????Editor’s Note Industrial Internet is the commanding height of manufacturing competition in the future, and it is promoting profound changes in innovation mode, production mode, organizational form and business paradigm, and promoting the reshaping and reconstruction of industrial chain, industrial chain and value chain. It can be said with certainty that the industrial Internet will bring about all-round, deep-seated and revolutionary changes in the future industrial development, and have a far-reaching impact on social productive forces and the development of human history. In today’s world, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is booming. As a product of the deep integration of manufacturing and Internet, industrial Internet has become the key support of the new industrial revolution and an important cornerstone of intelligent manufacturing.
????The significance of the industrial Internet cannot be overestimated. However, what is the industrial Internet? How does the industrial internet change our manufacturing industry? Where does China rank in the world industrial Internet? In response to these major issues, the reporter interviewed industry experts in depth and explored the answers together.
At the just-concluded two sessions, the term "industrial Internet" frequently appeared in various discussions, and this year’s "Government Work Report" particularly emphasized the need to "develop industrial Internet platforms". "Industrial Internet" has become another hot word after the Internet of Things and intelligent manufacturing. Those large-scale manufacturing enterprises that are familiar with it are laid out early and seek to reshape their core competitiveness with the help of the industrial Internet.
What exactly is the industrial Internet? "In layman’s terms, the industrial Internet is a new network infrastructure that realizes the comprehensive interconnection of people, machines and things, and forms an emerging format and application model for intelligent development." Liu Jie, deputy director of the Information and Communication Administration of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, explained this.
????The foundation of intelligent manufacturing
Talking about the difference between the Internet of Things and the industrial Internet may be easy to understand. Because, literally, the Internet of Things emphasizes the "connection" between things, while the industrial Internet needs to realize the comprehensive interconnection of people, machines and things.
In fact, the dividends brought by new technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence to the manufacturing industry are inseparable from the carrier of industrial Internet. With the efforts of data experts, algorithm experts and other professionals, many mature Internet companies have been able to transplant these new technologies to industrial enterprises. "The industrial Internet itself is the product of the deep integration of information technology and industrial technology, and there is a powerful force behind it to promote cross-border innovation." Liu Jie said.
After applying the industrial internet platform, Guangdong Wanhexin Electric Co., Ltd. used artificial intelligence technology to coordinate tasks and process control among different manufacturing bases, and used big data technology to collect, archive and analyze 1.5 million pieces of data every month. With the help of this platform, the overall efficiency of Wanhe New Electric has increased by more than 30%, the product delivery cycle has been shortened by 20%, and the market competitiveness has been significantly improved. The annual sales revenue increased from 3 billion yuan to 4 billion yuan, up 33% year-on-year, and the inventory of raw materials decreased from 67 million to 52 million, down 22.3% year-on-year, which achieved obvious economic benefits, which is the "performance" set by the industrial Internet.
"New technologies such as big data, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence are all supporting means of the industrial Internet. Without the rapid development of these new technologies in recent years, there would be no global industrial Internet layout boom." Pan Wen, director of the Software Institute of CCID Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said.
So, what is the relationship between industrial Internet and intelligent manufacturing? In fact, the realization of intelligent manufacturing mainly relies on two basic capabilities, one is industrial manufacturing technology, and the other is industrial Internet.
The former includes advanced equipment, advanced materials and advanced technology, which is the basis for determining the manufacturing boundary and manufacturing capacity; The latter includes intelligent sensor control software and hardware, new industrial network, industrial internet platform, etc. It is the key to give full play to the potential of industrial equipment, technology and materials, improve production efficiency, optimize resource allocation efficiency, create differentiated products and realize service value-added.
Therefore, the industrial Internet is regarded as the basis of intelligent manufacturing. "We can understand that intelligent manufacturing is an intelligent industrial ecosystem including industrial internet, materials, design and technology. Previously, the vigorous development of intelligent manufacturing in China laid a good network foundation for the development of industrial Internet and provided a good development environment. " Pan Wen said.
????Achieve high-quality manufacturing
In the process of service transformation, China FAW Group Corporation has faced a series of outstanding problems: First, the old system can not meet the high concurrent and high frequency access requirements, and there has been a serious performance bottleneck. Second, the system that has been running for 10 years is old, and it is difficult to superimpose new services and expand. Third, different models are connected to different business platforms, which is complicated in maintenance and high in management cost. After the application of the industrial Internet platform, it not only realizes the effective management of tens of millions of vehicles, but also gets the support of real-time analysis of big data processing capabilities, as well as the support of fleet management, shared car rental and other services.
Obviously, the industrial Internet can solve the problems in the development of manufacturing in China and promote its high-quality development. Starting from the production end, industrial Internet can improve the quality and efficiency of the supply system, expand effective and mid-to high-end supply, enhance the adaptability of the supply-side structure to demand changes, and promote the development of China’s economy in a higher quality, more efficient, fairer and more sustainable direction.
"The main role of the industrial Internet is to play a core supporting role in the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises, effectively helping enterprises improve production efficiency and reduce costs." Pan Wen analyzed that on the one hand, the industrial Internet can promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, optimize the allocation of various resources and enhance industrial economic benefits; On the other hand, it can speed up the cultivation of emerging industries and give birth to many new industries with intelligent production, networked collaboration, service extension and personalized customization.
The concept of industrial Internet was put forward by General Electric Company (GE) in 2012. GE also believes that even if the industrial Internet can only increase the productivity and energy efficiency of specific industries in China by 1%, it has the potential to save about $24 billion in costs in China’s aviation, electric power, railways, medical care and petroleum industries in the next 15 years, and it will have the potential to bring $3 trillion in growth opportunities to China’s economy by 2030. This will effectively promote China’s industrial production mode from extensive and inefficient to green and lean, and the industrial ecology from low-end primary to high-end perfection, and promote the overall leap of the whole industrial chain.
"Why should we develop the industrial Internet? Because the industrial Internet can provide key support for the construction of a manufacturing power, it can also greatly expand the new space for the development of the digital economy. " Liu Jie said.
????Platform system is the core.
There is a saying in the industry that for the industrial Internet, the network system is the foundation, the platform system is the core, and the security system is the guarantee. Among them, the significance of network system and security system is easy to understand, but why is the platform system the core?
In this regard, An Xiaopeng, deputy director of the Information and Software Services Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, replied that the industrial Internet platform can be said to be the "operating system" of the industrial Internet, because the number of people, machines and things connected by the industrial Internet platform will be far greater than that of various single operating systems, and its value will far exceed these operating systems.
"The industrial Internet platform is also the core of the new ecological competition in manufacturing." An Xiaopeng explained that the industrial Internet platform has a significant "Matthew effect". When its industrial APP and users reach a certain scale, the platform will explode and form a winner-take-all competition situation. The industrial internet platform also has a significant "substitution effect", which can greatly reduce the cost and difficulty of enterprise information deployment and promote the manufacturing industry to a new stage of system reconstruction, power change and paradigm shift.
In the view of Yu Xiaohui, chief engineer of China Information and Communication Research Institute and secretary-general of Industrial Internet Industry Alliance, China’s industrial Internet has initially formed three application paths, namely, smart factories for improving internal productivity of enterprises, and smart products, services and collaboration for extending the external value chain of enterprises, and the platform operation for open ecology is the industrial Internet platform. The first two have been practiced abroad, but the industrial internet platform has not been explored in the world for a long time.
The industrial Internet platform is entering the strategic window of large-scale expansion. China’s aerospace cloud network, Sany, Haier, Huawei and other enterprises have taken the lead in launching industrial Internet platform services based on their own manufacturing capabilities and scale advantages, and have been widely used in aerospace, construction machinery, steel and petrochemical and many other fields.
"The industrial Internet is giving birth to a new industrial system." Pan Wen believes that the mobile Internet platform has created a series of new industrial links and values such as application development, application distribution, online and offline. At present, the industrial internet platform has shown similar clues in application innovation and integration of industry and finance, and it is expected to develop into a brand-new industrial system in the future, which will promote the formation of a multi-level development environment for mass entrepreneurship and innovation. (Reporter Xin Huang)