Where will the manufacturing "wind" blow in 2015?

Technological advances continue to push manufacturing industry from mechanization to automation, computer integrated manufacturing and future manufacturing, which is the consensus of many practitioners and researchers of intelligent manufacturing.

Next Generation Internet, Information Physics Fusion System (CPS), Big Data and other well-known "hot words" and related technologies are affecting future manufacturing. At the same time, the future demand generated by the manufacturing industry itself is also surrounded by key words such as time, quality, cost and efficiency.

On January 29, Professor Qiao Fei, Vice Dean and Professor of Electronic Information and Engineering College of Tongji University, organized and analyzed the development trend of intelligent manufacturing, the changing policies of manufacturing industry in different countries and the impact of big industrial data on manufacturing industry.

Manufacturing Industry Towards Intelligence and Networking

Emerging IT technologies triggered by the internet, such as Internet of things, information physics system (gps), cloud computing and big data, M2M communication, embedded control, will meet the development needs of manufacturing industry.

In recent years, a variety of new advanced manufacturing related concepts have emerged, such as reconfigurable manufacturing, distributed manufacturing, network manufacturing, ubiquitous manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing, predictive manufacturing, cloud manufacturing, green manufacturing and so on.

Qiaofei believes that although there are some differences in the connotation of the concepts of major advanced manufacturing, the characteristics of the overall development model of emerging advanced manufacturing are still very clear despite the concepts.

For example, Internet of Things, Mobile Internet and Internet of Things technology have the characteristics of self-adapting and networking of physical devices with control functions. Product life cycle process runs through the entire industrial chain. It needs synergy, integration of all data resources for adaptive manufacturing, and integration of production management and services. Advanced manufacturing mainly adopts the intelligent method, which reduces the complexity of the system and improves the efficiency of engineering and management.

With the development of advanced manufacturing in full swing, the research of manufacturing industry has gradually developed in three directions: manufacturing equipment, systems and services. The research covers the upgrading of industrial robots, high-end equipment, intelligent equipment and other equipment; information integration, large data application, intelligent manufacturing process, cloud computing technology application and other systems research; dynamic perception and intelligent control, integration and sharing of manufacturing and services and collaborative research.

Joe Fei described a future manufacturing scene to the audience: "Future manufacturing must be networked and intelligent. Vertical development is characterized by high automation and integration of information within factories, while horizontal development tends to outsource manufacturing services and global supply chain management.

Changes in International Manufacturing Industry

Joffe pointed out that manufacturing development in Germany, Japan, Britain and the United States has its own characteristics. Especially the concept and mode of "industrial 4.0" put forward by Germany are often talked about by all kinds of people in manufacturing industry.

As the "leader" of global manufacturing equipment, German manufacturing industry has a strong equipment and workshop manufacturing industry, has a high level of capability in the field of information technology in the world, and also has a very professional technology in embedded systems and automation engineering.

The so-called "industrial 4.0" project was launched by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology in 2013. The federal government invested 200 million euros in this project.

Before the launch of "Industrial 4.0" in Germany, in order to implement the strategy of revitalizing manufacturing industry, the Obama Administration announced in 2012 that it would invest $1 billion to build an innovation network of American manufacturing industry, including 15 manufacturing innovation institutes in the first batch.

According to Qiaofei, the cooperative relationship of American manufacturing companies stimulates enterprise innovation, and the mode of industry-university cooperative training of technical talents also has an important impact on manufacturing industry.

"Corporate partnerships in the United States play a key role in R&D of the world's leading technologies. The birth and rise of Silicon Valley is a typical example of the impact of government support on R&D. And the United States encourages the attempt to co-operate with manufacturing companies and educational and training institutions to provide unique opportunities for education and training of students and workers at all levels. Joffe commented.

It was the United Kingdom that put forward the manufacturing strategy earlier than Germany and the United States. Since 2008, the British government has launched the "high value manufacturing" strategy, hoping to encourage British enterprises to produce more world-class high value-added products at home, in order to enhance the role of manufacturing in promoting British economic growth.

Joffe believes that the integration of manufacturing and service industries has resulted in much of the wealth of British manufacturing from outside manufacturing activities. Britain has shifted more energy from traditional manufacturing to technological and design innovation. Britain's road to revitalizing manufacturing industry is not a simple re-reading of the industrialization process, but the upgrading and improvement of traditional manufacturing industry, which focuses on the development of "high-value manufacturing" to complement and promote the service industry and manufacturing industry.

Manufacturing in Japan has also put forward the strategy of "industrial revitalization". After the Abe government came into power, it put forward the strategy of "Abe Economics". Its three main contents are "industrial revitalization" besides financial quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus measures.

Among them, Japan's innovative measures of advanced manufacturing include: increasing the policy reform and subsidies for new energy, and expanding the cause to more advanced hydrogen fuel vehicles; sharing technological achievements among manufacturing giants in cross-industry development, making enterprise R&D investment more intensive and risk-resistant; attaching importance to the combination of manufacturing industry and market, and promulgating a number of guiding policies.

In line with the manufacturing strategy formulated by these countries, our government is formulating the strategy of "manufacturing 2025". Although the overall strategic layout of the country has not yet been formally promulgated, on January 26, Dongguan Municipal Government announced the Opinions on the Implementation of "Dongguan Manufacturing 2025 Strategy" in No. 1 of 2015, which demonstrates Dongguan's determination to push manufacturing to a higher level.

Qiaofei believes that the development of manufacturing industry in China should take digitalization, networking and intellectualization as the commanding point, and accelerate the in-depth integration of information and communication technology and manufacturing technology as the starting point. Four major transformations should be realized: from factor-driven to innovation-driven; from low-cost competitive advantage to quality-benefit competitive advantage; from extensive manufacturing with high resource consumption and pollutant emission to green manufacturing; and from production-oriented manufacturing to service-oriented manufacturing.