China is a major industrial production and manufacturing country, but not an industrial powerhouse. There are many factors that constrain us from becoming an industrial powerhouse, such as advanced technology, modern talent, and an unreasonable industrial structure. However, the most direct one is that our production methods are "too inefficient" and "not intelligent enough" compared to developed countries in Europe and America. These are all stumbling blocks for us to move towards becoming an industrial powerhouse.
To summarize, the problems faced by our traditional manufacturing enterprises mainly include the following aspects.
Firstly, the lifecycle of the products produced is not sufficiently 'ecological', unable to cover the entire lifecycle of design, production, logistics, sales, and service, which means that we cannot provide users with the best service experience throughout the entire process.
Secondly, the information at various levels of the factory cannot be fully integrated, such as the real-time information sharing problem from the equipment layer, control layer, workshop layer, enterprise layer to the collaboration layer, and how people, machines, and materials can work together to play a role.
Thirdly, factories urgently need to build a digital interconnected cloud platform to achieve information integration throughout the entire process, providing decision-making basis for large-scale customization and flexible production planning.
A smart factory is the only way for us, it is a disruptive innovation of the entire production process of the entire enterprise. The following examples of smart production lines demonstrate how smart factories can reduce costs and increase efficiency for enterprises.
Case Study of Intelligent Manufacturing for Automotive Gear Production
The intelligent manufacturing production line for automotive gears, based on the production process and pace of different automotive gears, uses an intelligent logistics system composed of truss systems, automatic warehouses, joint robots, etc. to effectively connect related equipment such as intelligent gear hobbing machines and intelligent gear shaving machines. The intelligent management system for gear automatic production line, which has been successfully developed to meet various intelligent standard requirements, has completed the integration of various related equipment and systems, forming a gear processing automatic production line that meets user requirements. This production line has achieved automated processing such as automatic workpiece clamping, fully automatic workpiece loading and unloading, and automatic conversion between processes, reducing labor intensity and improving production efficiency and reliability.
Case study of locking screws for intelligent manufacturing of TV sets
By using
RFID technology to identify each TV, each TV has an information communication interface in the intelligent manufacturing system. Combined with the color electric lock screw robot, it completes automatic product recognition, automatic switching of work programs, automatic screw replacement, etc. The
RFID tag is fixed on the corresponding fixture board of the product, and the locking screw operation information of each TV is read by the
RFID reader, sent to the locking screw robot to complete the operation, and the operation result is written into the corresponding
RFID tag. The reader/writer at the repair station is responsible for reading the operation results of each TV's
RFID tag. If there are some screws that are not properly fastened on the TV, it will enter the repair station to repair the screws; If all the screws of the TV are tightened, proceed to the next process.
The application of
RFID in intelligent manufacturing of color TVs can achieve full process identity identification, completely solve market anti smuggling and value-added services in the terminal market, and enable products to be connected and communicate throughout the entire life cycle of design, production, and sales, thereby realizing corresponding intelligent applications.
Case Study of Intelligent Manufacturing Filling Production Line
The intelligent filling production line uses sensors, actuators, and on-site equipment to collect on-site data and control the process, and operates through a programmable logic controller (PLC) in the control layer. This production line focuses on the entire production process, including 8 processes such as bottle feeding, bottle washing, air extraction, filling, foaming, inflation, capping, and bottle discharge. It also includes auxiliary functions such as capping, liquid level/pressure detection, bottle pouring/leakage detection, etc. The introduction of intelligent manufacturing technology has increased the production efficiency of the filling production line from the existing 60% to over 85%, greatly improving the flushing rate and filling qualification rate, while effectively controlling the liquid loss rate and bottle loss rate.
