Industrial IoT Drives Manufacturing Transformation, Robot Market Expands Further

Smart manufacturing will drive the application and development of sensors across all industries and fields, thereby becoming a huge driving force for new economic growth. Unlike traditional smart factories, intelligent factories will achieve full-process intelligence in engineering technology, production manufacturing, production supply, and sales.

Data shows positive signals emerging in China's industry. The financial data of industrial enterprises recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics indicates that from January to October this year, the profits of China's industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 8.6% year-on-year, with the growth rate accelerating by 0.2 percentage points compared to the first three quarters. Among them, profits in October grew by 9.8%, 2.1 percentage points faster than in September.

Judging from the current development of smart manufacturing, it is closely related to seven major industries: artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, sensors, cybersecurity, edge computing, and big data. Industry insiders state that artificial intelligence and sensors, as the core control technologies of smart manufacturing, have enormous room for future development. Industries such as edge computing, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and big data will enable data sharing and interconnection for smart manufacturing, establishing a networked macro-environment. Finally, cybersecurity ensures the data security of the industrial internet.

In the economic development era where information reigns supreme, wherever data reaches, it will inevitably trigger innovation and transformation across the entire industrial chain. Those who utilize the mindset of "big data" will gain the initiative, seize opportunities, and occupy the commanding heights of development. Big data is the most authoritative and scientific basis for opening the channel to the future. The value unleashed by the aggregation and fusion of data may activate trillions in output value.

Smart manufacturing will drive the application and development of sensors across all industries and fields, thereby becoming a huge driving force for new economic growth. Unlike traditional smart factories, intelligent factories will achieve full-process intelligence in engineering technology, production manufacturing, production supply, and sales; simultaneously, it will also drive the rapid development of smart grids, smart logistics, smart buildings, smart mobile devices, and smart product fields. Based on this, David Zhang, Vice President of R&D and Chief Technology Officer for Honeywell Greater China, believes that advanced manufacturing and advanced logistics and transportation will be the focus of investment in the next five years, with the market scale expected to reach $250 billion.

According to Lu Xi, Inspector of the Science and Technology Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China's IoT industry scale has currently reached 750 billion yuan, and in fields such as intelligent transportation, connected vehicles, and medical health, a batch of mature IoT operation service platforms and business models have been formed.

IIoT Drives Global Manufacturing Transformation

The Internet of Things (IoT) is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics discussed in the technology industry in recent years. While this term in the consumer application market may still involve much fanciful imagination and business opportunities that seem somewhat "nebulous" due to nascent business models, in the industrial application field, the Internet of Things has a clearer outline and more substantive content.

Market research firm MarketsandMarkets predicts that the so-called "Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)" market size is expected to reach $151 billion by 2020, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.03% between 2015 and 2020. The main factors driving this market include advancements in related semiconductor and electronic technologies, the development of cloud computing technology, IPv6 standardization, and policy promotion by governments worldwide.

By realizing industrial automation technology and the concept of smart factories, IIoT will be key to driving the transformation of global manufacturing. Germany's proposed "Industry 4.0"—the fourth industrial revolution—is one of the large-scale strategies within this. Other major world manufacturing nations such as the United States, China, and India also have similar initiatives attempting to use smart technology to enhance manufacturing efficiency, expand revenue scale, and increase global influence.

The hardware technologies required for deploying the Industrial Internet of Things are actually already in place. The key lies in integrating this hardware with software suitable for different applications to achieve holistic solutions for efficient smart factories. Since the Industrial Internet of Things also involves power grid deployment, massive data computation, analysis, and transmission, the stability, security, and reliability of related solutions are indispensable. Furthermore, standardization and a platform that allows other industrial chain participants to collaborate will be the foundation for its sustainable development.

Taiwan, with its rich experience and complete industrial ecosystem in manufacturing, IT, and IC industries, can be said to have unique conditions to seize global Industrial Internet of Things business opportunities ahead of others. However, traditional manufacturers wanting to transform into smart factories often do not know where to start due to unfamiliarity with IT field technologies. IT companies intending to enter the Industrial Internet of Things field to provide related services need to find the latest hardware and software technologies and market trends that meet the needs of relevant applications. IC manufacturers aiming to occupy a place in the Industrial Internet of Things market must start from the concept of platformization to provide customers with complete solutions.

The Robot Automation Market is Growing Larger

With rising labor costs, industrial robots have also welcomed favorable opportunities for development. However, robots seen in production workshops in the past were mostly single-armed. Future robot development will involve specialized robots with clear divisions of labor based on research and development, fully integrating with 3D printing, industrial VR, etc., forming a new model of smart manufacturing characterized by mutual collaboration and sharing.

Currently, China is developing "Made in China 2025." Under the new situation, the industrial field is bound to take a series of actions. Related research reports show that in China's industrial robot market in 2015, six-axis articulated robots were the most prominent, accounting for 46.2% of total sales. It is expected to maintain a high growth rate of over 30% in the coming years. This is certainly inseparable from the current transformation stage of traditional industry, which requires the power of intelligent technology to drive it, thereby deriving huge demand space. Additionally, with the current downward trend in consumer robots, some businesses have already targeted the industrial robot industry. Internal and external conditions, coupled with competitors encountering a "cold spell," are all suitable for its development.

For the current four major families of industrial robots in China—Switzerland's ABB, Germany's KUKA, Japan's FANUC and Yaskawa Electric—breaking through the encirclement still relies on advanced technology to fill the gaps in automated production lines. Especially in the automotive and electronics industries, with the continuous improvement of automation levels, the automation market for robots is also growing larger.

The so-called industrial robots today are actually Manipulators, industrial robotic arms without hands, let alone intelligence. To occupy a place in the Chinese market, it is necessary to develop dexterous dual-arm robots and multi-arm robots.

So, what kind of robot can be considered dexterous? The simplest are dual-arm robots, working like humans, but as an intelligent robot, they can mimic the multi-arm and multi-legged forms found in the animal kingdom. This includes full-station dual-arm robots, where one robot can perform the work of eight stations—doesn't that evoke the image of an octopus? In other words, dexterity is synonymous with intelligent engines. Just like the currently popular "craftsman spirit" and "private customization," these are not outputs from production lines, but rather robots that are a synthesis of an intelligent terminal, a CPS network controller, and a cloud manufacturing platform, possessing intelligent and flexible movements, thereby achieving true personalized manufacturing.

Thus, if the rise of assembly lines pushed industrial manufacturing towards proceduralization and improved efficiency, then robots with flexible manipulators and dexterous arms will truly realize intelligent manufacturing. This not only propels manufacturing into the "sharing economy" but also represents a major breakthrough in the development history of robots.

Big Data Drives Smart Manufacturing

Currently, smart manufacturing, characterized by the accelerated integration of information technology and manufacturing, is surging. But how exactly should informatization and intelligence integrate? What is the connection between big data and manufacturing? In response, Han Yishun, Executive Vice Dean of the Tsinghua University Data Science Research Institute, gave an answer at the forum: Industrial big data is the source of "intelligence" and an important driving force for the upgrading of Dongguan's manufacturing industry.

Han Yishun explained that whether it's Germany's Industry 4.0 or the United States' Industrial Internet, their cores are inseparable from industrial big data. In the United States, the application prospects accumulated in discrete manufacturing are the most promising, even ranking above government services and communication media; the potential of process manufacturing also ranks before banking and health services. In Germany, unmanned factories are only a superficial part. German factories can already achieve cooperation between two competitors in research and development, even workshop exchange and sharing. The closed circles and boundaries are broken, all of which rely on the support of big data.

"Big data is the source of intelligence. The operational process of future manufacturing enterprises, or the entire product lifecycle, will be connected by big data," Han Yishun stated. He cited the well-known engineering machinery company Sany Heavy Industry and the private customization factory Qingdao Red Collar as examples. The former has already built big data with over 5,000 dimensions, 200 million entries per day, exceeding 40TB, which can monitor the operation and damage of each machine in real-time, enabling proactive service in advance. Relying solely on its 200,000 domestic equipment units, it can even become an important basis for judging China's macroeconomy. The latter has explored private customization models like C2M and M2B. "I see that Dongguan enterprises are already exploring in this direction, which is commendable," Han Yishun said.

Chen Chen, Deputy Director of the Beijing Industrial Big Data Innovation Center, also stated that for industrial enterprises, primary big data can enable enterprises to conduct basic statistical analysis, which is greatly beneficial for cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and building new business models. Enterprises can both do subtraction—reducing unnecessary cost consumption in the manufacturing process through data benchmarking—and do addition, such as broadening business channels. Advanced industrial big data applications can allow enterprises to be prescient, starting to do multiplication and division, such as predicting enterprise production operations and integrating supply chains.

For the many listeners from Dongguan enterprises in the audience, participating experts also offered advice. In the future, Dongguan must move beyond the processing stage and extend to front-end design and R&D and back-end services, which also needs to be connected through industrial big data. Especially for the current Dongguan manufacturing industry, its information systems cannot yet well support daily business operations. Management must make a strategic shift from 2.0 to 3.0 in terms of awareness, building internal systems, processes, organizational structures, and culture compatible with industrial big data.

It is reported that Dongguan City has currently launched the cultivation of industrial big data demonstration projects, started project application and review work, and has discovered a number of enterprises like Jiyan Xinyang with impressive big data construction, initially possessing some functions and characteristics of smart factories. More importantly, Dongguan has also introduced a series of policies and plans.

Chen Jiwei, Deputy Inspector of the Dongguan Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, stated at the meeting that in recent years, Dongguan has successively issued policy documents such as "Dongguan City Development of Internet of Things to Build a Smart Dongguan Plan (2013-2015)," "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Cloud Computing in Dongguan City," and "Dongguan Big Data Action Plan (2015-2016)." It has conducted research related to big data in Dongguan and several special planning tasks, preliminarily indicating the direction for big data development and application, providing policy guarantees for big data development.

It is worth mentioning that at the end of October this year, Dongguan proposed in the "Dongguan City Big Data Development Implementation Plan" that by 2018, Dongguan will initially establish a big data development system and mechanism, complete the construction of a government cloud data center and a government big data database, among other goals. Among them, Dongguan will use big data to drive the accelerated development of smart manufacturing, promote the integrated development of the internet and manufacturing, support industrial enterprises in conducting automatic data collection and big data analysis of equipment, products, and production processes, form manufacturing big data storage and analysis centers, and build a number of data factories and smart factories.

Archive Number: 301. Content organized from the old site database.