With the comparison of machinery and MES, you can know what the relationship between lean production and digital factories and smart factories is. The digital factory is more JIT, such as Kanban, moving materials, for the operation of the digital factory, is the flow of information or the effective operation of the process, its element definition, link operation, process connection are digital. By integrating together in a continuous, standardized and uninterrupted way, the essence is to achieve the integration of process information, which we can call management automation. The other pillar of lean production is automation, the current stage of artificial intelligence or to develop, the most important thing is how to achieve man-machine integration or man-machine integration coordination, to find a way to put people in the decision-making loop.

If you want to put people in the decision-making loop, you must first carry out the construction of the business loop, and digitalization is the foundation, including digital elements, digital business processes, digital execution operations, and so on. For intelligent decision-making, how to integrate people into the decision-making and business processes, and what links to improve the intelligence of people, it is necessary to build a human-machine integration environment to achieve business-driven people, machines, and systems. The interface must be clearly demarcated, and the flow of information must be lean, so that people can be integrated into the process.

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Another pillar of lean production is JIT, JIT for MES, is for management system or digital business control system, I think there are two aspects, the first is in the context of MES, to understand the new connotation of JIT demand pull, according to reverse thinking, such as demand pull to plan the operation of production. For MES, we should analyze the relationship between the business chain or network, understand each other’s demand and supply relationship, which is equivalent to the collaboration between various business departments, the collaboration between business links, that is, the relationship between demand and supply, and ensure the smooth connection of business from the perspective of on time and on demand.

The second aspect is that under the multi-variety batch mixed flow production mode, lean Kanban production operation guarantee measures, lean always mentions Kanban production, which belongs to a kind of appearance, Kanban is just a means of execution, of course, in this inside, the implementation of some ideas. For the digital business control system, we should grasp the essence of lean, ensure the effect of lean production, we have to do the spirit. If lean production mentions quick tooling change, it is in APS, that is, APS in the large scope of MES, which can be achieved through batch control.

The single piece flow mentioned in lean production can realize the unitized resource allocation and the process production in the unit in APS, which needs to be combined with the actual operation, but also needs the business control system to make adaptive changes and integrate the lean idea in it.