Behind these brilliant achievements, in addition to the intensive production scheduling of the original manufacturers, the power of cross-border conversion through flexible methods has contributed greatly.

In fact, under the impact of the epidemic, enterprises that can quickly complete the switchover of production lines, or quickly adjust their strategies, most of them have advanced automation, digitalization, and intelligence levels, and behind them are the capabilities of “flexible production”.

2711-K10G16 “In the context of epidemic prevention and control, intelligent manufacturing with flexible production characteristics allows enterprises to rebuild a personalized production line in a short period of time and promote rapid product update and iteration.” Smart manufacturing will play a huge role.” Wang Yaonan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said.

Wang Yaonan, for example, said, “During the epidemic prevention and control period, our team developed a series of medical ultraviolet disinfection robots, medical materials distribution robots and other epidemic prevention robots, which were presented to hospitals for free use.” “From a logistics robot that used to target production lines to a quarantine robot, we can transform it in less than a month.”

For example, in the clothing industry, with the improvement of people’s living standards, there is a strong demand for personalized customization and flexible production, and a number of personalized customization platforms immediately appear.

Jiang Mingwei, chief expert of Beijing Machinery Industry Automation Research Institute Co., LTD., told this reporter that the “clothing intelligent customization 1.0” jointly developed by Shanghai Textile Group and Shanghai University of Engineering Technology uses multi-view fusion technology and dome design, and only needs 5 seconds to complete data collection through the motion sensing collector and network hub. Using the point cloud data grid algorithm and the girth parameter correction algorithm based on point cloud fitting, the full-color 3D human body model can be rotated 360 degrees, and the dimensions of various parts of the human body can be calculated to form the data required for basic clothing production. The data can be transmitted to the production room in 30 seconds, and customers can place orders through mobile terminals, and fast clothing customization can be achieved in 2 hours.

Rigid and flexible smart manufacturing

2711-K10G16 Industry insiders pointed out that the realization of flexible manufacturing, the test is not only the technical ability of enterprises, as well as the soft power of management and other aspects, not relying on the introduction of one or two advanced equipment can be solved, can not only be limited to the production level of concern, but also need to fully develop the flexibility of upstream and downstream industries.

Yao Weibing believes that the “six modernization” path of intelligent manufacturing that Guangzhou Mingluo continues to practice (that is, lean + flexibility + standardization + digitalization + intelligence on the basis of automation) is a key step in realizing intelligent production.

2711-K10G16 Lean production can make the most of assets, equipment, and investment. Flexibility is to make dedicated assets more universal, and further transform the rough depreciation of products into accurate depreciation calculations over the life cycle. At the inflection point of intelligent development, non-standard standardization (that is, standardization results of non-standard equipment/process/process/production line, etc.) is used as the underlying support to further optimize quality and production efficiency. Digitalization can significantly shorten the product delivery cycle, the quality of new products is verified in advance, the stable and rapid market, so that the investment can quickly produce value.

Rao Youfu believes that in the future, the expansion process of flexible manufacturing will face two aspects of difficulties, the first is the combination of soft and hard problems, the core of flexible manufacturing is to rely on software system identification and scheduling, to turn the requirements of new products into program instructions, which requires the flexible program to be directly applied to the production line, you need to adjust the original production mode; Second, there is the issue of digital reserves. Customer demand changes quickly, but to quickly turn the demand into a product, it requires producers to have rapid coordination capabilities, and its design and manufacturing capabilities to meet the requirements of rapid delivery, so as to meet market demand, and this requires the horizontal opening up of data and automated production, intelligent analysis.

However, Yao Weibing believes that the customization of flexible production does not mean the elimination of standardization, according to the individual needs of consumers to achieve customization is a trend, but flexible production to do not unlimited customization. “Flexible production is also relative, what we want to do is to achieve lean, flexible, digital and intelligent throughout the production line through intelligent manufacturing.” “We need to do a good job in industrial coordination, develop different products based on the standard structure, and make the manufacturing as flexible as possible.”

Yao Weibing believes that the concept of flexible manufacturing should also be introduced from the front end of the production, and the concept of flexible manufacturing should be taken into account when designing the production line or designing the product, rather than flexible transformation in the later stage, so as to achieve cost reduction and efficiency. In fact, the business logic of flexible manufacturing exists, not only the importance of flexibility, but who is fast, good and cheap.

In a broad sense, intelligent manufacturing is a big concept, flexible manufacturing, is one of the important contents of intelligent manufacturing. As Wang Yaonan pointed out, a major feature of intelligent manufacturing is “flexible”.

Yao Weibing believes that the development of intelligent manufacturing, including flexible manufacturing, will bring revolutionary changes to the manufacturing industry and become the driving force for the future development of manufacturing.