The Road to Intelligent Manufacturing: Dilemma and Breakthrough

Since 2013, China has become the world's largest market for industrial robots for six consecutive years. China's manufacturing industry has also gradually set off a wave of "machine substitution", trying to solve the bottleneck encountered by the current manufacturing industry , and took the opportunity to successfully complete the industrial upgrading. Among them, the automation, informatization and intelligent transformation of factories have been the focus of attention in recent years, and a government-supported "smart manufacturing revolution" has also emerged in China.

According to the previous report of the China Electronics and Information Industry Development Research Institute, China has initially formed four major intelligent manufacturing clusters, including the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Rim, the Pearl River Delta, and the Midwest. According to the "World Smart Manufacturing Center Development Trend Report (2019)" released by the Standard Ranking City Research Institute and the Jingguan Institute of Urban and Government Affairs, China has approved a number of national-level smart manufacturing pilot projects in order to promote the development of smart manufacturing. A total of 816, and a batch of 537 intelligent manufacturing industrial parks have been built at the local level. In addition, according to the data of the report, as an important promoter of promoting the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry, the output value of China's intelligent manufacturing industry has nearly quadrupled from 454.09 billion yuan in 2013 to 1,748 billion yuan in 2018. Intelligent manufacturing has become a key direction to promote economic development and reshape the competitiveness of enterprises.

However, on the whole, intelligent manufacturing is still "the concept is greater than the reality", and in terms of the degree of automation, the overall level is still at a low level, Li Xiaotao, deputy director of the Guangdong Institute of Intelligent Robots, told "CEConlines", in the steel, petrochemical, automobile, 3C processing, home appliances and other industries, the degree of automation is relatively high, while the equipment manufacturing, electronic product assembly, clothing and other industries, the degree of automation is still relatively low, still requires a lot of manpower. In addition, from the perspective of enterprises, large-scale manufacturing enterprises are more capable of intelligent upgrading in terms of capital and cognitive level, and are also accelerating the intelligent transformation of their own enterprises. Haier's connected factory, Midea's smart and lean factory, Huawei's digital factory... The leading companies in various fields are on the road of transformation and exploration. However, as the vast majority of small and medium-sized manufacturers in the manufacturing industry, most of them are still preliminary "machine substitution", that is, to improve the coverage of intelligent equipment. There are many difficulties such as the lack of intelligent and intelligent cognition. As the main force in the manufacturing industry, the transformation and upgrading of small and medium-sized enterprises is the key to this "smart manufacturing revolution". Therefore, this article mainly discusses the current "smart manufacturing transformation" from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The road is twisty

How to shift from "traditional manufacturing" to "intelligent manufacturing" is a problem that Chinese manufacturing enterprises are generally confused and concerned about. Even the initial improvement of equipment intelligence, such as adding industrial robot equipment, is a very complicated thing for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises with diversified orders and low stability.

"The cost of employing people is really too high now. Many small and medium-sized enterprises want to automate, but they must calculate the input-output ratio and how long it will take to recover the investment cost. Moreover, there is a premise to recover the investment cost. You also have to have stable orders. The fact is that many enterprises may face the problem of insufficient production capacity after the automation transformation, and cannot support the operation of the production line.” President of Dongguan Zhanyi Commodity Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhanyi). Manager Dong Laiping told "CEConline".

What Dong Laiping mentioned is also a dilemma commonly encountered by small and medium-sized manufacturers. As a Dongguan manufacturing enterprise specializing in stainless steel insulation, environmentally friendly plastics and glass water cups, Zhanyi is also a "smart manufacturing enterprise" in the current small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. "The epitome of transformation: basically still struggling on the road to intelligent production equipment, mainly in the stage of intelligent transformation or semi-automatic transformation of equipment in some highly standardized production links. And there are still many problems. In addition to the cost problem that has always plagued the company just mentioned, the talent problem is also talked about more now, such as whether there are high-skilled talents to support the change of production methods, because the automation equipment ultimately depends on the talent. Operation, which is often not solved by money. Li Xiaotao said that after the degree of automation is improved, the quality requirements of workers and technical support/maintenance engineers are higher, and human resource reserves need to be prepared in advance. Otherwise, the automation facilities may not be used well and it is difficult to achieve the expected results. In addition, in view of the complexity and diversification of products, whether automation facilities can efficiently cope with product switching is also a difficult problem for enterprises.

In addition, a number of industry insiders, including Li Xiaotao, have mentioned to "CEConline" the prevalence of the phenomenon of "emphasizing the hard over the soft". Some may simply follow the trend blindly, seeing that everyone is using the automated equipment, and they will follow with a slap of the head, and have not done any careful research at all. Moreover, the construction of software systems is often neglected, such as data collection, MES systems, etc., and the later is supplemented, and the more supplements, the more problems may arise, because the previous hardware investment did not take into account the construction of the entire operation system in the later stage. Li Xiaotao pointed out that the higher the degree of equipment automation, the more attention should be paid to equipment data collection and data application.

Yun Jiyuan, a senior consultant at Hejun Consulting, also pointed out in an interview with "CEConline" that some enterprises are too aggressive in automation, thinking that automation, ERP, OA can solve the current problems of enterprises . Not only small and medium-sized enterprises, but also some large-scale enterprises. The organization, process and system of the enterprise itself are not perfect. Especially for relatively traditional enterprises, if they suddenly develop by leaps and bounds, the organizational process will not keep up and adapt. Moreover, enterprises often do not have a good consideration of themselves, and they have not re-optimized and planned on the production side, have not promoted lean production, and have not even achieved personnel quality. Advanced equipment may often become decoration or A new problem occurs.

Yun Jiyuan has been in contact with an auto parts company that has problems. The company has added automation equipment in a production process. The equipment is also very advanced, and it can indeed solve the problems of production quality and efficiency. However, after he and his team completed the calculations, he found that the transformed link is not the bottleneck link in the entire production link, but the bottleneck link is at the back of the production line. Therefore, the faster the front is done, the more powerful the latter is.

All in all, automation, informatization, and intelligent upgrading is a systematic project. Blindly implementing "machine substitution" in a large area may not necessarily reduce costs and improve production efficiency. Because of the lag of processes and systems, In the end, it may restrict the development of enterprises. Enterprises should first consider clearly: where is the problem? How should these problems be solved? To achieve what purpose?

Planning first

The transformation and upgrading of manufacturing enterprises involves software and hardware upgrades, talent upgrades, management model changes, etc. It is not about improving the coverage of intelligent equipment or implementing a set of software. can be easily solved. As a long-term system transformation project, an enterprise must have a scientific and reasonable top-level plan. If there is no plan, the enterprise will invest blindly, the results will not be effective, and even the results will be counterproductive.

Yun Jiyuan has dealt with an example of unsuccessful automation. This is an enterprise that does metal post-processing. The enterprise has eight assembly lines lined up in a row, each line has a dozen people, conveyor belts, etc. Simple automated assembly equipment. The problem with it is that everyone's rhythm is inconsistent, there will always be congestion, and the pipeline won't work well. In addition, the semi-finished parts on the production line are very full, and the workshop is particularly crowded. The final transformation method is to abandon some of the assembly lines and some automation, and turn them into workstations. The efficiency is higher, and the employees are based on the piece rate system, and the income also goes up. Seemingly unreasonable changes, but effective for the enterprise.

This is due to the lack of planning. The company has not figured out whether it is necessary to implement automation transformation at this stage? What is the purpose of automation transformation? Simply thinking that automated upgrades can solve the problem of cost efficiency, and even the purpose of transformation and upgrades is not clear.

If starting from the analysis of return on investment and quality cost, Li Xiaotao believes that it is not necessary to pursue all or unnecessary automation. Money should be spent on the cutting edge, aiming at the bottleneck links that affect production, such as low efficiency, environmental Selective and staged automation upgrades should be carried out in the links with harsh, high-intensity, and high-quality risks.

With prior research and comprehensive planning, the enterprise will know how to start and when to do it? How to do it? To what extent? ...For example, Zhanyi mentioned above, Dong Laiping has had an idea for automation since 2018, because the existing production capacity cannot support the sometimes sudden large orders, he wants to increase the production capacity. However, due to the characteristics of the production process of the water cup itself and the current situation of the industry, as well as the existing development level of the company itself, it has not yet reached the level that can support an automated production line. Dong Laiping's approach is to upgrade equipment in areas that have value to be transformed, such as injection molding and mold opening, instead of blindly pursuing automation and finding external automated factories to complete large orders.

Another case handled by Yun Jiyuan can be compared. This company mainly produces metal welding machines, which are large-scale equipment. Because it is a piece-rate system, employees will prepare a lot of parts in advance to earn more money, and employees need to drive cars when the product is produced, but the number of cars is limited, and quarrels and fights often occur. The transformation method is to use a semi-automatic assembly line, increase the flipping and conveying equipment, uniformly distribute, and uniformly assign quotas. The output is doubled in the same time, and the floor area is reduced by 2/3. The key is that the cost is reduced.

Lack of scientific and rational planning is basically a problem for most companies, no matter the scale. Yun Jiyuan told "CEConline" that many companies think of one out as one out. For example, because of the traditional management model, enterprises are also in charge of automation transformation, lacking the guidance and overall planning of goals, production links, quality The management and control, financial and even warehousing systems are all divided. In the end, it seems that every place is advanced. In fact, the problem has not been solved, and new problems may arise.

Therefore, there must be an overall consideration in the early stage, Li Xiaotao also pointed out, especially planning, because after the automation transformation, the system will be stronger. If it is not considered in a unified way during the planning process, it will be quite difficult to renovate after encountering problems. Automation upgrades, informatization construction, and implementation of lean production management should be carried out simultaneously.

Yun Jiyuan said that it is necessary to comprehensively plan from the perspective of the industry or enterprise, and calculate the accounts clearly, not only the financial accounts-cost issues, but also the market accounts. In addition, when planning, don’t make decisions on a whim, and don’t be led by software companies or hardware companies, or kidnapped by automated equipment. It depends on whether your product is applicable and whether customers accept it. He suggested starting from two points, one is externally, to clearly grasp the development space and trends of the industry; the other is to straighten out the internal management, organization, process, system and other aspects of the enterprise, and to cooperate with external development and internal processes To support the future development of the enterprise. In addition, both mentioned the importance of choosing suitable suppliers and partners, as well as talent development and introduction.

The automation upgrade of manufacturing enterprises should be carried out step by step on the basis of planning and carried out in stages, and the most urgent problems can be solved in a targeted manner, so as to achieve a purposeful goal.