Nearly a year since "Made in China 2025" was released, the conceptual level has been splendid, ranging from Industry 4.0, industrial informatization to intelligent manufacturing, unmanned factories, and currently extending to unmanned vehicles, unmanned ships, and unmanned medical equipment. In such hot areas, it seems that the era of industrial intelligence and unmannedness is imminent.
Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei Technologies, has made an objective judgment on this. He believes that this is the era of artificial intelligence. First of all, industrial automation must be emphasized; after industrial automation, it is possible to enter informatization; only after informatization can intelligence be achieved. China's industries have not yet completed automation, and there are still many industries that cannot even be semi-automated.
Therefore, before exploring Industry 4.0 and unmanned industry, it is necessary to understand the historical origin, technical origin and economic significance of related concepts.
Automation is the prelude to intelligence
In the 1980s, the American auto industry was worried that it would be overwhelmed by Japanese competitors. In Detroit, many people look forward to defeating their opponents with "lights-out production." "Lights-out production" means that the factory is highly automated, the lights are off, and the robots themselves are making cars. At that time, this idea was unrealistic. The competitive advantage of Japanese car companies did not lie in automated production, but in "lean production" technology, and lean production relied on manpower in most cases.
Nowadays, the advancement of automation technology has made "light-off production" gradually become a reality. The Japanese robot manufacturer FANUC has been able to place part of its production lines in an unattended environment and run automatically for several weeks without any problems.
German Volkswagen aims to dominate the world, and this automotive industry group has formulated a new production strategy: modular horizontal moments. Volkswagen wants to use this new technology to produce all models on the same production line. This process will eventually enable Volkswagen's factories around the world to adapt to local conditions and produce any models required by the local market.
Many years ago, Qian Xuesen once said: "As long as the automatic control is done, the missile can hit the sky even if the components are close."
Nowadays, automation will imitate human intelligence to a large extent. Robots have been applied in fields such as industrial production, ocean development, and space exploration. Expert systems have achieved remarkable results in medical diagnosis and geological exploration. Factory automation, office automation, home automation and agricultural automation will become an important part of the new technological revolution and will develop rapidly.
Many years ago, Qian Xuesen once said: "As long as the automatic control is done, the missile can hit the sky even if the components are close."
Post time: Oct-10-2021