What is intelligent manufacturing: five characteristics, eight modes, and ten technologies

Intelligent Manufacturing (IM) is a human-machine integrated intelligent system composed of intelligent machines and human experts. It can perform intelligent activities such as analysis, reasoning, judgment, conceptualization, and decision-making in the manufacturing process. By collaborating with intelligent machines, we aim to expand, extend, and partially replace the mental labor of human experts in the manufacturing process. It updates the concept of manufacturing automation and extends it to flexibility, intelligence, and high integration.

Intelligent manufacturing, originating from the research of artificial intelligence, is generally believed to be the sum of knowledge and intelligence. The former is the foundation of intelligence, while the latter refers to the ability to acquire and apply knowledge to solve problems.

Intelligent manufacturing should include intelligent manufacturing technology and intelligent manufacturing systems. Intelligent manufacturing systems can not only continuously enrich the knowledge base in practice, but also have self-learning functions, as well as the ability to collect and understand environmental information and their own information, and analyze, judge, and plan their own behavior.

1、 Five characteristics of intelligent manufacturing

1. Unmanned production site, truly achieving a "unmanned" factory

The widespread application of intelligent devices such as industrial robots and robotic arms has made unmanned manufacturing in factories possible. CNC machining centers, intelligent robots, coordinate measuring instruments, and other flexible manufacturing units make "unmanned factories" more accessible.

2. Visualize production data and use big data analysis to make production decisions

Currently, information technology has penetrated into every aspect of the manufacturing industry, including barcodes, QR codes RFID、 Industrial sensors, industrial automatic control systems, industrial Internet of Things, ERP, CAD/CAM/CAE/CAI and other technologies are widely used, and data is becoming increasingly abundant, with higher requirements for real-time data. This requires enterprises to adapt to the trend of manufacturing, utilize big data technology, make real-time corrections, establish product virtual models to simulate and optimize production processes, and even reduce production energy consumption and costs.

3. Networked production equipment to achieve the "Internet of Things" in the workshop

4. Paperless production documents for efficient and green manufacturing

Building a green manufacturing system, constructing green factories, and achieving clean production, waste resource utilization, and low-carbon energy are important strategies for China's "intelligent manufacturing". Traditional manufacturing industries generate a large number of paper documents during the production process, which not only leads to a significant amount of waste, but also presents problems such as inconvenient searching, difficult sharing, and time-consuming tracking. After implementing paperless management, staff can quickly query, browse, and download the required production information on the production site, greatly reducing manual transmission and circulation based on paper documents, thereby eliminating file and data loss, further improving production preparation efficiency and production operation efficiency, and achieving green and paperless production.

5. Transparency in the production process and the "neural" system of smart factories

Advancing the intelligence of manufacturing processes, by building smart factories, promoting simulation optimization, digital control, real-time monitoring of status information, and adaptive control of manufacturing processes, and achieving intelligent control of the entire process, is a major strategy for Made in China 2025. In industries such as machinery, automobiles, aviation, ships, light industry, household appliances, and electronic information, the model of building smart factories by enterprises is to promote the intelligence of production equipment (production lines), with the aim of expanding the value space of products and achieving value growth based on the improvement of production efficiency and product effectiveness.

2、 Eight modes

1. Internet Factory - Connecting the "Information Island" of Enterprise Operations

2. Energy optimization management throughout the entire production process - improving energy resource utilization efficiency

The whole process energy optimization management mode is mainly applied in industries such as petrochemicals, non-ferrous metals, and steel. This mode focuses on improving energy resource utilization, collects energy efficiency data from various equipment and links through MES, and constructs an energy management system (EMS) or MES with an energy management module to optimize production processes, equipment, energy supply, and personnel in real time.

3. Traceability of the entire product lifecycle - enhancing product quality control capabilities

The product life cycle traceability model is mainly used in food, pharmaceutical and other fields, the model to quality control as the core, the main approach is to make the product has a unique identification throughout the life cycle, through the MES system to carry out quality judgment and process stability and other online quality testing and early warning.

4. Flexible manufacturing-rapid response to diverse market needs

The flexible manufacturing mode that quickly responds to diversified market needs is mainly used in casting, clothing and other fields. The main method is to realize that the production line can process a variety of products/parts at the same time, the workshop logistics system can realize automatic batching, build an advanced scheduling system (APS), and realize efficient coordination and integration among industrial control system, manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning system (ERP).

5. Large-scale personalized customization to meet the personalized needs of users

The large-scale personalized customization model is mainly used in consumer goods such as clothing, textiles, home furnishings, and home appliances. It realizes customized services through product modular design, product personalized customization service platform and personalized product database.

6. Remote operation and maintenance services-improve the level of equipment/product operation and maintenance services

The interconnected factory model is mainly used in petrochemical, steel, electronics, home appliances and other fields, the application of Internet of Things technology to build production data acquisition system, manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning system (ERP), to open up the "information island" in enterprise operations ".

7. Network collaborative manufacturing-supply chain upstream and downstream collaborative optimization.

The network collaborative manufacturing model is mainly used in aerospace, automobile manufacturing and other fields, which takes supply chain optimization as the core, builds a cross-enterprise manufacturing resource collaboration platform, realizes the integration and docking of inter-enterprise research and development, management and service systems, and carries out dynamic analysis and flexible configuration of manufacturing services and resources.

8. Digital integration of product life cycle to shorten product development cycle

The product life cycle digital integration model is mainly used in aviation equipment, automobiles, ships, construction machinery and other equipment manufacturing fields, through (MBD) product development technology, full life cycle management system (PLM) and other means to achieve the core purpose of shortening the product development cycle.

3. ten key technologies

1. Smart Decision Making

In the course of business operations, a large amount of data is generated, such as contracts, refunds, expenses, inventory, cash, products, customers, investments, equipment, production, delivery times, etc., which are generally structured data that can be analyzed and forecasted in multiple dimensions. At the same time, the application of these data can also extract the KPI of the enterprise and compare it with the preset goals.

2. Intelligent management (Smart Management)

The core operation management systems of manufacturing enterprises include human asset management system (HCM), customer relationship management system (CRM), enterprise asset management system (EAM), energy management system (EMS), supplier relationship management system (SRM), enterprise portal (EP), business process management system (BPM), etc. The most important condition for intelligent management and intelligent decision-making is the accuracy of basic data and the seamless integration of major information systems.

3. Smart logisTIcs and SCM

The internal procurement, production and sales processes of manufacturing enterprises are accompanied by the flow of materials. Therefore, more and more manufacturing enterprises pay more and more attention to logistics automation while paying attention to production automation. Automated three-dimensional warehouses, unmanned guided vehicles (AGV) and intelligent hanging systems have been widely used. In the logistics centers of manufacturing enterprises and logistics enterprises, the application of intelligent sorting system, stacking robot and automatic roller table system is becoming more and more popular. WMS(Warehouse Management System, warehouse management system) and TMS(Transport Management System, transportation management system) are also widely concerned by manufacturing enterprises and logistics enterprises.

4. Smart R & D

Research and development is crucial for smart manufacturing companies. To develop intelligent products, enterprises need the cooperation of electromechanical software and multi-disciplines. In order to shorten the product development cycle, it is necessary to deeply apply simulation technology, establish virtual digital prototype, realize multi-disciplinary simulation, and reduce physical tests through simulation. It is necessary to implement the ideas of standardization, serialization and modularization to support mass customer customization or product personalized customization. It is necessary to combine simulation technology with test management to improve the confidence of simulation results.

5. Smart ProducTIon line

Automated production line is a form of intelligent production line. Companies in many industries are highly dependent on automated production lines, such as steel, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, tobacco, chip manufacturing, electronic assembly, automobile and parts manufacturing. Automated production lines can be divided into rigid automated production lines and flexible automated production lines. In order to improve production efficiency, industrial robots and hanging systems are more and more widely used in automated production lines.

6. Smart workshop (Smart workshop)

A workshop usually has multiple production lines, to achieve the intelligent workshop, the need for production status, equipment status, energy consumption, production quality, material consumption and other information for real-time collection and analysis, efficient scheduling and reasonable scheduling, significantly improve equipment utilization (OEE). Therefore, no matter which manufacturing industry, manufacturing execution system (MES) has become the inevitable choice of enterprises.

7. Smart Factory (Smart Factory)

A factory usually consists of multiple workshops, and large enterprises have multiple factories. As an intelligent factory, not only the production process should be automated, transparent, visualized, and lean, but also product testing, quality inspection and analysis, and production logistics should also be integrated with the production process.

8. Smart products (Smart Product)

Any manufacturing enterprise should think about how to add intelligent units to the product and enhance the added value of the product. Typical smart products include smart phones, smart wearable devices, drones, smart cars, smart home appliances, smart vending machines, etc.

9. Smart equipment (Smart Equipment)

Intelligent equipment is also an intelligent product, which can compensate for processing errors and improve processing accuracy,

10. Smart Services (Smart Service)

Intelligent service is a big data technology: based on sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT), it can sense the status of the product, so as to carry out preventive maintenance, help customers replace spare parts in time, and even help customers bring business opportunities by understanding the status of product operation. It can also collect big data of product operation to assist enterprises in making marketing decisions.

Source: YouYice Intelligent Technology (Public Number)