The era of "private customization" in manufacturing has arrived!

There is no doubt that the transformation of the business world by the Internet has extended from the consumption field to the industrial production field, which is the arrival of the so-called industrial Internet era. After experiencing eyeballs as king and the bloody battle of traffic economy, people found that it is still "customer first". How to attract and retain customers? Of course - products and services. For manufacturing enterprises, the ultimate "customer-centric" is to be able to produce products that meet the individual needs of each individual, that is, "exclusive" products, which are unique products with strong individual elements printed on them. It is not a product of "one thousand people" in the industrial age. It can be said that the "Internet +" of traditional manufacturing enterprises is to really contact "every" user or consumer through information means, and to be able to produce their "exclusive" products or provide "exclusive" products. Serve.

This is no longer a dream, but a reality. A 28-year-old consumer got his custom-made air conditioner at Haier's Zhengzhou Interconnection Factory. This is a hanger with WiFi module, formaldehyde removal function, and cartoon patterns printed on the panel. It is said to be the world's first air conditioner. Personal custom air conditioning. In the five days from placing the order to picking up the goods, he received nine text messages. From production scheduling, material preparation to installation panel, there are text message reminders for each link.

Intelligent manufacturing helps flexible production

"Customization is not a new concept. As early as the 1990s, the automotive industry has implemented 'flexible production', which can be produced on one production line. Different colors of the same model, and even different configurations and different styles of cars.” Xu Zhengyi, the former vice president of GE China Co., Ltd. and now the founder of Zhifang Innovation Center, said. The emergence of flexible manufacturing is because the industrial production management concepts and methods characterized by standardization, assembly line, and mass production can no longer meet the requirements of modern industrialization, especially the popularization of the Internet, the market has shifted from seller rights to buyer rights, and production is driven by From the mode to the pull mode, that is, the demand determines the production. "This concept seems simple, but in traditional manufacturing enterprises, it is very difficult to realize this. Because it involves changes in the entire production process, changes in organizational forms, material procurement supply chains, and even changes in information dissemination." Xu is saying.

However, advances in technology have accelerated this process. "The highly modular and streamlined manufacturing process will be completed by intelligent machines." Intelligent manufacturing not only brings about a substantial increase in the overall production efficiency, but also makes it more flexible. "In the past, the inflexibility was due to human factors, people and people Communication and coordination are required between them. Humans have emotional and physical limitations, but machines do not. Highly flexible production lines can learn by themselves, and their ability to process production information is getting stronger and stronger.”

Therefore, the current Customization is not only slow, but also low-cost. In the clothing industry, cloud clothing customization, which is engaged in clothing customization, can already achieve "after consumers fill in their needs online, the data will be transmitted to the design department of the factory, and then connected to the CAD system through the network, and it will be automatically generated within one minute. A sample. Each piece of clothing will also generate a QR code. In each process in the factory, as long as you scan the QR code, the details of the clothes will appear, and all processes can be synchronized.” The C2M (consumer to manufactory) model shortens the customization cycle of suits to 7 days, and the cost is only 1.1 times that of non-customized suits.

Chuangmei Technology, located in Changshu, Jiangsu, is a machined product manufacturing company. On their Industry 4.0 model machines, customers can select colors, The stamp and quantity are ordered, and the equipment receives the instruction to automatically carry out personalized customized production. After a few minutes, the simulated product is sent out.

Haier, which officially transformed into the Internet in 2012, is currently moving from mass customization to mass-creation customization and personal exclusive customization. Users will start from research and development and participate in the whole process of production and manufacturing. Truly "customized". Haier Air Conditioning Smart Connected Factory said that it will take the lead in realizing batch customization in 2015 to meet the personalized and fragmented needs of users. At present, Haier Air Conditioning Interconnection Factory has more than 200 user flexible customization solutions consisting of 11 general modules and 4 individual modules, which can meet the diversified personalized customization needs of users.

The flexibility of the supply chain is very important

Xu Zheng believes that to achieve customization, manufacturing enterprises need to achieve "flexibility" in three aspects: first, the communication between consumers and enterprises Flexibility, that is, users and enterprises can communicate and interact smoothly at any time, which is the so-called "fan economy". Traditional manufacturing enterprises should learn to manage users and serve users, instead of just focusing on production. For example, the user "participatory manufacturing" pioneered by Xiaomi breaks the strict barriers between consumers and manufacturers, making the brand more sticky to fans. Second, the flexibility of the internal production organization of the factory. This process has been gradually improved in the upgrading and progress of automation and intelligent technology, making flexible production more extreme. The third is the flexibility of the supply chain, that is, the synergy between enterprises.

The flexibility of the supply chain is necessary for enterprises to respond quickly to individual front-end demands. For example, Haier's user interaction is mainly concentrated on Haier's "Zhongchuanghui" platform, while the resource interaction of module suppliers (ie module suppliers) is mainly concentrated on the "Haidayuan" platform, which provides online registration for suppliers, Directly meet user needs. Streaming module business resources can realize self-registration, self-order grabbing, self-interaction, self-transaction, self-delivery and self-optimization on this platform.

Of course, there are not many companies like Haier that connect the supplier platform with the user platform and production lines, and most companies are still struggling with how to be fast and flexible on the basis of the original supply chain. But there is a consensus that is obvious, that is - resource sharing. It is not only difficult for enterprises to create "great achievements" that cover the whole country and the world, but also involve the whole industry chain by themselves. It is not only difficult to achieve high efficiency, but also inconsistent with the trend. The core concept of the Internet is "sharing", so traditional enterprises consider how to use social resources, such as some idle and surplus production capacity, to cooperate to meet diversified and personalized needs.

Shandong Esnile, which is engaged in the toilet paper industry, has established alliances with other companies in the industry to achieve production and service customers nearby through "mutual assistance". In addition, like Sunshine Printing.com, which uses the Internet to subvert the traditional printing industry, it is through the ability to integrate resources to connect the scattered demand at the front end with the excess traditional printing resources at the back end, so as to meet the "long tail" market demand.

"In the future, a more integrated division of labor can be achieved through systems and information technology, and enterprises may become virtual factories, which are completed through social collaboration during production. This is also one of the connotations of Industry 4.0. "Xu Zheng said. If you think about it one step further, the manufacturing industry in the future may be all service industries, "that is, the arrival of the service economy". The most obvious is the home appliance industry. Today, the technical barriers of home appliances have been much lower than in the past, and these home appliances will become smart terminals for families, or household service terminals. At this time, the hardware is not important, but the functional platform or management system grafted on the hardware is the key to consumers' choice. This heralds more possibilities for the "Internet +" opportunity of traditional manufacturing.

Whether it is the pioneering of flexible manufacturing in the automotive industry or Haier's current personalized customization model, in addition to some equipment and technology upgrades are necessary conditions, management and cultural factors are also the foundation. As Jin Jiguang, director of the factory of Chuangmei Group, said, the intelligence and flexibility of the production process cannot be solved simply by purchasing automation equipment and a single software system. The most fundamental thing is that enterprises should reshape the innovation system of the organization and encourage all employees to innovate. For Chinese manufacturing companies, some lessons have to be made up.