How can discrete industries such as clothing, automobiles, machine tools and electronic equipment seek digital leaps?

The vast majority of manufacturing enterprises are discrete enterprises, which have long faced difficulties such as high customization, highly complex process and long cycle. How to stand out in the surging market competition and embark on the road of digital transformation and intelligent upgrading? We are bound to face this inevitable road choice: if we do not do it, it is difficult to be reborn, and if we do wrong, we will be in trouble.

In this issue, Risun [intelligent manufacturing experts], focusing on China's manufacturing industry, will analyze the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of discrete enterprises and discuss the leap of China's intelligent manufacturing.

01 Setting of Discrete Manufacturing

Manufacturing enterprises are generally divided into discrete manufacturing and process manufacturing according to production operation types. Discrete manufacturing refers to that the production process of a product is usually divided into many processing tasks to complete. It is usually assembled by a series of discontinuous processes of multiple parts. It is usually workshop task production and assembly line production. Common private manufacturing industries such as electronic equipment, machine tools, automobiles and clothing are all discrete manufacturing enterprises.

For discrete manufacturing enterprises, the business process consists of the following main components: production material purchase, material storage, parts processing, assembly, inventory management, product sales, etc. Because discrete manufacturing enterprises have more materials, their operation and management are based on materials and their change process. It can be said that a discrete manufacturing enterprise takes materials as its main operation object. These materials have basic information, and their change process (form change, location change, value added, etc.) generates other information. The management system decides what action to take on the physical logistics through the information processing and analysis of materials.

02 Transformation and Upgrading of Discrete Intelligent Manufacturing Industry

More and more enterprise managers have realized that traditional discrete manufacturing enterprises have such problems as low automation and digital level, weak basic technology, high cost and energy consumption, and serious waste of resources in the manufacturing process. In response to policy advocacy and market demand, it is urgent to accelerate transformation and improve quality and efficiency to break the "shackles".

However, enterprise managers find that on the way to promote digital transformation and intelligent upgrading, they often hear words such as "we are different" and "we are not suitable". When they encounter problems such as different scales, demands and products, they subconsciously reject many scientific and reasonable policies and solutions.

Enterprise managers must realize that in discrete manufacturing, the processing method is fixed; The resources (equipment, manpower and environment) allocated for the processing method are fixed; Product parts, components and spare parts are fixed; The supply and demand and process of product processing are also fixed. However, the demands of different products, different quantities and different batches of parallel processing on employees' work are different. The interference to the production flow rate of each product is variable, and the production demand thus generated is also variable. Therefore, it is not only by introducing intelligent equipment to change the factory pattern that the discrete production process can operate perfectly under full load.

Several years ago, a well-known domestic automobile enterprise began the overall planning of digital workshops and intelligent factories. Risun intelligent team carries out digital intelligence upgrading for the whole plant area such as the production, transportation, quality inspection, sorting and packaging of automobile skins. By establishing a database, it realizes the interconnection of production and sales data, plans the application of MES system for data collection of automatic equipment, and realizes the landing application of digital workshops by using intelligent robots, automatic equipment and  suspension systems.

A real digital transformation and intelligent upgrading "project" should be a transformation from appearance to essence, from behavior to consciousness, and from compulsion to consciousness. It is a change in which enterprise managers make decisions, full-time departments promote and all employees participate.

03 Digital Workshop for Discrete Manufacturing

To promote digital discrete manufacturing, it is not advisable to go with the tide and follow the crowd. It is the right direction to understand the business needs and create a digital solution suitable for the development of the enterprise with the purpose of safeguarding the interests of the enterprise.

The production process of discrete manufacturing enterprises is ever-changing, but there is still a dress matching relationship in the production process: products are produced through one process, and there is a sequential or parallel relationship between processing processes; Whether it is equipment or manual operation, the main body, time, consumption, tooling and physical and chemical parameters of processing can be defined.

We can start with the production process, focus on breakthroughs, gradually expand and continuously improve, and achieve digital results step by step, then establish digital workshops and even intelligent plants.

An excellent discrete manufacturing digital workshop should have five principles:

1. The scientific principle reflects the core connotation and characteristics of the digital workshop, reflecting the production and manufacturing level of the enterprise and the direction of continuous improvement.

2. The principle of practicality, based on practice, integrates the new generation of information technology, and is applied in the digital workshop.

3. The principle of systematization is the linkage of the overall system of the workshop, with core elements, basic capabilities and performance levels.

4. The principle of operability is that the data is easy to collect, count and analyze.

5. The principle of progressiveness tracks the development of new technologies and reflects the latest technologies used in the digital workshop.

With the continuous upgrading and development of digital workshops in the industry, it is required that the management of typical discrete enterprises such as automobiles, machine tools and electronic equipment must have the awareness of digital transformation and prepare for intelligent upgrading.

In this issue, Risun [intelligent manufacturing expert] takes you to understand the basic situation of discrete manufacturing enterprises on the road of digital and intelligent transformation. In the next issue, we will introduce more about Intelligent Manufacturing in detail.

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