Ten questions about mobile robots: The automotive parts market is rising strongly, how to tap into the trillion-dollar new market?

"To realize intelligent manufacturing, how should the government promote it, how should experts guide it, and how should enterprises implement it? These three issues have not yet been fully resolved." Professor Tan Jianrong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said at the 3rd Gaogong Mobile Robot Smart Factory Summit.

In fact, while Industry 4.0 has become a buzzword in the industry, more manufacturing companies are still in the process of transitioning from Industry 2.0 to Industry 3.0.

The automotive parts market with multiple varieties, multiple batches, small quantities and high requirements is a typical example.

Driven by the strong growth in new energy vehicle production capacity, the automotive parts market has been further expanded.

According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's auto parts sales revenue is expected to climb from 4.9 trillion yuan in 2021 to 5.2 trillion yuan in 2022 .

"It used to take four to five years to develop a new model of a traditional fuel vehicle, and the layout of the automated production line of auto parts manufacturers could be stretched out accordingly. But now it is no longer possible. It takes three months at the fastest and 6-12 months at the slowest to install automated equipment and layout of the production line."

Faced with the aggressive new forces in car manufacturing, a number of auto parts manufacturers have no choice but to quickly "catch up" on flexible manufacturing.

On July 26, hosted by Suzhou Wuzhong Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee, undertaken by Gaogong Mobile Robot and Suzhou Wuzhong Robot Industry Development Co., Ltd., and co-organized by Suzhou Robot Industry Association , more than 20 upstream and downstream enterprises in the mobile robot and automotive parts industry chain took the lead in breaking the boundaries of the industry and jointly explored new trends and new practices in flexible manufacturing of automobile production in the form of closed-door salon dialogues and exchanges.

"China's current manufacturing industries can be divided into discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing and mixed manufacturing. The well-known 3C and automobile manufacturing both belong to discrete manufacturing."

"Discrete manufacturing products are made up of multiple parts processed through a series of discontinuous processes and assembled through different processes. Due to the complexity of supporting and the difficulty of production organization, discrete manufacturing often needs to solve various technical problems and the coordinated production of many intelligent manufacturing equipment to achieve intelligent manufacturing."

Miao Qingwei, CEO of Elson , believes that flexible manufacturing is an inevitable trend for the discrete manufacturing automotive parts industry, and 3D vision just solves the most critical problem of flexible positioning in the flexible production line of automotive parts.

Auto parts manufacturer Miaolin Wire Rope holds a similar view to Elson.

But for many auto parts manufacturers, automation is not a simple matter that can be achieved overnight. A number of auto parts manufacturers including Miaolin Wire Rope, Aisin AW, Chuhang Technology and Xinan Electric Co., Ltd. expressed their concerns at the forum:

1. Miaolin Steel Rope: Can it be used in complex specific scenarios?

Miaolin Wire Rope, a foreign-funded automotive parts manufacturer with over 20 years of experience, focuses on the research and development and manufacturing of a variety of products such as automotive sliding door cables, automotive seat cables, air-conditioning control cables, etc. Its market spans many countries and regions including Japan, Europe, America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

( Zhang Liang, Assistant to the Minister of Miaolin Wire Rope )

Zhang Liang, assistant to the director of Miaolin Wire Rope , believes that 3D vision systems have indeed been widely used in the industrial field, but due to the high standards and high complexity of automobiles and automobile parts, there are still certain thresholds and difficulties in practical applications.

Take automotive zipper products as an example. The changeable, irregular and peculiar shapes increase the difficulty of product quality inspection. In addition to the problems of low efficiency, high error rate and frequent rework of manual quality inspection, Miaolin Steel Rope has gradually improved and enhanced production efficiency by connecting with visual system suppliers in recent years.

2. Aisin AW: How is the product stability?

Aisin AW, as a company with the largest market share in the field of automatic transmissions, has established close cooperation with internationally renowned automobile companies such as BMW, Mini, Opel, Peugeot, Volkswagen and Volvo.

Although Japan's Aisin Group, founded in 1969, has become one of the world's top 500 companies and has a large market share in certain segments, its high factory turnover and compact production lines have made it more difficult to install automated equipment.

( Aisin AW Section Chief (Technical Supervisor) Luo Zhihong )

Aisin AW Section Chief (Technical Supervisor) Luo Zhihong said that the group has planned to introduce hundreds of Elite collaborative robots in the new production line, and the group will increase the introduction of automated equipment in the future .

3. Chuhang Technology: It also needs to meet the requirements of efficient and high-precision production

Chuhang Technology is a technology company established by a team of German returnees, dedicated to the research and development and production of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving systems based on 77GHz-79GHz millimeter wave radar. Headquartered in Nanjing Jiangbei New District, a national-level new district, Chuhang Technology has subsidiaries in Munich, Germany, Shanghai, Hefei and other places.

Currently, Chuhang Technology has a production base in Anqing with an annual production capacity of 1.8 million radars. In March of this year, Chuhang Technology received the first strategic investment from Hella Group in China and plans to build a smart factory in Shanghai with an annual production capacity of 5 million.

( Lu Binbin, project leader of Chuhang Technology Industrial Consumption BU )

Lu Binbin, project leader of Chuhang Technology's Industrial Consumption BU , said that the smart factory testing equipment currently built has the ability to analyze incoming materials, processes, OKM and after-sales testing and a rapid response mechanism, as well as environmental and durability testing capabilities. And matching the construction of Chuhang Technology's new factory is more efficient and more precise automation equipment.

4. Xinan Electric: How durable is it?

Xinan Electric is a powerful provider of intelligent controller integration solutions in China. Founded in 1989, Xinan Electric has cooperated with Whirlpool of the United States and Samsung Electronics of South Korea. Its current products cover smart home, variable frequency drive, automotive electronics, industrial control, new energy, network communication, rail transportation and other fields.

Since 2006, Xin'an Electric has started to develop in the field of automotive electronics. In 2014, Xin'an Electric also gradually entered the photovoltaic and new energy track. Until 2019, Xin'an Electric was awarded the honor of Jiangsu Province Smart Factory.

( Qin Ling, Project Manager of Xin'an Electric )

Facing the current automation transformation, Xinan Electric Project Manager Qin Ling said that the company group is evaluating various intelligent manufacturing links, such as laser navigation AGV and related AGV supporting applications on the logistics side. However, how wide the route inside the specific factory needs to be, whether to choose a mixed mode of man and machine, or whether it is better to separate man and machine, and how much resources need to be invested in smart shelves and three-dimensional warehousing, still need to be carefully considered.

"In the future, the company will invest more than 100 million yuan to build a national-level intelligent warehouse, which will use a large number of AGV equipment. However, in previous experience, AGVs will have various problems, and the number of problems is relatively frequent. Once the AGV stops operating, the loss per hour is millions. Therefore, in the new production line, the company will consider using AGV equipment with better performance in all aspects."

When it comes to AGV, Miaolin Wire Rope, Aisin AW and Chuhang Technology have also revealed their intention to apply it on a large scale. Some companies said they will consider domestic substitution, while others said they have begun to develop their own AGV.

Once upon a time, the question "What is the key core of intelligent manufacturing?" was mentioned repeatedly.