Large data-driven manufacturing moves towards intelligentization

"Human beings are moving from the IT era to the DT era," Jack Ma, Alibaba Group founder, has spared no effort to sell his views on various occasions, and the information society has entered the era of big data. The emergence of large data changes the way people live and work, and also changes the mode of operation of manufacturing enterprises.

Manufacturing is also in an era of data explosion

In recent years, with the rapid development of information technology and communication technology such as Internet, IoT, cloud computing and so on, the explosion of data has become a serious challenge and valuable opportunity that many industries face together. With the development of manufacturing technology and the popularization of modern management concepts, the operation of manufacturing enterprises relies more and more on information technology. Today, the entire value chain of manufacturing, the entire lifecycle of manufacturing products, involves a lot of data. At the same time, the data of manufacturing enterprises also showed an explosive growth trend.

Manufacturing enterprises need to manage a wide variety of data, involving a large number of structured data and unstructured data:

(1) Product data: Design, modeling, process, processing, testing, maintenance data, product structure, parts configuration relationship, change record, etc.

(2) Operational data: Organizational structure, business management, production equipment, marketing, quality control, production, procurement, inventory, target planning, e-commerce and so on.

(3) Value chain data: Customers, suppliers, partners and so on.

(4) External data: Economic operation data, industry data, market data, competitor data, etc.

With the development of mass customization and network synergy, the manufacturing enterprises also need to accept the personalized data of many consumers from the internet in real time, and allocate the resources, organize production and manage more kinds of relevant data through the network.

Second, large data is the lifeblood of the industrial Internet

The huge value that large data can bring is being recognized by traditional industry, it is through the technology innovation and development, and the data perception, collection, analysis, sharing, for enterprise managers and participants to look at the manufacturing value chain of a new perspective.

(1) Realization of intelligent production

In the German "Industry 4.0", through the information Physical system (CPS) to achieve plant/workshop equipment sensing and control layer of data and enterprise information system integration, so that the production of large data into the cloud computing data Center for storage, analysis, decision-making and in turn to guide production.

In particular, production lines, production equipment will be equipped with sensors, crawl data, and then through wireless communication connected to the Internet, transmission data, the production itself for real-time monitoring. The data produced by the production is also processed quickly, transfer, feedback to the production process, upgrade the plant into an intelligent network that can be managed and adapted, making industrial control and management optimization, maximizing the use of limited resources, reducing the cost of industrial and resource allocation, and enabling the production process to proceed efficiently.

In the past, during the operation of the equipment, its natural wear and tear will make a certain change in the quality of the product. And because of information technology, the development of Internet of things, can now through the sensor technology, real-time perception of data, know what the product failure, where the need for accessories, so that the production process of these factors can be accurately controlled, truly intelligent production. Therefore, to some extent, the large data produced by the factory/workshop sensors directly determines the intelligent level of the intelligent equipment required by the "Industrial 4.0".

In addition, from the point of view of production energy consumption, the equipment in the production process using sensors to monitor all production processes, can detect the abnormal or peak energy consumption, which can continuously optimize the production process of energy consumption. At the same time, the analysis of the large data of all processes will greatly reduce the production energy consumption.

(2) Realize mass customization

Large data is the foundation of manufacturing intellectualization, its application in manufacturing mass customization includes data acquisition, data management, order management, intelligent manufacturing, customization platform, and the core is customization platform. The customization data reaches a certain order of magnitude, and can realize large data application. Through the excavation of large data, to achieve popular prediction, precision matching, fashion management, social applications, marketing push and so on more applications. At the same time, large data can help manufacturing enterprises to improve marketing targeted, reduce logistics and inventory costs, reduce the risk of production resources input.

The use of these large data for analysis will lead to warehousing, distribution, sales efficiency and substantial increase in cost reduction, and will greatly reduce inventory, optimize the supply chain. At the same time, using large data such as sales data, sensor data of products and data of supplier database, manufacturing enterprises can accurately predict the demand of goods in different market regions of the world. By keeping track of inventory and selling prices, manufacturing companies can save a lot of costs.

"Industry 4.0" is based on information physical system (CPS) to achieve "intelligent factory", so that intelligent equipment based on the processing of information, judgment, analysis, self-regulation, automatic drive production and processing, until the final product completion and other steps. It can be said that the smart factory has been prepared for the final manufacturing mass customization production.

To achieve personalized consumer demand, on the one hand, manufacturing enterprises can produce products or services that meet consumers ' individual preferences, on the one hand, the internet needs to provide consumers with personalized customization needs. Because of the large number of consumers, each person's needs are different, resulting in the need for specific information is also different, coupled with changing demand, it constitutes a large product demand data.

The interaction and transaction between consumers and manufacturing enterprises will also generate a large amount of data, mining and analysis of these consumer dynamic data, can help consumers participate in product demand analysis and product design and other innovative activities, to contribute to product innovation. Manufacturing enterprises to deal with these data, and then pass to the intelligent equipment, data mining, equipment adjustment, raw material preparation and other steps, in order to produce a personalized demand for customized products.

Third, large data constitute a new generation of intelligent factory

The individuation of consumer demand requires the traditional manufacturing industry to break through the existing mode of production and manufacture, and to data processing and excavating the huge amount of data and information produced by the consumption demand. At the same time, in the production process of these non-standard products, production information and data is also a large number, the need for timely collection, processing and analysis, in turn to guide production.

These two aspects of large data flow through the Internet in the final transmission between intelligent devices, by intelligent equipment analysis, judgment, decision-making, adjustment, control and continue to carry out intelligent production, production of high-quality personalized products. It can be said that large data constitute a new generation of intelligent factories.

The large data in the intelligent factory is the large data produced by the interaction and integration of the "information" and "Physical" world. Large data applications will lead to a new era of innovation and change in manufacturing enterprises. Based on the traditional information data of manufacturing management, through the physical data perception brought by the internet of things, the private cloud of production data in the "Industrial 4.0" era was formed, and the development, production, operation, marketing and management of manufacturing enterprises were innovated. These innovations bring faster speed, higher efficiency and sharper insight to manufacturing enterprises.

The Center for International Economic and Technical cooperation, Ministry of Industry and Information technology Wang Xiwen

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)