New Productive Forces, New Production Models, New Resilience

New production models geared towards personalized needs

Snapshot from the future: ICT-powered flexible manufacturing

To respond to changing market conditions and set themselves apart in the face of fierce competition, companies must take the initiative and embrace new production models. That's why an increasing number of companies are looking to concepts like flexible manufacturing. Flexible manufacturing is an advanced production model characterized by on-demand production. It helps companies become more flexible and enables them to rapidly respond to ever-changing market demand. In addition, flexible manufacturing shortens the R&D cycle, cuts R&D costs, and ensures equipment is not left idle, all while reducing inventory risks and speeding up capital turnover. Therefore, it allows companies to seize market opportunities and grow sustainably. Flexible manufacturing involves the following areas:

Flexibility of product design and production line planning: After receiving an order for a new category of product, companies need to quickly conduct R&D and design, and rapidly adjust factors such as production line equipment, working procedures, processes, and batch size. This is where ICT comes in, as simulation, modeling, VR, and other ICT technologies can be used to simulate the entire new manufacturing process. This will reduce the cost of new product development and design, and support more accurate adjustment cost projections and capacity projections.

Flexibility of process: In flexible manufacturing, companies can design products based on the personalized needs of customers, or invite customers to directly participate in product design (e.g., using modular systems to enable customers to define what a product will ultimately look like). Both models require an intelligent scheduling system. Such a system will make automatic adjustments and provide an optimal production plan based on known features such as the factory's production capacity, order complexity, and delivery deadlines. After a company receives an order, the scheduling system will automatically identify all universal components, custom components, and procedures and materials required to manufacture these components. By coordinating production tasks and the provisioning of materials and tools, the scheduling system maximizes the productivity of all equipment and workers in the factory so that no component will create a bottleneck in order delivery.

Flexibility of equipment: As the number of customizations and small-batch orders increases, factories must be able to switch between production processes in real time. Conventional manufacturing equipment can generally only be reconfigured by trained engineers using specific programming devices and languages. This makes switchover processes time-consuming, and does not support the kind of rapid responsiveness that companies need. In the future, ICT technologies such as visual programming, natural language interaction, and action capture will help factories reprogram equipment quickly and easily. This will help promptly meet companies' demand for flexible manufacturing.

Flexibility of logistics: One of the keys to flexible manufacturing is modularization, through which a large number of finished components are manufactured. This requires automated ICT technology to effectively manage warehousing and logistics, which prevents omissions and other errors in the shipment process. Take furniture producers as an example. With large-scale customization, every board, decorative strip, and handle may need its own identification code or radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to facilitate automated packing and loading, and to support traceability throughout the whole transportation and distribution process.

Resilient and intelligent supply chains that help enterprises respond to crises

Snapshot from the future: Supply chain visualization powered by digital technologies

Supply chain visualization is about using ICT technology to collect, transmit, store, and analyze upstream and downstream orders, logistics, inventories, and other relevant supply-chain information, and graphically display such information. Such visualization can effectively improve the transparency and controllability of the whole supply chain and thus greatly reduce supply chain risks.

Supply chain visualization supports the tracking of materials and equipment in upstream activities. Logistics information is displayed in real time.

With supply chain visualization, the operation data of various transportation vehicles in the logistics system is also available, and the status of these vehicles can be displayed in real time. Global Positioning System (GPS), AI, 5G-A, IoT, and other technologies are used to monitor the transportation process and the status of goods while in transit. There is also a visualized scheduling center that enables the consolidation or splitting of orders at any time, and the optimization of transportation resources and routes. This enables companies to detect and rapidly respond to any logistics emergency by promptly adjusting logistics routes to ensure the timely and safe delivery of goods.

A remote monitoring system monitors the environment in warehouses in real time. This system uses various sensors to graphically display operations and maintenance (O&M) information such as temperature, humidity, dust, and smoke. This allows the timely detection of any signs of fire or water leakage, enabling prompt intervention and preventing material losses. Goods can also be tracked in real time as they are logged into and out of warehouses. As goods are moved, IoT, RFID, and QR code technologies are used to automatically identify and register goods, and the warehousing status data of goods can be accessed remotely in real time.

Snapshot from the future: From supply chain to supply network

In the traditional supply chain model, each link in the chain depends on the previous link delivering as expected. Each link could be a bottleneck that prevents the normal flow of goods down the chain. For example, if the supply of an upstream raw material provider is disrupted, downstream manufacturers will definitely be affected, resulting in inefficient operations or even a standstill for the entire supply chain. With the adoption of ICT technologies such as cloud computing, IoT, big data, and AI, the supply chain will transform into a supply network. In this network, the upstream materials required by every link have multiple alternative sources, and they can be sourced through multiple routes. A multi-contact collaborative supply ecosystem will be created by enhancing the internal and external interconnectivity of enterprises. The failure of any single link will not paralyze the entire supply network.