After Germany proposed the concept of Industry 4.0 more than a decade ago, China’s manufacturing industry is the most active practitioner, and the strength of intelligent manufacturing investment is not to mention the national force, and any economy in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea is also enough to invest in heaven. It is supposed to have achieved what Professor Zhang called “a clear lead”, but this is not the case.

8440-1809 We “fudged” a “pseudo-fourth Industrial Revolution” too early, and when we “liquidated” out of the game, the bigger game in the second half began: the bar was higher, the stakes were higher, the rules were more complex, and the conditions were more restrictive. So I followed two of them down the table.

This article viewpoint and logic
1. “Industry 4.0” does not propose a theoretical or technological vision enough to create an era, and it is not comparable to the previous three technological revolutions, so it is not the “fourth Industrial revolution”.
2. Due to the excessive focus on “Industry 4.0”, the equally important new trends in manufacturing technology of the same period are ignored, including “generative design” related to AI.
3. A large amount of capital and social resources are directed to the manufacturing link, and the original extremely lacking process and design capabilities are not immediately strengthened, resulting in the lack of innovation in China’s manufacturing industry but the problem of 8440-1809 overcapacity is more acute;
4. After the breakthrough of generative artificial intelligence, the biggest benefit is the design and process link, and new structures and new methods that the human brain cannot imagine before will be easily created by AI. And this is precisely what is lacking in Chinese manufacturing.
5. Humans cannot “reverse engineer” the design ideas of complex structures generated by AI, that is to say, the design of AI cannot be “copied”. Even if shape parameters are obtained in reverse, the speed of imitation cannot keep up with the speed of AI innovation.

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6. If the eyes were not locked in “Industry 4.0” 10 years ago, perhaps the concepts of “generative design”, “adaptive topology optimization”, “smart materials”, “lightweight design” and so on would blossom.

Main body

Carefully think about it, I am 8440-1809 also the first wave of people to rub off on the “Industry 4.0” traffic. The concept of Industry 4.0 originated in Germany and was promoted in China, so after 2012, a large number of compatriots from universities, governments, enterprises and investment circles came to Germany to investigate Industry 4.0 projects. At the time, I was working on non-standard equipment at MAKA, so I came up with a concept called MAKA 4.0, which included Design 4.0, Process 4.0 and Factory 4.0. The industry response is also good, at the peak of almost every week to receive domestic visiting groups, but also to the old club free of charge for many years of marketing.

But by the time of about 14 years, German manufacturing and industry 4.0 began to be deified and over-touted, so that Chinese manufacturing enterprises and the government believe that Industry 4.0 is the only way to transform and upgrade the manufacturing industry, since the “industrial 8440-1809 robot heat”, the country has begun the “Industry 4.0 heat”, “industrial Internet heat” and “intelligent manufacturing heat”. It is an excessive focus on the manufacturing process, where the “design” and “process” are missing.

As a conscientious engineer and technician, I will continue to pour cold water on Industry 4.0 while feeling the heat, and point out the limitations of Industry 4.0 objectively in every report to enterprises and institutions. So much so that once the leader of the lecture directly denied my point of view, he believes that industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing has risen to the level of national strategy, is beyond doubt. Fortunately, most study tour organizers accept different voices and will still introduce companies one after another.