Some time ago, everyone has been discussing Germany's "Industry 4.0". In fact, this problem can rise to a very high level. This concerns future world leaders. What opportunities and challenges did Germany, the United States and China encounter in distribution? Who is most likely to control the world can start here.
Let's start with Germany. "Industry 4.0" has indeed risen to Germany's national strategy, but even German industry has more than 300 different interpretations of "Industry 4.0", which shows that new things can not be defined casually, let alone us outsiders? So what you hear is false, and what you see is true. If you want to have a say in Industry 4.0, you must go to the first-line factory in Germany to study deeply and get a glimpse of the true face of Lushan Mountain. Let's learn and discuss, while following the personal experience of the reporter of Global magazine in Germany!
First, the future factory-"machine" has a soul, it can read "products"
Siemens Amberg Electronics Factory, located in a small town in the northeast of Bavaria, is known as the model factory of German Industry 4.0, although there are only three seemingly simple workshops. It is a microcosm of German industry in the future.
Amberg has the most advanced digital production platform in Europe. This factory mainly produces industrial automation products such as PLC. In the whole production process, no matter components, semi-finished products or products to be delivered, they all have their own codes. After the circuit board is installed in the production line, each process can be automatically determined. Every process of production, including welding, assembly or logistics packaging, all process data are also recorded for traceability;
More importantly, on an assembly line, different parts can be automatically assembled by pre-setting the control program, and the assembly line can produce products with different characteristics.
Because "product" and "machine" have realized "communication", the whole production process has been optimized and IT control has been realized, so the production efficiency has been greatly improved: less than a quarter of the workload needs manual processing, mainly data detection and recording; The factory produces 3 billion components every year, and can produce one product per second, which is 8 times higher than that before digitalization. Due to the real-time monitoring and processing of all components and processes, the factory can supply products to customers within 24 hours.
In addition, due to the real-time monitoring and analysis of quality data, the defective rate is greatly reduced. Carl Bitner, head of the factory, said that the qualified rate of the factory was as high as 99.9988%, "no similar factory in the world can achieve such a low rate of defective products".
Second, the automation center-the machine will also update itself.
After leaving Amberg, our reporter went to Raimongo in northern Germany, which is the industrial automation application center of the Flawn Hof Institute in Germany, specializing in the research and development and production of equipment and solutions for enterprises to promote "Industry 4.0".
"In the traditional industrial era, it often took several days to replace the equipment of a mobile machine. But now we only need a few minutes. You Ergen IELTS bonet, head of the center, said. This is because in the installation process of traditional equipment, technicians need to manually connect new components to the working environment before adjusting the control equipment on the production line. Just like I used a computer to work decades ago. " At that time, every new part needed a floppy disk with a driver. After installation, it often conflicts with other components on the computer, so that users have to adjust it manually. "
Now the emergence of USB makes everything easy. We just need to plug the new equipment into the computer. "Plug and play" has become a vivid description of this technological progress. Now the experts of Industry 4.0 use "plug and play production" to refer to the smooth configuration of equipment and systems, just like Ramono's scene. Just like computers, future components will spontaneously connect with the working environment and integrate themselves into existing control systems.
3. Will robots replace workers?
According to the statistics of an independent market research institute in Germany, as of August 20 14, 70% of industrial SMEs in Germany have started the innovation of "Industry 4.0", mainly including the introduction of automation and intelligent equipment for production. What kind of future does this portend?
First of all, the industrial center of gravity has changed. Before Industry 4.0, all innovations were aimed at reducing costs through scale effect and employee productivity. The key to the success of the future industry lies in how to improve productivity while shortening the cycle from "design" to "listing" and how to meet more complex and personalized product needs. Water Mu Ran Comments: Of course, this is actually to meet people's pursuit of diversified and personalized products! Indeed, this is a world trend.
Secondly, the boundary between virtual and real seems to have been eliminated. For example, all production procedures of Amberg factory can be simulated in computer in advance, and production analysis and optimization can be completed in virtual world.
In this way, it seems that artificial will be replaced by machine intelligence. Germany's Der Spiegel once published an article worrying that digitalization would take away most of the existing jobs, but the prospect is not so pessimistic. William Bauer, dean of the German Flawn Hof Institute of Employment Economics, believes that although the new industrial system cancels many production joints that require the participation of "people", it will also bring new problems and create space. In the future, manpower will focus on innovation and decision-making.
Four: whoever has mastered big data will have mastered the future!
It is precisely because of the self-improvement system of the machine that "Industry 4.0" will produce a large amount of data. According to the reporter's description: Take Amberg factory as an example, there are more than 1000 online monitoring nodes on its production line, and more than 50 million pieces of data are collected every day.
Then the question is coming! The new industrial production mode will produce a huge amount of data, which ultimately belongs to factories, software manufacturers, factory customers or end users? And what brand-new business model can be created by using these data? This will be the key issue to determine the future industrial competition.
Germany VS the United States; Daimler VS Google
To put it bluntly, this problem is actually the competition between "German manufacturing industry" and "American science and technology industry", that is, the competition between the prospects of the two industries. A very subtle and dramatic action is that Google, Apple, Amazon and many American Internet companies are "attacking German industry". They are entering the traditional industrial powers of Germany with new industrial thinking and game rules, and the latter may even become their suppliers and affiliated companies.
This statement is not alarmist. Take Google as an example. In recent years, it has acquired a supplier of intelligent heating equipment and turned itself into a competitor of Bosch. The technology of measuring blood sugar content in tears is added to the contact lens of diabetic patients and the results are transmitted to smart phones, which has entered the medical field that Siemens is good at. Now, Google is still repairing driverless cars and has become a peer of Daimler and BMW.
(Above) Daimler teamed up with BMW to launch a two-seat electric car.
Can "Industry 4.0" help German industry resist such "invasion"? Henning Kagermann, former CEO of SAP, a German software company, said that most German SME owners didn't realize a key issue. It is not enough to just produce smart products. What matters is the ability to provide intelligent services. Otherwise, the leading manufacturers in the German market at present may only be alternative product suppliers for service providers in the future.
Comments: "Industry 4.0" originated in Germany and developed in the United States!
Two examples just illustrate this point: Daimler has set up a research and development center in Silicon Valley to develop a car intelligent entertainment system, but this system ultimately depends on Apple's Siri voice system; German energy giants REWE and E.on recently discovered that their competitors are a start-up with a history of only five years. This small enterprise connects more than 1500 natural gas, solar energy and wind energy power generation equipment that does not belong to it through the network, and can switch equipment as needed to form a virtual power plant.
It can be seen that whoever can master the data and information attached to these intelligent products, whether it is entertainment equipment in cars or solar panels, will also master the ability to provide intelligent services.
Comments: Are you a manufacturer, a service provider or a user? The subordinate order of these three determines the future world pattern! "Industry 4.0" is actually "Information 2.0" (traditional Internet is information 1.0). Let's look forward to history again. If the historical process of human society is an exponential curve, then today is the critical point of the development of human society! New technologies such as big data, cloud computing and Internet of Things will bring a series of miraculous changes! The subversion in the future is so terrible that people are so looking forward to it!
When Daimler meets Google, it is not only the competition between Germany and the United States, but also means that whoever can represent the most advanced productivity will win the future under the impetus of the mobile Internet!
Finally, I can't help thinking of a question: Where is China?
Shui Muran's finishing information comes from the reporter of Global magazine.