Where do intelligent talents come from

Intelligent manufacturing is a revolution in technology and production methods, which frees people from the "screw" work on the production line in the past, and engages in more valuable work. The technological changes brought about by intelligent manufacturing require producers to have more professional skills; and the changes in production methods brought about by them also require multiple comprehensive capabilities such as management and leadership on the basis of professional skills.

Multiple market research reports show that "smart manufacturing talent" will be the most important driver for the realization of smart manufacturing. At present, the shortage of professional and technical talents and compound talents has become more and more prominent in the transformation of China's intelligent manufacturing. According to the "Manufacturing Talent Development Planning Guide" jointly issued by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it is predicted that the talent gap in the new generation of information technology industry, high-end CNC machine tools and robots in my country will reach 10.5 million this year. By 2025, The gap will further widen to 14 million.

Solving the talent problem of future intelligent manufacturing transformation has become one of the biggest challenges for Chinese manufacturers. Fan Cunyan, CEO of Xinsong Education Technology Group, also pointed out in an exclusive interview with CEConlines that China's economy has entered a transitional period after going through a period of great development in the past ten years. At this stage, many enterprises need to break through the development bottleneck. After the barriers of capital and technology, and after the continuous decline of my country's demographic dividend, the shortage of professional talents has become the core problem affecting investment and development.

Focus on the cultivation of future talents

With the changes brought about by intelligent manufacturing, after the use of intelligent equipment is gradually popularized, many skilled jobs in the past will also decrease or disappear, or some skills The job content and requirements of the position will change greatly.

For example, Qu Daokui, president of SIASUN Robotics, pointed out in an interview with CEConlines that in the past, the operators of robots were all specially trained professional and technical personnel. In the future, various operation applications will be integrated into the software system to automatically identify the corresponding operation mode on the production site. That is to say, the future work is a highly human-computer interaction mode. The robot will no longer need to arrange a special technical operator, but will make overall planning on a software interface. This employee is not only responsible for the work of operating a large number of robots, but also Most of them are able to efficiently integrate the resources in hand according to the needs, and achieve the output goal in the most reasonable way.

In addition to the sharp rise in demand for such "user interface talents", there are also "new technology engineers" such as system architects and data scientists who have been mentioned more in recent years. Professional skills are also urgently needed in the future. talent.

In addition, a manufacturer from Dongguan pointed out that some factories in China have first-class intelligent equipment and production lines, but they cannot achieve the matching efficiency, mainly due to the lack of management and professional technology. This is actually a major bottleneck for the transformation and development of China's manufacturing industry.

Professor Chen Ming, Director of the Industry 4.0 Learning Factory Laboratory of Tongji University, and Lin Xiaoxia, Vice President of TÜV Rheinland Greater China Rheinland College and Life Care, both pointed out in an exclusive interview with CEConlines that the future manufacturing industry will accelerate its transformation in an all-round way. In the process of intelligent manufacturing, it is inseparable from the support of three categories of talents: First, professional talents facing new technologies, such as robotics, IoT, AI, big data analysis, cloud computing and other nine core technical fields of Industry 4.0 technical talents; The second is the compound talents with interdisciplinary backgrounds required for the integration of intelligent manufacturing. They not only have multiple disciplinary knowledge in professional technology, but also have the skills of planning and overall operation in the entire production process; the third is "system-level talents" or management skills. High-end talents with both technology and skills can see the overall situation and have strong management and leadership skills. Among them, the third type of talents is also the most lacking and the most difficult to cultivate.

However, regardless of the above categories, there are currently large gaps. Moreover, the lack of talents has increasingly affected the normal development of the company. The CEConline once contacted a medium-sized manufacturer. In the early stage, he invested a lot of money in hard aspects such as smart equipment and technology. After a period of time, the level of factory automation has indeed improved. A lot, but in the later run, it encountered problems in terms of personnel. First, there is a lack of professional operation and technical personnel; second, when encountering equipment failure, production link adjustment or production line re-planning, it is often impossible to find competent people. These all seriously affect the production efficiency of the factory, and even appear to be lower than the level before the production line upgrade.

According to the long-term follow-up reports of CEConlines, an important reason is that in the past industrial development and structural upgrading in China, the important supporting role played by human resources has been neglected for a long time. Emphasis is placed on the upgrading of technology and business, and the adjustment and upgrading of the talent structure has not been paid much attention, resulting in the slow improvement of the overall skills and quality of industrial workers, which cannot keep up with the pace of market development.

In addition to the lack of attention paid to talents in the industrial development and the enterprises themselves, more importantly, the lag of China's socialized vocational education and talent training has also led to a large gap in the current intelligent manufacturing talents and the inability to keep up with the industry. important reasons for development. First, there is a serious disconnect between traditional college education and industrial development, such as typical professional settings, teachers’ emphasis on theoretical knowledge, etc.; second, socialized vocational education has not been paid enough attention in China for a long time before, and it is also embarrassing in social cognition; although the past five years With the support of policies one after another, the reform and improvement are being accelerated. However, talent training requires a certain period of time, and the reform of vocational education itself also needs a certain period of time, and it will take a long period to see the effect.

The heads of several manufacturers told the CEConlines that to realize the transformation of intelligent manufacturing, it is fundamentally necessary to speed up the reform of vocational education in my country, to further connect the industry and the market, and to use professional enterprises and social forces to lead the way. Talent cultivation stimulates the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate in the cultivation of socialized talents, deepens the role of enterprises in vocational education, revitalizes and integrates various resources, and establishes a talent cultivation model suitable for the development of intelligent manufacturing in the future. The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Education and other 6 departments released the "National Pilot Implementation Plan for the Integration of Industry and Education" in 2019. It also pointed out that deepening the integration of industry and education, and promoting the organic connection between the education chain, the talent chain, the industrial chain and the innovation chain, is the priority to promote education. Development, talent-led development, industrial innovation and development, and high-quality economic development are strategic measures that interconnect, synergize, and promote each other.

What should businesses do?

For enterprises, the connotation of talents under intelligent manufacturing has undergone major changes. First of all, sufficient energy should be invested in talent planning, and even in the early stage, the focus should be on talent planning for the future development of intelligent manufacturing. , to carry out the transformation of talents and organizational models, and to promote the overall transformation of enterprises in the future based on talent development and management innovation for intelligent manufacturing.

Chen Ming said that when formulating the company's intelligent manufacturing and talent strategy, it is necessary not only to meet the current talent needs of the company, but also to consider the needs of the company in the next five to ten years.

From the perspective of the enterprise, the changes made in the talent organization structure and management, intelligent manufacturing cannot ignore the innovation in all aspects of talents within the enterprise. Companies must look at and focus on future leadership, architecture, diversity, technology and the long-term development path of their employees with fresh and challenging eyes.

In terms of management, in order to quickly adapt to or anticipate market changes, implement flat management and speed up information transmission. Lin Xiaoxia said that to activate the new kinetic energy of human resource management, human resource management should become digital and intelligent, such as establishing an intelligent and digital talent evaluation model, and creating a new engine for intelligent manufacturing.

In terms of talents, from the perspective of short-term planning, enterprises should establish a basic training mechanism such as internal transfer and training of existing employees, and accelerate the improvement of the basic skills and quality of existing employees. It is necessary to adopt more incentive mechanisms to stimulate and promote the improvement of employees' own abilities, continuously respect and optimize talents, and build a strong talent team for the innovation and development of enterprises.

Chen Ming said that enterprises should incorporate four major categories of talents in engineering technology, vocational technology, management and business into the talent management team. In addition, in the process of transformation, enterprises will find that the demand for different positions will decrease or increase, and there will also be demand for talents that are not currently in reserve. Therefore, it is necessary to make adequate talent reserves and plan ahead.

However, the internal training of the enterprise may be more focused on the application training of skills. The training direction pursues the ability to quickly adapt to a position, which is often overlooked or not good at the improvement of systematic theoretical knowledge.

Many respondents pointed out to managers around the world that in order to solve the problem of intelligent manufacturing talent gap, in addition to starting from the inside of the enterprise, the enterprise needs to "go outside" in the future, which not only refers to the introduction of talents from the outside One point, more means that enterprises need to cooperate with external parties to solve talent problems and participate in the talent training system of the entire society. Outside the organization is not only a source of external talents, but also a new way of "self-cultivation" for enterprises. Fan Cunyan pointed out that the way of "co-training" with the outside world in the future is the key to solving the problem of enterprise talents.

Specifically, enterprises should strengthen cooperation with vocational education platforms, and even become an important part of socialized vocational education.

For example, in recent years, enterprises and traditional educational institutions have established "training partnerships", jointly built training centers, and jointly established schools. These are typical models of current school-enterprise cooperation.

In the "Several Opinions on Deepening the Integration of Industry and Education", it is also proposed that enterprises should be encouraged to participate in vocational education and higher education in accordance with the law. Deepen the reform of "introducing enterprises into education", and support and guide enterprises to deeply participate in the reform of education and teaching in vocational schools and institutions of higher learning. Support school-enterprise cooperation to carry out productive practical training, and encourage enterprises to directly accept students for practical training. Promote collaborative innovation and achievement transformation with enterprises as the main body, and accelerate the transformation of basic research results into industrial technologies. In addition, the "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan" issued by the State Council in 2019 also mentioned promoting the integration of production and education in the school-enterprise "dual" education, building a diversified school-running pattern, and striving to stimulate the endogenous motivation of enterprises to participate in and organize vocational education.

All in all, enterprises should have a more long-term and overall vision in the future of intelligent manufacturing talents, broaden their cognitive horizons on talent training and sources, have a more "cross-training" awareness, and constantly discover and combine Only those forces worth uniting, exploring and cultivating new cooperation models can solve the various needs for talents in the future.