With external market demand pressing, how should traditional enterprises achieve transformation and upgrading?

With the rapid development of China's economy and the improvement of people's living standards, consumers' demand for products has gradually shifted to personalization and diversification. Changes in external market demand have forced traditional manufacturing companies to transform and upgrade. At a time when digitalization is fully implemented, companies' understanding of digitalization is no longer limited to the IT layer. The value and significance of the Internet of Things for corporate production and manufacturing are constantly emerging, which coincides with the networking path of intelligent manufacturing. With the rapid development of the industrial Internet of Things platform, traditional manufacturing companies have also transformed from the past capacity-driven to data-driven.

Cai Qinan

The digital transformation of enterprises is imminent, but the difficulty and problems of transformation vary among enterprises of different sizes and industries. Cai Qinan, general manager of Advantech's Industrial Internet of Things Business Group, analyzed: "In terms of scale, large enterprises are rich in resources, have high technical levels, and receive more attention and support from the country and the government, so their digital transformation is relatively smoother; in contrast, a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises are relatively lacking in talent, capital, resources, and technology, and their understanding of digitalization varies, and they urgently need to achieve transformation through cooperation. From an industry perspective, due to the different process technologies and market characteristics of different industries, the difficulty of digital transformation is also different. More mature industries such as automobile manufacturing and electronics manufacturing have relatively high levels of digitalization and are relatively easy to transform; while traditional industries such as steel and textiles have a relatively weak digital foundation and it is difficult to achieve rapid transformation."

“The road ahead is long and arduous, but I will continue to explore.” Transformation and upgrading cannot be achieved overnight. More and more companies have realized that only by working together can they go faster and further. As a global leader in the Internet of Things, Advantech has been committed to promoting the application of the Internet of Things, leveraging the Internet of Things technology to connect the global digital wave, helping small and medium-sized enterprises to quickly achieve the integration of IT and OT, and accelerate the development of digitalization. With the development of the Internet of Things, Advantech has also transformed from a traditional hardware manufacturer to a supplier of intelligent overall solutions that combine software and hardware.

Break down information silos and solve pain points with “scenario-based” solutions

The technical level of traditional manufacturing enterprises varies. Through visits to enterprises, we found that most small and medium-sized enterprises are still stagnant at "Industry 0.5". To move towards intelligent manufacturing does not necessarily require brand new factories and brand new equipment. Many small and medium-sized enterprises are thinking about how to upgrade and transform, with overall planning and phased implementation. "Smart factories do not mean building a brand new factory. Most of them are based on the transformation and upgrading of existing traditional factories." Cai Qinan said: "In the process of transformation and upgrading, small and medium-sized enterprises mainly face four challenges:

First, the equipment is old and of various types. The biggest challenge is how to quickly connect the equipment to the Internet and obtain equipment data.

Second, the management of small and medium-sized enterprises generally lacks a complete system architecture, is inexperienced, and lacks model projects to refer to.

Third, after data collection, facing complex and massive data, how to mine effective and valuable data is also a practical problem facing us.

Finally, there is the issue of talent. Digital transformation requires relatively high quality of talent, and traditional factory management talents lack the knowledge structure. "

The essence of the Industrial Internet of Things is data. Therefore, it is very important for the Industrial Internet of Things to collect key data through smart devices, provide optimization analysis suggestions, and ultimately improve production capacity, quality, and sales. For most traditional companies, the first problem is to realize data collection and networking of different devices, and to break through the information islands in each link. Through years of rich experience in the field of intelligent manufacturing, Advantech can help users break through the barriers of controllers , equipment, and communication protocols of different brands and manufacturers, and rely on data interoperability and efficient communication to realize the visualization of the production process of typical applications. "Therefore, Advantech can establish on-site data collection and install sensors for equipment networking for a factory that has been established for decades. The data of equipment that has been used for more than ten or even twenty years can be visualized and analyzed through the WISE-PaaS Industrial Internet of Things cloud platform, and combined with the two-way control solution to achieve equipment monitoring to collect a large amount of valuable information in the production line, thereby improving production efficiency and ultimately improving management efficiency."

Through extensive industry accumulation and forward-looking understanding of technology trends, Advantech integrates the innovative technologies of IoT and cloud platform WISE PaaS to form standardized smart factory solutions based on professional knowhow: war room system, overall equipment efficiency management solution, factory energy management, intelligent production station solution, factory environment and waste monitoring solution, etc. From providing traditional on-site data collection software and hardware services in the past, to providing smart manufacturing application solutions, and seamlessly linking to industrial cloud platform services, combined with Advantech's many years of building an IoT integrator ecosystem, to meet industrial APP applications in various scenarios. In enterprise transformation projects, Advantech not only provides standardized solution services, but also has a professional IoT.SENSE (IoT Enabling Service) service team to deeply explore the pain points of enterprises, and help enterprises establish a system architecture suitable for their own application scenarios in different industries and enterprises, and provide consulting solutions and planning services until the solution is implemented and accepted.

Cai Qinan pointed out that different industries have different pain points and needs faced by enterprises. For example, the textile industry hopes to be able to grasp the production status of each factory at any time due to the difficulty of management in scattered factories; machinery equipment factories hope to provide remote preventive maintenance services; the electronics manufacturing industry hopes to reduce the production of defective products through dynamic equipment information; the metal processing industry expresses that the machines are old and hopes to add intelligent equipment to achieve production line integration and efficiency improvement. With many years of software and hardware product advantages, technical advantages and industry experience, Advantech has joined hands with industry system integrators to deeply understand the pain points of enterprise needs and provide differentiated industry intelligent solutions suitable for different scenarios.

Relying on its rich practical experience in the field of intelligent manufacturing, Advantech can provide users with help in five aspects: First, Advantech's Kunshan manufacturing plant has been upgraded and opened to the public. Users can visit the site in person for exchanges and have a stronger intuitive experience of digital transformation; Advantech also provides customers with digital upgrade training to cultivate targeted digital talents for customers; in order to provide better services, Advantech has established an intelligent manufacturing solution center and service team (IOT.SENSE) to provide companies with intelligent manufacturing solution planning. In response to the needs of different industries, Advantech has also combined industry partner resources to build an industrial ecological platform to provide customers with all-round solutions and jointly deepen the industry.

Build an open and integrated industrial IoT platform to release data value

As we all know, whether it is smart manufacturing or smart equipment, their core is data. In the past, data was deposited in the equipment and enterprises could not extract it. Production management could only rely on experience, not data. Today, Advantech can help customers collect production data, equipment data and even environmental data through equipment networking, analyze them, fully tap the value of data, and find the key factors to improve production efficiency. The ultimate goal is to bring the greatest economic benefits to enterprises.

Faced with complex industrial sites, a truly intelligent manufacturing system should include a large number of subsystems. For example, in a manufacturing plant that we are relatively familiar with, there are logistics warehousing systems, equipment status monitoring systems, energy management systems, environmental monitoring systems and other applications for different links, as well as upper-level management systems such as the corresponding MES system. Cai Qinan pointed out: "These different systems are often provided by different suppliers. How to achieve the integration of multiple systems is a huge challenge for both enterprises and solution providers."