"New Infrastructure" is gaining momentum! The Industrial Internet is entering a critical year for implementation | CCF-GAIR 2020

Author | Guo Renxian

The industrial Internet is a core element of the "new infrastructure" and one of the most interesting areas in the second half of the Internet.

On March 4, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting and pointed out that it is necessary to accelerate the construction of major projects and infrastructure that have been clearly defined in the national plan, as well as speed up the construction of new infrastructure such as the industrial Internet, 5G networks, and AI.

Among them, the industrial Internet was reiterated as the "new infrastructure", which is somewhat exciting.

If we say that there is an industrial revolution every other era, the fourth industrial revolution is happening under the catalysis of the new generation of information technology, as traditional industrial manufacturing is facing rising costs and low profits, which are "obstacles" in the development of enterprises and urgently needs transformation. As an important cornerstone of the fourth industrial revolution, how will the industrial Internet subvert the traditional manufacturing model, production organization method and industrial form?

Unlike the consumer Internet, the industrial Internet has many sub-sectors and is difficult to standardize. The former's business model of burning money, attracting users, and earning traffic cannot be replicated in the industrial Internet. The development of the industrial Internet requires not only new ideas, but also the support of more companies in the sub-sectors.

In addition to the support of platform companies such as Siemens, Schneider Electric, Haier, Alibaba and hundreds of follower companies, big data platforms, industrial AI, industrial robots, industrial software, etc. are also indispensable.

With so many competitors vying for the market, and given that the industrial Internet has a vast market space and numerous sub-sectors, what path will its development take?

The concept of Industrial Internet was first proposed by General Electric (GE) in 2012, originating from the manufacturing industry. It has been eight years since the concept was proposed.

At present, enterprises in many different fields and regions in China are accelerating their platform layout. Especially after experiencing the baptism of the epidemic, the industrial Internet has officially stood at the super outlet of the industry and entered the stage from conceptual framework to practical implementation.

After the outbreak of the epidemic, the manufacturing industry faced an unprecedented "big test". In order to effectively prevent and control the epidemic, many companies were forced to delay their start of work, which was the most severe blow to the manufacturing industry that relied heavily on manpower and equipment.

• For example, if employees fail to arrive on time, it means that there will be no one to operate the machines and equipment in the production workshop;

• If the production line stops, the business activities of the entire enterprise will come to a standstill;

• In addition, if orders cannot be delivered on time, the company will also face risks of breach of contract and loss of customers;

In addition, traditional industrial enterprises have low levels of informatization and digitization. When faced with major emergencies, it is difficult for managers to quickly understand the overall situation and make their own judgments to respond to emergency needs or cooperate with centralized deployment...

Although labor-intensive industries provide us with a large number of job opportunities, the outbreak of the epidemic has also made us realize that the high dependence on manual labor poses potential risks to business operations to a certain extent.

In addition, as the epidemic is raging around the world, countries have been forced to take "lockdown" measures, people's production and life are at a standstill, anti-globalization thoughts are accelerating, and my country's core position in the global supply chain is being challenged.

Xu Xiaolan, president of the China Industrial Internet Research Institute, said in a proposal to the 2020 Two Sessions that "the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has put a severe test on the country's governance system and capabilities. Looking back at the pandemic, the monitoring response was not timely, the production and allocation channels for emergency support materials were not smooth, the flow of personnel was not fully understood, and personal health information was underreported or concealed. These phenomena have exposed my country's inadequate ability to collect, analyze, utilize, and make decisions on data in a modern industrial system. It is urgent to achieve data interconnection and interoperability of all factors and the entire industrial chain in the construction of the national emergency management system."

When talking about the Industrial Internet, Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, once said that most companies feel that the Industrial Internet is "loud but slow to gain popularity, hard to see and touch". There are many reasons for this phenomenon. From the perspective of the technology itself, it meets the requirements of the Industrial Internet, but there is still a lot of optimization and work to be done.

In the digital transformation of enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises face difficulties in digital transformation due to problems such as lack of funds and technological barriers. The driving role played by leading companies in the industry in the digital transformation of the industrial chain needs to be further enhanced. In addition, there is a large gap in the overall digital development level among industries.

However, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic has allowed various industries to more clearly see the value of the industrial Internet, and at the same time has fully demonstrated the advantages of this long-brewing wave of industrial digitalization.

In terms of matching the supply and demand of medical supplies, Haier's COSMOPlat platform has launched a medical supplies information sharing resource aggregation platform. At the same time, Aerospace Cloud Network has released the "Industrial Internet Application Service Platform for Medical and Health Textile Products and Epidemic Prevention Materials", which has played a role in the production capacity scheduling of medical enterprises and the precise matching of supply and demand of protective products.

In terms of emergency hospital construction, Shugen Interconnect and XCMG used the remote dispatch capabilities of equipment based on the Industrial Internet to rationally arrange the operations of industrial machinery fleets, supporting the rapid construction of hospitals such as the Vulcan Mountain Hospital.

In terms of operation and maintenance services, Alibaba Cloud has built a medical equipment monitoring platform to provide services such as full life cycle management of medical equipment and equipment data visualization. In addition, Alibaba Cloud has launched a production management solution for epidemic prevention and resumption of work in collaboration with DingTalk to monitor the operating status of the factory in real time and quickly assist in production management decision-making.

Industrial Internet of Things has opened its "Fii Cloud Service Developer Center's five core services" for free, including project management, code hosting, online IDE, continuous integration, and test management, for other industrial enterprise users to use for online office and collaborative development...

After the outbreak of the epidemic, relevant companies have played an important role in epidemic prevention and control and resumption of work and production by leveraging the advantages of the industrial Internet in network collaboration, remote services, and supply and demand matching. While providing effective support for winning the battle against the epidemic, it has also allowed the industrial Internet to take root in more fields and is widely used in steel metallurgy, petroleum and petrochemicals, home appliances and clothing, machinery, energy, etc.

The industrial Internet has also changed from an "optional option" for enterprises to a "must have option" for commercial competition, and the digital transformation of enterprises has entered the fast lane.

More than half a year has passed since the outbreak of the epidemic. Now that the epidemic has eased, people are reflecting more deeply on the role of the industrial Internet.

In 2017, the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Development of Industrial Internet through 'Internet + Advanced Manufacturing'". This year marks the final year of the Three-Year Action Plan for the Innovation and Development of the Industrial Internet, and it is also the first year that the Industrial Internet has been classified as "new infrastructure".

The guiding opinions point out that in the three-year initial stage from 2018 to 2020, a low-latency, highly reliable, and wide-coverage industrial Internet network infrastructure will be initially built, an industrial Internet identification resolution system will be initially established, an industrial Internet platform system with different focuses and coordinated development will be initially formed, and an industrial Internet security assurance system will be initially established.

On March 4 this year, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting and clearly pointed out that the construction of new infrastructure such as industrial Internet, 5G networks, and AI should be accelerated.

On March 20, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Promoting the Accelerated Development of the Industrial Internet", which clearly proposed 20 specific measures in six areas: accelerating the construction of new infrastructure, accelerating the expansion of integrated innovative applications, accelerating the improvement of security assurance systems, accelerating the growth of innovative development momentum, accelerating the improvement of industrial ecological layout, and increasing policy support, to further promote the development and application of the industry.

The industrial Internet is expected to play a role in hedging against economic downturn and enabling China's manufacturing industry to transform from big to strong.

Under the baptism of the epidemic, the complex international environment, the new demands of the manufacturing industry, and the country's established development strategy and other multiple factors, vigorously developing the industrial Internet has become the only choice. 2020 is destined to be a key year in the history of the development of the industrial Internet.

The foundation of a country's economy is inseparable from the real economy, among which manufacturing is the cornerstone of the real economy. Guangdong Province has always had a developed manufacturing industry. With the advancement of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in the past two years, it has greatly promoted local development. As the most dynamic city in Guangdong, Shenzhen has gathered many star companies in the manufacturing industry, such as Foxconn, BYD, Skyworth Group, DJI, Han's Laser... How can many manufacturing companies use the industrial Internet to achieve "quality improvement, cost reduction, and efficiency improvement"?

From August 7 to August 9, 2020, the 2020 Global Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Summit (CCF-GAIR) will be held in Shenzhen. The conference is hosted by the China Computer Federation (CCF) and co-organized by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) and Leiphone.com.

Some of the topics that will be discussed in this year's "Industrial Internet Special Session" are:

• How can we quickly promote the implementation of China's unique industrial Internet platforms and solutions through policy guidance and by leveraging the characteristics of domestic industrial clusters?

• How to solve standard protocol issues and quickly realize the interconnection and interoperability of industrial equipment?

• How does the Industrial Internet use AI?

• Under the wave of new infrastructure, what is the focus of the industrial Internet industry?

• What will the ecological structure of the Industrial Internet look like? What are its new features?

• How to open up the “last mile” of industrial digital transformation?

• What new insights does the COVID-19 pandemic bring to industrial digital transformation?

  ......

This forum will jointly discuss the construction of new infrastructure for the Industrial Internet, including the implementation of industrial Internet platforms, industrial AI, industrial brains, 5G, edge computing, industrial software, industrial robots, etc., systematically summarize the industrial digitalization trends and best practices in various vertical fields, and look forward to the market opportunities and development space for industrial Internet companies under the wave of new infrastructure. At last year's Industrial Internet Summit, the following guests shared:

• Cui Shuguang is the Executive Dean of the School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), the Dean of the Future Intelligent Network Research Institute, the Executive Vice President of the Shenzhen Big Data Research Institute, and an IEEE Fellow.

• Wang Jianmin, Dean of the School of Software, Vice Dean of the School of Information, and Executive Director of the Big Data Research Center of Tsinghua University;

• Zeng Zhenyu, Vice President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and President of Data Intelligence;

• Li Dongxi, General Manager of Operations of Internet of Things Service Division of Siemens (China);

• Wang Jianyu, General Manager of Industrial Intelligent Service Division of Baowu Equipment Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.;

• Zhao Weidong, General Manager of Haier Digital Technology (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd.;

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For the "Industrial Internet Special Session" of the 2020 Global Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Summit (CCF-GAIR), we will continue to comprehensively upgrade the conference guest lineup.

Looking back at the history of the CCF-GAIR conference, it was founded in 2016. Over the past four years, we have invited 1 Nobel Prize winner, 1 Turing Award winner, more than 20 academicians from China and the United States, more than 30 IEEE Fellows, more than 500 scholars with high reputations in their respective professional fields, and well-known entrepreneurs, investors and innovators in the field of AI to give conference reports and related roundtable sharing, attracting more than 10,000 AI scholars and practitioners to exchange ideas. It is the highest-level and most influential summit in the field of local artificial intelligence so far.

One more thing: The original price of the summit ticket is 3999 yuan, and now the early bird price is 699 yuan. CCF members can get a 30% discount on the ticket. But the benefits are coming. Now the [Industrial Internet] special session has released a limited number of free special tickets. You can log in to apply. The organizer will review and issue them. Hurry up if you want to grab it~

To apply for free tickets for the "Industrial Internet Special Session", please click here to read the original text .