At the BRICS Smart Manufacturing and New Industrial Revolution Partnership Forum held during the 2019 World Intelligent Manufacturing Conference, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that smart manufacturing is the direction of manufacturing development and the core driving force of the new round of industrial revolution. The transformation of manufacturing to smart manufacturing is a must. Recently, the reporter walked into the Hefei Lianbao factory in Lenovo, and saw how a PC can change from a piece to a few millimeters, and a few centimeters of parts eventually become a PC product. Tens of thousands, thinking change is the first "importance."

 

Bai Peng, vice president of Lenovo Group and CEO of Lianbao Technology, said in an interview that using automation rate to measure the automation level of enterprises is a relatively simple and intuitive number for the industry. This is the main indicator, but not the only indicator. Because each industry is very different, the criteria for measuring the degree of automation of companies in different industries are different. Lenovo is an intelligent manufacturer of electronics. Because of the industry characteristics of electronics, the overall automation rate of the industry is not the same as other industries. A mass-produced single product, when its manufacturing process and process are very standardized, the change will be relatively small, so that the process is fixed, the automation equipment is designed according to each process, and all the automation is used, it is very easy to do the black light factory. Nobody factory. However, for a flexible production with relatively large changes, some human-machine collaboration is needed. Therefore, to measure the degree of automation of a company's advanced, we must not only look at the proportion of labor.

 

"Automation" in intelligent manufacturing is "digital", and "digitalization" is "intelligent." To measure the manufacturing level of an enterprise as a whole, more importantly, the combination of these three aspects.

 

Bai Peng exemplifies that a big feature of PC is that it is flexible and versatile. Take high-end products such as X1Carbon as an example. In the case of no color configuration, there are at least 20,000 combinations of products. The order received every day is different, the production process cannot be fully standardized, and it must have a certain flexible production capacity, which is one of the important capabilities of intelligent manufacturing.

 

An important part of the transformation of enterprise intelligent manufacturing is the combination of OT and IT. Traditional IT systems include SAP, MES (production system), ERP, etc. It is necessary to integrate OT (OperationTechnolo-gy, operational technology) into IT, and the two aspects can be combined in order to truly achieve intelligent manufacturing.

 

"For intelligent manufacturing, the most important thing is to be able to inform the OT, which is the most difficult." Bai Peng said. When OT is integrated with IT technology, it can truly build a good big data platform. With traditional IT technology or some data, the value of big data platforms is not enough. Because the data is not complete will limit the application, the application scenario will also be limited. How to open up OT and IT and build a big data platform is the key to truly achieving a very advanced digital information system.

 

Lianbao Factory is Lenovo's largest personal computer R&D and manufacturing base in the world. It has been in production for more than 120 million units in the past seven years. It is one of the bases for Lenovo to showcase its intelligent manufacturing results.

 

Qu Songtao, general manager of Lianbao Technology Intelligent Manufacturing Group, said that Lianbao has five insistences on smart manufacturing. First, insist on data-driven as the main line and redistribute resources. Second, adhere to the dual automation strategy, one is visible automation, one is invisible automation. Measuring a company not only needs to be evaluated by what it sees, but also the flow of the entire data behind the invisible, the flow of information and the flow of value. Third, adhere to the intelligent manufacturing transformation program centered on “softness and sensitivity”. Fourth, adhere to independent research and development, self-learning and self-practice, and unswervingly adjust their own processes. Fifth, insist on building an enabling organization and establishing an independent intelligent manufacturing solution center.