lean talents to the cultivation of intelligent talents, this transition and the development of Possibly the most important issue facing manufacturers.