Lu Shiying: The Core of Intelligent Manufacturing

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Lu Shiying, expert in lean management and intelligent manufacturing, graduated from MIT-Tsinghua University International MBA, with more than 18 years of practical experience in enterprise lean management. He used to be the operation director of the Fortune 500 Asia region, the chief consultant of a well-known German lean consulting company, the lean supply chain director of the Asia-Pacific region of an American listed company, and the lean logistics manager of the Asia-Pacific region of Stanley Black & Decker.

Intelligent manufacturing can enable enterprises to achieve small batches and multiple varieties of products, shorten production cycles, reduce prices, optimize resources, increase energy efficiency, and improve return on investment. Why is 90% of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises currently Is the degree of enterprise intelligence still low? In addition to the cost of intelligent upgrades, what other concerns do enterprises have?

At the latest Zhisheng Future Forum, Lean Management and Intelligent Manufacturing expert Lu Shiying shared several cases of intelligent manufacturing improvement he personally operated, helping us understand the three-step strategic roadmap for intelligent manufacturing .

▲Lean management and intelligent manufacturing expert Lu Shiying

The following is a selection of the speech content of Lu Shiying:

I Personally, I have concluded that the "wisdom" of intelligent manufacturing is "information interconnection", and the "energy" is "lean production" + "industrial engineering", which are two driving wheels, and the middle is "people", which is the core.

▲Figure 1: The Pillar of Intelligent Manufacturing

The first to do Industry 4.0 is the equipment manufacturing industry and the automotive industry. China's industrial engineering is far behind German companies. The German MTM company is a professional organization that studies modern industrial engineering. Now many factories in Deduo have introduced MTM (Method Time Measurement) management, while the industrial engineering management method used by most Chinese enterprises is still the western industrial engineering technology of the last century. . MTM decomposes the actions of the production process into codes, and the manager does not need to go to the production site, but knows the production process through the code. Engineers first optimize and improve each action through MTM technology, and then edit it into a regular action code. If there is a discrepancy between the actual production time and the design time, through code comparison, you can know that the reason is that the workpiece is placed in a non-standard, unreasonable layout, or that the employee did not follow the standard design process. The modern industrial engineering method using MTM can make enterprise data very accurate and objective, which lays a solid and reliable man-hour data foundation for the further realization of intelligent manufacturing. Traditional industrial engineering mostly relies on engineers measuring working hours through stopwatches, and the error rate is sometimes as high as 30% to 50%. On the basis of such data, the introduction of advanced information and intelligent systems is like seeking fish from wood, and failure is sooner or later. thing.

After talking about industrial engineering, let's talk about lean manufacturing. Many people know that lean production is a management system from Toyota in Japan, but many people do not know that most German manufacturing companies are implementing lean production today. The realization of German Industry 4.0 is far from being as beautiful as it looks. Behind it, there is the pain and pain of changing the production system. 10 years ago, I was a manufacturing technology manager in China for a German auto parts company. At that time, their strong American competitor Delphi (also my old employer) had successfully implemented lean production, but the senior management of the German company was very hesitant. After another 3 years, Delphi expanded from 5 factories to 10 in China, doubled its business, and continued to exceed 10% profit margin. They began to panic, so, after a six-month war of words between supporters and conservatives, in 2009, they began to implement lean production. After three years of painful changes, their manufacturing level was again ahead of their peers, and finally realized Industry 4.0 Strategy. Lean production is a transformation process that must be experienced for the realization of intelligent manufacturing. I have diagnosed hundreds of manufacturing companies in Fujian, and about 40% of them told me that they had implemented lean production, but they were unsuccessful, and they no longer believed it. . I would like to remind you that if you think you can bypass the lean manufacturing revolution and go directly to smart manufacturing of Industry 4.0, you have already started pouring gasoline on your banknotes.

Now let's talk about the "intelligent" information interconnection. This is the easiest way to realize intelligent manufacturing. Today, the most important thing is information management technology. There are robots that want to be more intelligent, and software that wants to be more intelligent. But if the first two "wheels" are not built well, I'm sorry, if you think that automation suppliers or software vendors are incompetent, you will be wronged.

Finally, I have to say that "people" are the heart. In my opinion, what kind of talented companies will eventually do smart manufacturing well? First, it is an enterprise that continuously learns; second, it is an enterprise that focuses on innovation; third, it is an enterprise that attaches importance to customers. Compare enterprises to cups, and intelligent manufacturing to fine wine. The attitude of learning determines the capacity of the "cup", the strength of innovation determines the texture of the "cup", and the customer determines the quality of the "good wine".

(All the opinions in this article are from the "Outsmart Future Export Forum" jointly held by Global Sources and its leading management media "CEConline" in Shanghai on May 19, 2015.)

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