Building a smart factory becomes a development trend

From automation to intelligence, it takes a long way to go. Automation can make industrial manufacturing processes meet the efficiency requirements, but it must meet the market requirements at any time, adjust the production capacity flexibly, promote the effective use of space, and effectively reduce production costs and other intelligent The request cannot be solved by automation alone. It requires the factory to have a smart "brain" that can judge and regulate.

Recently, the 13th Industrial Automation and Standardization Symposium was held in Beijing. Experts at the meeting proposed the goal of intelligent factories.

Intelligentization has become a trend

Intelligent factories are more than just a conceptual model. At present, all countries in the world attach great importance to the development of "intelligent production technologies", including enterprise resource planning systems, application chain management, real-time databases, advanced process control, and decentralized control systems and fieldbus control systems.

Many multinational corporations have applied the above systems and integrated them to realize the integration of design, production management and operation, which has greatly enhanced the competitiveness of enterprises and enhanced the advantages of the market.

For example, more than 70% of U.S. companies in the top 500 companies in the world use SAP's ERP solutions and achieved significant economic benefits.

In order to occupy the commanding heights of intelligent production technology, many countries have proposed cross-century research plans. The U.S. government proposed the "US National Key Technology" plan, the European Community proposed the "Information Technology Research and Development Strategy", the German government proposed "Industry 4.0", and Japan's "Intelligent Manufacturing System Plan", South Korea's "advanced advanced technology National Plan etc. These countries have made intelligent production technology and advanced manufacturing technology an important research topic. Through the cooperation of government, enterprises, universities and research institutes, we will promote the development of "smart production technology."

The development of intelligent factories is actually closely related to the trend of industrial automation. According to relevant statistics, the total output value of automation equipment, automation products and automation planning services reached 865 billion yuan in 2011. This data shows that under the trend of ever-changing technology and the complexity of product manufacturing, how to effectively manage automation equipment has become the focus of future development.

The demand for the intelligent development of large enterprises in China is increasing. Lin Rong, deputy chief engineer of Sinopec Engineering Construction Co., Ltd., said that the petrochemical industry as a technology energy and raw materials industry is facing shortage of resources, and the petrochemical companies are becoming more and more large-scale, integrated, park-oriented, intelligent and networked with the production process, and the demand for digitization is increasing. obvious.

Some experts believe that intelligent factories will be the development trend in the next 5 to 15 years.

The factory will be fitted with "brain"

What exactly is an intelligent factory? It's as if the factory is equipped with a "brain" that can think for itself.

The future smart factory system will have the ability to collect and understand external and self information, analyze and judge and plan its own behavior. The overall visual technology practice, combined with signal processing, reasoning and forecasting, simulation and multimedia technology, will showcase design and manufacturing in real life.

At present, the development of intelligent factories has entered a new phase. In digital plant technology, the use of Internet of Things technology, equipment monitoring technology to strengthen information management and services, and control the production and sales process, improve the controllability of the production process, reduce manual intervention in the production line, timely and correct collection of production line data, and Reasonable management of production progress, etc.

Zhang Yixin, head of the Efficiency and Energy Conservation Center of ABB (China) Co., Ltd., introduced that ABB will introduce advanced and systematic energy management solutions. Through systematic energy management, the company integrates its energy efficiency concepts, advanced technologies and equipment, industry knowledge, and project management experience into the user's energy management program, helping users significantly improve energy efficiency and achieve energy efficiency.

In addition, Siemens Industry Automation Group and Mitsubishi Electric have all joined the array of intelligent production technologies.

The key to achieving a smart factory

The technology of intelligent factories is rapidly updating. To make the manufacturing process have the ability to judge, the basic components of the control system such as instruments, meters, and sensors are the focus of attention.

At present, the intelligentization of instruments and meters is mainly based on the development and application of microprocessors and artificial intelligence technologies, including the use of artificial intelligence, expert systems, genetic algorithms, and evolutionary calculations to enable the instrumentation to be highly efficient, versatile, and maneuverable. Flexibility and other performance.

In addition, as more and more embedded devices are connected to the factory's manufacturing processes, deploying control systems through cloud-based architecture is undoubtedly one of the most important trends today.

In the field of industrial automation, as applications and services shift to cloud computing, the major patterns of data and computing locations have changed, and this has also brought disruptive changes to the embedded device space. In the future, cloud computing will provide complete systems and services, and production equipment will no longer be a single, independent individual in the past. Once the connection is completed, all manufacturing rules may change.

In addition, the wirelessization of industrial communications is also a problem that is currently being investigated in smart factories. According to expert analysis, the application of wireless communication systems for factory automation worldwide will increase by about 40% annually. With the increasing popularity of wireless technologies, various vendors are providing a series of hardware and software technologies to help increase communication capabilities in products.

Experts believe that although wireless technology has considerable advantages over wired technology in terms of implementation convenience, the current improvements in wireless technology, reliability, certainty and immediacy, and compatibility have yet to be strengthened and improved.