1) Dumb equipment: The equipment in the factory is an information “island”, not connected to the network, not automatically reported production data, not automatically reported equipment status data. At the same time, due to historical reasons, the equipment itself is lack of sensors, difficult to obtain the corresponding data.

2) Dumb station: station information is not interactive, not shared and not transparent, post personnel qualifications, process requirements and quality information can not be timely transmitted, resulting in unstable product quality and production efficiency process.

3) Dumb material: The material information, from the supplier’s incoming material storage, inventory status, material location, tooling vehicle information and finished product information to the process status and information of delivery to the customer, cannot be visible in real time and can only be recorded manually.

4) Dumb tools: a large number of quality inspection tools and assembly and processing tools in the production process cannot transfer quality data and processing parameters to the system to automatically judge whether it is suitable or not, and cannot give timely warning to the production quality, resulting in defective products entering the market.

TRICONEX 3704E

TRICONEX 3704E

In August 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Guidelines for the Construction of 5G Fully Connected Factories [2], guiding all regions and industries to actively carry out the construction of 5G fully connected factories. A 5G fully connected factory is an advanced factory that makes full use of the integration of the new generation of information and communication technologies represented by 5G, builds new industrial Internet infrastructure, builds or transforms production sites at the production line level, workshop level and factory level, and forms extensive connection of production units, deep integration of information (IT) operation (OT), makes full use of data elements, and enables efficient innovation and application. It is suggested that enterprises can gradually upgrade intelligence from production lines, workshops, factories to supply chains according to their own business effects, talent reserves and development needs.

The construction of 5G fully connected factories will drive the development and growth of the 5G technology industry, and further accelerate the in-depth expansion of new technologies, new scenarios and new models of “5G+ industrial Internet” into all fields and links of industrial production. To provide intelligent manufacturing infrastructure for small and medium-sized enterprise applications, through comprehensive coverage of high reliability, high security and high QoS (Quality of Service, quality of service) of advanced wireless connection technology, for small and medium-sized enterprises to solve the long-term unresolved four dumb problems to provide new ideas, new direction.

3. Integration of heterogeneous systems in manufacturing enterprises

Due to the influence of historical and realistic factors, the existing industrial equipment and information systems of most enterprises have the problem of multi-source heterogeneity, that is, there are great differences among equipment and systems in the aspects of network, communication protocol, data format, technical architecture, data caliber and so on. Such heterogeneity leads to a series of problems, such as network connectivity, data fusion and process coordination, etc. among various single devices and systems, which is the integration of multi-source heterogeneous systems (see Figure 2), to be solved in the actual intelligent manufacturing process.