On November 6, the International Economic and Technological Cooperation Center of Schneider Electric jointly with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially released the “Digital Empowerment Building Green Smart Factory is the right time – Digital empowerment Green Intelligent Manufacturing Executive Insight 2023” (referred to as the “Report”) at the sixth China International Import Expo. Based on an in-depth survey of 120 corporate executives, the report analyzes the core of manufacturing transformation, the development trend of green smart factories and key issues in construction and operation.

The construction of green smart factories shows three major trends as a whole

Industry insiders said that the National New Industrialization Conference was held in late September, taking new industrialization as a key task to achieve Chinese-style modernization and a new engine to promote economic development. Intelligent manufacturing is the main direction to promote the new industrialization, through the extensive application of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, promote the deep integration of information technology and industrialization, improve production efficiency, achieve a high level of automated production, and promote the transformation of the production mode of manufacturing enterprises. At the same time, new industrialization encourages traditional enterprises to upgrade to green manufacturing, build green factories, green parks and green supply chains, and improve green manufacturing and service systems.

At the press conference, Qu Xianming, member of the National manufacturing power construction Strategic Advisory Committee and director of the manufacturing Research Office of the Strategic Consulting Center of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, also said: “The core of the competition in the manufacturing industry is the competition of manufacturing capacity, and the competition of manufacturing capacity is mainly reflected in the manufacturing plant.” The mainstream direction of future factory construction is the integration of green intelligence, that is, green smart factory, intelligence is the means, green is the purpose and core.”

The report found that the construction of green smart factories as a whole presents three major trends. First of all, green smart factory has become an important feature of leading enterprises, 100% of the leading enterprises participating in the survey were rated smart factory and green factory, far more than 6% and 20% of the catch-up enterprises, it can be seen that the trend of digital and green integration is becoming more obvious, will lead the development direction of future factories.

Secondly, among all the value demands for the construction of green smart factories, “cost reduction” and “carbon reduction” ranked first and second, respectively, by 66% and 46% of the surveyed enterprises. This means that the growth mode of enterprises has gradually shifted from high energy consumption and extensive to fine, intelligent and high-quality growth mode, and paid more attention to endogenous growth.

Finally, the future-oriented green smart factory includes six key features: lean operation, green environmental protection, comprehensive perception, intelligent management and control, people-oriented, and industrial collaboration. Among them, the “people-oriented” that fully respects the experience and creativity of employees, and the “industrial collaboration” enabled by digitalization have received more and more attention from enterprises.

According to the report, enterprises still face four major challenges in the construction process of green smart factories: First, strategic challenges, 56% of enterprises believe that the overall planning and design of factory construction is insufficient, and the transformation path is not clear; The second is the operational challenge, it is difficult to determine the appropriate scenario and entry point, as well as the high investment in early construction and long payback period; The third is the technical challenge, how to leverage technology in the case of rapid technology iteration in the industry, and the integration of business and technology is not strong; The fourth is the talent challenge, how to cultivate the compound talents needed for factory construction and development through a series of measures such as building corporate culture, and solve the problem of insufficient willingness and ability of employees.

Build an end-to-end green smart factory for the whole value chain

In response to the above challenges, Schneider Electric combined the experience and practice of leading enterprises and its own, in the report proposed to build an end-to-end green smart factory with the “1+4” framework. Follow the concept of “value creation”, and achieve green and intelligent integration from the four levels of “strategy”, “operation”, “technology” and “talent”.

First of all, the enterprise should form a consensus on the core goal of green intelligent manufacturing transformation is “value creation”, including commercial value, environmental value and social value.

At the strategic level, the sustainable development of dual-line integration is the mainstream of future factory construction and optimization. The survey found that 93% of leading companies have both digital and dual-carbon strategies in place and have undertaken corresponding construction activities. Leading enterprises also advocate planning first, medicine first and medicine later, invest in long-term research, carry out detailed feasibility studies, and formulate clear landing indicators.

At the operational level, a single scenario is only the starting point and stage of the construction of a green smart factory, but the key is to achieve upstream and downstream connectivity and collaboration, and to achieve the overall optimal. In the future, the construction of green smart factories must be customer-centric, and pull through the end-to-end transformation of the whole value chain from marketing, procurement, research and development, manufacturing to service, to achieve scale benefits.

At the technical level, the integration of green intelligent manufacturing 5T technology (information technology, operation technology, communication technology, digital technology, energy technology) is one of the important foundations to support the construction of green intelligent factories. With the increasingly blurred boundaries of 5T technology, the application of technology at all levels of factory operation is constantly enriched, which can meet the needs of different scenarios of a new generation of green smart factories.

In terms of talent, the report emphasizes that the essence of digitalization lies in the digitalization of people. 93% of the leading companies have digital projects, 44 percentage points ahead of the catch-up companies. It is especially important to form a digital corporate culture within the organization, build a digital organization, and define and enhance the digital capabilities of employees.

The report pointed out that the construction stage of the factory can be divided into three categories: the new factory needs to be driven by the construction of the new factory, fine production management, and green intelligent manufacturing. The transformation factory pays special attention to the existing dilemma of transformation and upgrading, and formulates the exclusive upgrade path through the status assessment of each module; The leading factory emphasizes further refined operation management of the business, excavates new growth breakthrough points, continuously integrates emerging technologies, and innovates production modes.

How can manufacturing enterprises build sustainable production capacity in uncertain times? The answer, the report says, is to run fast on the road to building green smart factories. In the next few years, I believe that “building a green smart factory” will become the goal of all ambitious manufacturing companies, and those who take action will have a first-mover advantage.