How is Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet progressing? A private perspective on the future development of industry

The "2020 Zhiwu·AIoT Industry Leaders Summit" co-organized by IoT Think Tank and Yunhe Capital came to a successful conclusion in Shanghai. At the "Industrial Edge Intelligence" sub-forum in the afternoon, Wang Sujing, editor-in-chief of IoT Think Tank, delivered a wonderful speech entitled "Prospects for Future Industrial Trends".

The following is the full text of the speech:

Hello everyone! Today I will share the topic of "Prospects for Future Industrial Trends". Since my topic is the future trends in the industrial field, I must first look at the current status of the industrial field.

At present, the hottest words in the industrial circle are Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet, and Intelligent Manufacturing. You may have heard them so many times that your ears are almost callused. You have also read many articles by experts and scholars analyzing these concepts. However, today I would like to present the development process of these concepts from another perspective, that is, the perspective of media publicity.
 

Because our IoT Think Tank was one of the first platforms to focus on this field, we reached in-depth cooperation with many domestic and foreign companies that were preparing to enter the intelligent manufacturing and industrial Internet five or six years ago to help them with publicity. Among them were industrial giants that wanted to transform, ambitious start-ups, and some communications and Internet companies that seemed to have nothing to do with industry at first glance...
 

Since we want to promote, we must first determine the focus and tone of the promotion. So, every now and then I will sit down with the marketing personnel of these companies to discuss what we should convey to the outside world.
 

In 2014 and 2015, the Industrial Internet was still a new term in the industry. Whenever we published an article, readers would leave messages in our backend asking, "What is the Industrial Internet?" "What is the difference between Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing?" So we thought that the most important thing to do at that time was to popularize the concept.
 

Based on this policy, our approach to writing articles at that time was to have one article tell you what the Industrial Internet is, one article tell you what Industry 4.0 is, one article tell you the difference between a certain concept and a certain concept, and then finally add a little bit about how a certain company is very far-sighted and has already begun to deploy in this field.
 

As for how to layout, we never elaborated. Why? Because we couldn’t explain it. Most of the companies that approached us for publicity didn’t know how to proceed.
 

In May 2015, the State Council officially issued Made in China 2025. The wave of Industry 4.0 set off by the 2013 Hannover Industrial Fair in Germany has truly swept across the land of China's manufacturing. With the support of policies, countless companies have entered this field. As long as they have something to do with intelligent manufacturing, they will definitely get a wave of popularity.
 

What I remember most vividly is that a pyramid scheme company that was promoting and selling kidney health products approached me and asked us to help them advertise. I told them very clearly that we were in the field of science and technology, and that your product had nothing to do with us, so we couldn’t help you promote it. As a result, the person in charge was quite tough and directly took out a copy and threw it to me, which described how they used intelligent manufacturing technology that surpassed Germany to produce kidney products. I was amused and confused when I read it - this was enough to show how popular the related concept was at that time.
 

Another concept that was extremely popular at the time was the Industrial Internet Platform. Influenced by the revolutionary pioneer GE Predix, companies that claimed to be engaged in the Industrial Internet Platform emerged one after another. I remember that IoTAnalytics released a research report at that time. Statistics showed that there were 450 IoT platform companies in the world in 2017, more than half of which were Industrial Internet platforms. The enthusiasm of the industry almost reached its peak.
 

Everyone’s enthusiasm is understandable. The value created in the era of mobile Internet is truly dazzling. Ten years ago, I could never have imagined that now I can use my mobile phone to browse the web, watch videos, order takeout, make payments, and hail taxis… If the industrial world also has a mobile app store and a corresponding developer platform, with software for various purposes available for industrial customers to download and use, then can platform providers recreate the glory of Android/IOS in the industrial field?
 

However, reality soon poured cold water on everyone. As they worked on it, they found that the industrial Internet platform had too many pitfalls. On the one hand, building a platform is a huge project that is time-consuming, labor-intensive and costly. As the pioneer, GE Digital could not withstand the huge cash flow pressure, let alone the latecomers whose capital could not be compared with it. On the other hand, a typical feature of the industrial field is that "different industries are like different mountains". How to extract homogeneous common needs from them is also a huge test of the internal strength of enterprises.

 
As a result, due to unstable foundations and the houses being built too quickly, we watched helplessly as the newly built high-rise buildings collapsed again.
 

Some entrepreneurs who were full of vigor and enthusiasm before the New Year asked me if there were any suitable companies to recommend after the New Year; some companies spent a lot of money on marketing when they got financing, but when they wanted to ask for the final payment, they didn't reply to WeChat or email; some projects that were initially hailed as classic benchmarks in the industry and attracted countless peers to visit and learn from them ended up in a mess and were scolded as scammers, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. One of the landmark events was in the second half of 2018, when GE announced that it was looking for a buyer for Predix, and the industry began to fall into confusion: where is the future going?
 

But everything has two sides, and these failures also left valuable experience for those explorers who have not given up. They began to think about what kind of value they can create for the industry.
 

So, starting from last year, I saw that many companies changed their past style of talking about concepts and making big promises, and began to become more down-to-earth. This is also clearly reflected in the caliber of publicity. People no longer want to talk about cool unmanned factories and the like, but talk about how I can use digital solutions to help you improve product quality, how to help you reduce operating costs, how to increase the flexibility of your production line, and how to improve your customer satisfaction. Even if the solution is not as advanced and cool as imagined, I have really created value for you.
 

Therefore, helping thousands of industries achieve digital upgrades and digital transformation has become a focus repeatedly emphasized by solution providers over the past year. During this period, I was also invited to visit many companies' factories to see their implemented cases, and many of them were really surprising. As an industry media person, I am very happy to see such a change.

Looking at the four stages of changes in publicity style, the trend changes just correspond to Gartner's famous "Technology Maturity Curve" - ​​from gradually gaining attention after its birth; to reaching the peak under the pursuit of capital and spotlight; to the bubble being punctured and falling to the bottom; and then to slowly becoming rational and mature, a new technology finally begins to truly create value for the industry.
 

In a blink of an eye, it is now 2020. This year is a very special year. What is so special about it? I would like to use a metaphor to explain.

If we compare China's industry to a long-distance runner, then it has been "running all the way" for the past few decades. In the early days of reform and opening up, the added value of my country's manufacturing industry was less than 1/6 of that of the United States, but by 2010 it had surpassed the United States in one fell swoop. Since then, we have the most complete industrial system in the world. From "poverty and backwardness" to "the most complete in the world", the growth rate of China's industry has created a world miracle.
 

Although the rapid pace will overtake many competitors, there is a hidden danger of muscle soreness, just as the current Chinese industry is facing the hidden worry of "big but not strong". Extensive development mode, huge environmental costs, weak independent innovation, etc. are all obstacles that Chinese industry must overcome.
 

Especially the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it was like a boulder that suddenly rolled down the long-distance race track, forcing us to slow down our pace of progress. It also sounded a wake-up call to the industry - extreme situations like the COVID-19 pandemic will indeed exist in the future, and if manufacturing companies do not have enough "resilience", they can only sit and wait for death.
 

I just mentioned the word "resilience", which is another popular propaganda slogan this year. What does resilience mean? It refers to the property of an object that deforms but is not easily broken when subjected to external forces. The epidemic is this sudden external force, and corporate resilience is its ability to cope with complexity and uncertainty.
 

What kind of companies are resilient? Data surveys show that they are often those that have achieved good or even excellent results in digital transformation.
 

These leading companies did not encounter the dilemma of supply chain disruption or business operation obstruction. Some of them maintained the normal operation of the factory remotely, some quickly adjusted the production line to start producing mask machines and ventilators, and some achieved rapid coordination of global supply chain layout...