The convergence of the production floor to the enterprise has brought about significant changes in manufacturing organizations, systems and networks. As the boundaries of information and collaboration are broken down, manufacturing organizations are gaining tremendous opportunities to reduce costs and transform operations through innovative business processes. But convergence also represents many challenges.

Manufacturing and IT organizations must work more closely to provide architectures that not only support plant systemization and enterprise-level system harmonization, but also need to meet the security and performance requirements of industrial automation and control applications. It is the cornerstone of the realization of the digital shop floor. The primary applications for shop floor networks are computer-aided manufacturing, process automation and control, and data acquisition and testing.

Its users are mainly the functional departments of front-line operations, involving various plants, workshops and warehouses of the enterprise. The most important characteristic of the data flow of various applications in workshop network is that there are a large number of critical, uninterruptible and real-time applications, such as the collection of real-time monitoring data of assembly line equipment and the collection of product test results, etc.; secondly, the mobility of the workshop network has high requirements, such as the processing of product-related information in the warehouse; moreover, more and more information in the workshop network needs to be interacted with the management network.

Academician of the two academies, honorary chairman of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society Lu Yongxiang delivered a keynote speech of "Network Intelligent Manufacturing - the future of China's manufacturing", President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, President of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society Zhou Ji, in the report of "Manufacturing digitization and intelligence and "Made in China 2025 " report, he clarified the stage-by-stage mission of upgrading China's manufacturing industry. RainerGlatz, Managing Director of Electronic Automation Branch of German Federation of Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing, and other experts and scholars from the industry at home and abroad were invited to attend the event and released a wonderful report on hot topics such as Industry 4.0 and Future Industrial Intelligent Manufacturing.

In the morning of the same day, Beijing International Industrial Intelligence and Automation Exhibition, which is the most influential exhibition in the northern China market, was grandly opened in Beijing Exhibition Center. The German Pavilion also brought the latest products and technologies from Hannover Messe to show the exhibition visitors the future development trend of factory intelligence and solutions.

Information network technology drives manufacturing innovation

Numerous experts and scholars have pointed out that at present, the world is witnessing a new wave of technological innovation represented by information network, intelligent manufacturing, new energy and new materials. According to Miao Wei, there is a consensus in both the industrial and theoretical circles that the core of the change is the application of information network technology.

The development of information technology, particularly the Internet, is having an impact onThe traditional way of development of the manufacturing industry has brought about a disruptive and revolutionary impact. The wide application of information network technology can sense, collect and monitor a large amount of data generated in the production process in real time, promote the seamless integration of the production process and collaborative manufacturing among enterprises, realize the intelligent analysis and decision-making optimization of the production system, and make intelligent manufacturing, network manufacturing and flexible manufacturing become the direction of the change of the production mode. To some extent, the Internetization of manufacturing is becoming a megatrend. For example, Germany's Industry 4.0 program, the core of which is intelligent production technology and intelligent production mode, aims to "Internet of things" and "service (service) networking", the products, machines, resources, people organically linked together, to promote the sharing of data in all aspects. Realize the digitalization of the whole life cycle of products and the whole manufacturing process. The mutual penetration and deep integration of information network technology and traditional manufacturing industry is profoundly changing the way of industrial organization and accelerating the formation of new enterprise-user relationship. First, from mass mass production to mass customized production change. Second, the centralized production to networked off-site collaborative production change. The third is the transformation from traditional manufacturing enterprises to cross-border integration enterprises.

Miao Wei emphasized that, at present, with the extensive penetration of information network technology in the field of manufacturing, and the industrial Internet, industrial cloud and a large number of new production concepts brought about by it, the Internetization of the manufacturing industry presents several distinctive features such as intelligent products, crowdsourcing design, intelligent manufacturing, online services, and new business models based on the Internet. For example, in terms of smart products, Internet technology, artificial intelligence, and digital technology are embedded in traditional product design, making products gradually become Internet-enabled smart terminals. Tesla is known as the "Apple of the automobile industry", and its success is not only due to the breakthrough of battery technology, but also due to the integration of Internet thinking into automobile manufacturing. Tesla's core positioning is not an electric car, but a large movable intelligent terminal with a new human-machine interaction mode, which makes the car an experience tool containing hardware, software, content and service through the Internet terminal. In terms of business model innovation, in recent years, a number of new enterprises based on Internet applications have emerged globally, forming a great impact on the traditional market by virtue of new business models. China's Xiaomi cell phone using Internet thinking, relying on personalized customization, supply chain integration and hunger marketing and other new business models, in a very short period of time to achieve great success, three years of entrepreneurship, sales grew from 500 million yuan in 2011 to 31.6 billion yuan in 2013, with an average annual growth rate of nearly 700%.

General Electric is at the center of the smart factory discussion due to a recent weighty report, The Industrial Internet: Breaking the Boundaries Between Intelligence and Machines. The report argues that a highly interconnected network of industrial operations combines the latest results of two disruptive revolutions: on the one hand, the myriad of machines, facilities, fleets, and networks that originated in the Industrial Revolution, and on the other hand, the recent rapid advances in computation, information, and communication systems brought about by the Internet revolution. The result is a new industrial revolution, which opens up new horizons, "which promises to generate between $10 trillion and $15 trillion for the global economy".

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an important area of intelligent manufacturing. In recent years, China in the Internet of Things high-end sensors, chips, communication protocols and other areas have made a number of innovative achievements, in transportation, logistics and other areas of application demonstration solid advancement, and gradually explored an important realization of the integration of the two paths. Cotton spinning enterprise Jiangsu Wuxi a cotton use of the Internet of things to monitor and control the production process, the company finished products, the production process, the environment, safety, electrical energy, five aspects of thousands of units (sets) of equipment to form a network, and and enterprise LAN, the Internet, the integration of mobile network, to achieve the integration of management and control.

For large-scale equipment manufacturing, metallurgical industry, petrochemical, automotive, pharmaceutical and other national key industry enterprises, generally facing the difficulties of rising labor costs and production costs, there is an urgent need to popularize and deepen industrial automation technology. Clyde Bergman Huatong R & D center deputy chief engineer Kong Xiangyun and other said, modern industrial production of different levels of advanced products and technologies as well as application solutions in the Chinese market demand is growing.

The deep integration of dual-chemistry presents four new directions

In the face of the new trend of intelligent manufacturing led by information network technology innovation, vigorously promote the deep integration of the two has become an inevitable choice to create an upgraded version of China's manufacturing industry. Miao Wei put forward, to grasp the construction and promotion of enterprise two integration management system standards, comprehensively enhance the level of industrial intelligence, promote the deep integration of information network technology and manufacturing industry, strengthen the integration of two integration support capacity building and other four important work.

Due to the problems of low level of informatization, lack of process management and insufficient key capabilities of enterprises in traditional industrial fields in China, it is urgent to formulate the enterprise dual-integration management system and guide enterprises to improve the level of informatization management.In 2014, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) will select 500 enterprises to carry out the pilot of the national standard for enterprise dual-integration management system, and strive to achieve basic compliance by more than 200 enterprises within the year, and continuously verify and improve the mechanism for promoting the integration of the two systems.

To promote the fusion of the two, the use of information technology to transform and upgrade traditional industries is the key direction, to deepen the integrated application of information technology in the whole process of research and development, design, manufacturing, management, marketing and the whole industry chain. For large enterprises, the focus is to deepen the integrated application of information technology around the design, manufacturing, marketing and other links, improve the level of production equipment, production processes, manufacturing process intelligence, accelerate the application of industrial robots, additive manufacturing and other advanced manufacturing technologies in the production process, cultivate digital workshops, intelligent factories, and promote the intelligent manufacturing production model. For small, medium and micro enterprises, the focus is to further improve the informationization service system for small, medium and micro enterprises, solve the outstanding difficulties of small, medium and micro enterprises in technological innovation, enterprise management, market development, investment and financing, talent training, information consulting, etc., lower the threshold of informationization application for small, medium and micro enterprises, improve the informationization application capacity and level of small, medium and micro enterprises, and enhance the vitality of small, medium and micro enterprises in their development. Innovate working ideas and mechanisms with Internet thinking, and promote the deep integration of Internet and manufacturing industry. First, promote the integrated innovation and application of Internet of Things and big data technology in the industrial field. The second is to promote the Internetization of manufacturing methods. The third is to encourage manufacturing industries to innovate sales and service models.

Miao Wei pointed out that to promote the integration of the two, the network is the foundation. China has built the world's largest information and communication network, fixed telephone users, cell phone users, Internet users have ranked first in the world, but the overall level of broadband network construction is not high, compared with developed countries there is still a big gap. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will vigorously implement the "Broadband China" strategy, accelerate the upgrading of information network broadband, promote the development of a new generation of mobile communications, comprehensively promote the convergence of the three networks, and strive to build a broadband, convergence, security, ubiquitous national information infrastructure. To promote the integration of the two, industry is the support. It is necessary to accelerate the upgrading of the support capacity of modern information technology industry, break through the core key technologies such as high-end chips, new displays, key electronic components, vigorously develop applied electronics and industrial software, support the research and development and industrialization of new-generation information technology such as cloud computing, Internet of Things, etc., and encourage the innovative development of intelligent terminal products to enhance the supply capacity of information products. At the same time, it is necessary to attach great importance to the issue of network information security, and continuously enhance the ability to guarantee network information security under the situation of integration of dualization.