Future factory blueprint automation Unmanned Personalized

Source：Updated：2017-11-28 08:14:39

"Our expectations of future factory is not so tall, is simply hope that through the use of intelligent technology to reduce labor, reduce costs, attract more high level of future employees to do more valuable work." Zhao rizhi, minister of science and technology of jiangsu province, told reporters in an interview.
 
 
 
For many traditional industries, labor intensity, low wages, and recruitment, staff liquidity is a common problem mostly, the 122 - year history of jiangsu sheng group co., LTD., is no exception.
 
In order to solve these problems, big group was built in 2015 the first in the domestic textile industry whole process domestic equipment demonstration line -- big "" digital spinning workshop, and included in the national ministry of public in October this year" intelligent manufacturing pilot demonstration project "in 2017.
 
"We have made intelligent textile equipment, logistics systems and monitoring systems, and managed to integrate traditional cotton spinning equipment into a single, intelligent process." 'this whole intelligent solution has improved efficiency,' said Mr. Zhao. 'at present, the company's intelligent manufacturing workshop has a scale of 456, 000 ingots, and the next step is 100, 000 ingot.'
 
Reporter contact with all kinds of artificial intelligence enterprise, the traditional manufacturers are starting to plan their selectively the blueprint for the future factory, the various elements in the blueprint, but have some common features. Factory in their planning, the future is no longer just piled up mechanical beasts by large equipment, manufacturing plant to pursue is no longer the scale of production, the same products, but personalized high-quality products, the demand of complex changes is not traditional factory can achieve.
 
With the combination of technology and demand, capital is pouring in, and the imagination of the future factory is being realized. According to the report of the cic consultant, China's intelligent manufacturing output value is around 1 trillion yuan in 2015, with a potential growth of more than 3 trillion yuan in 2020 and a compound growth rate of about 20 percent annually. But the technology is still a long process, and in this process, the management of the enterprise itself, the philosophy of leaders and government policies, etc., have put forward higher requirements.
 
Future factory blueprint
If a few key words are to be drawn to a future factory, the industry, investment community and academia in the survey will certainly include automation, digitization, intelligence and personalization. Automobile production equipment supplier - Shanghai DE MeiKe auto equipment manufacturing co., LTD., recently was included in the ministry of the first intelligent manufacturing system solution supplier recommended directory, from the assembly to the welding workshop has been replaced by automatic line. Such companies have led the way in using innovation to improve productivity.
 
But there are many other elements from automation to real future plants, such as intelligence and personalization.
 
Former CEO KUKA robot and now DE MeiKe CEO mras in an interview with reporters, said the future of the factory is the key to the production organization pattern, "all of the final product information, after switching between different products, the production orders how dispatching automatic decomposition, decomposition to the company to produce, in order to realize information management."
 
The implementation of this process, as executive vice President of Siemens (China) co., LTD., digital factory group general manager, sigfusson said need digital enterprise software suite, industrial communication network and comprehensive automation safety and industrial services for specific business these four pillars supporting each other.
 
"The future factories are automated, unhumanized and standardized, including the intelligence of key links such as material supply, SMT and post-engineering assembly." Panasonic electric machinery (China) company strategy planning department manager Yin xiaoheng told reporters. But the future is more personalization is worth looking forward to the factory, "such as a box, 1000 people have 1000 different kinds of demand, to realize the personalized needs, and to track the whole production process, needs to have a lot of information collection, and this kind of information collected by people is difficult to achieve." Mras said.
 
Mechanical industry, chief analyst at huatai securities ZhangCheng stressed that the implementation of future factory to meet the "cloud, nets, end" three level of ascension, namely industrial data connectivity, build factories of the industrial chain and internal network and represented by robot automation. There may be no fixed paradigm for future factories, but there is no doubt that the vision for a future factory has been on the agenda.
 
Boston consulting group (BCG) did the recent research on depicting the blueprint of the future factory in 2030, points out that industrial companies are able to improve the efficiency of the factory, 85% of respondents believe they can benefit from the future elements of the implementation of the factory, 74% said the company has introduced or plan in the next five years into the future plant elements.
 
"Technology + capital" competition
Under the demand of this, all kinds of technology companies and investors are starting to intelligent manufacturing industry layout, from robot four families around the world, to the world's leading manufacturers such as Siemens, panasonic, and then to Chinese automobile, textile and other traditional enterprises and various Internet companies.
 
"Sales of industrial robots have increased by almost 70 per cent year on year so far this year, indicating that China's manufacturing sector is increasing its investment in intelligent manufacturing." This is a very clear trend, zhang said. Especially in the manufacturing industry's most developed Yangtze river delta and the pearl river delta, the concept of "just using robots and not employing people" has become the consensus of the industry.
 
ABB is understood to be focusing on building a highly connected future smart factory. Logistics solutions including robot implements the storage, picking, sorting three functions of automatic operation, will increase the capacity of storage logistics system by more than 40%, investment and operation cost reduced by 35% to 50%, has been successfully applied in the user's intelligent logistics center.
 
Another international giant, fanuc, is also growing in the field. In just the past on the 19th China international industry fair, fanuc shows the accumulated in automation technology on the basis of information solutions, providing customers with complete manufacturing execution system (MES) based on intelligent robot manufacturing solutions.
 
In September this year, Siemens announced that China will dominate the global autonomous robot research and development work, and with tsinghua university in Beijing to establish joint research center for advanced industrial robots, focus on new mechanical and electrical integration, man-machine collaboration, and the application of artificial intelligence in the robot controller subject to conduct research and development. Also, DE MeiKe through the establishment of virtual production line technology in the automobile industry provides solutions for many manufacturers, and try to establish information control system of the whole factory, even to cover future models of transformation, parts of tracking etc.
 
But the future factory scene is not a sci-fi blockbuster, and his formation requires a great deal of knowledge and capital. For capital, it is very outdated to not understand smart manufacturing in this age, and not to know the most cutting-edge technology about future factories.
 
According to reports from forward-looking industry research institute, the eight major hot spots in the field of intelligent manufacturing are: robot, artificial intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicles, 3 d printing, unmanned, virtual reality, smart logistics, intelligent household.
 
"The investment in the whole industry is still in the process of rational development. There are more investment in industries with better profits, close proximity to C and higher Internet levels. Zhang said.
 
In technology, capital, policy to compete, the breaking point in the field of intelligent manufacturing time interval shorter and shorter, "robot in China since the 1990 s, at the beginning of the 21st century is accepted, until 2010, formed a real breaking point, this is a breaking point, in 2020 is probably a node, this results in a new round of technological revolution." Mras said.
 
How far is the future?
In the outside world, the future factory may be out of reach, but with the continuous iteration of the technology, the factory is approaching. However, there are many obstacles to future factory paths. The future will range from automation to intellectualization, even less humanization or dehumanization, and technical limitations are the first threshold. As zhang wenqiang, director of the intelligent laboratory at fudan university, puts it, the development of artificial intelligence in China is still in the stage of perceptual intelligence, and it has not reached the level of cognitive intelligence.
 
Kong bing also pointed out that although the machine can feed back the simple fault, the operation rate and other information, but in the actual production information, production bottleneck, production link problems and other aspects have not been realized. Take the robot industry as an example, there are probably thousands of local robot manufacturers in China, but they are more dispersed and have no complete system. He stressed that it would be difficult to achieve personalized demand in the next five to 10 years under such technical conditions.
 
Although the intelligent production reduces labor cost, but the quality requirements of the personnel are constantly improving, the shortage of talents is a bigger problem for enterprises.
 
In an interview, the reporter learned that in order to solve this problem, many enterprises began to invest in research and development and talent cultivation. "Our research laboratory at the fledgling stage at present, have certain project is needed to support the development of it, so the high-grade talents, funds, equipment configuration has been follow up development." "Said Yin.
 
In may last year, Siemens signed a new round of "education cooperation memorandum with the ministry of education, the sino-german cooperation framework for the" made in China 2025 "national strategy to cultivate innovative talents, the" digital age, need the digital talent." "Said wang. But many companies do not have the capacity to make the transition to intelligent manufacturing. About 80 to 90 percent of companies in China are still in industrial 2.0 or near 3.0, and only 10 percent are in industry 3.0, according to McKinsey's market research.
 
"China's current integration of industrial robots and software development is around 50 billion a year, with more than 300 companies in the industry, which means a lot of those involved are small businesses." ZhangCheng said.
 
In addition, several industry people polled said future factory building, the application requires enterprises in lean management, process combing, enterprise culture, to the enterprise management concept and management mode, especially the consciousness of the leaders themselves and drive proposes a bigger challenge.
 
But the industry still has great potential. The 13th five-year plan for robot industry proposes that by 2025, the annual sales volume of industrial robots will reach 260,000 units and 1.8 million units. According to the "made in China 2025" technology roadmap for key fields, intelligence of manufacturing key areas will be fully, pilot demonstration project operating costs by 50%, the product production cycle shortened by 50%, not the yield by 50%.
 
China has already stepped into a future manufacturing plant, but it will be in a dynamic, dynamic change that can be achieved in the future, and no one can predict it.