In the current world situation, a strong manufacturing industry has become the cornerstone of the country’s overall strength. “Made in China 2025” has laid the foundation for China’s strategy of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse. To develop advanced manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing is undoubtedly the key point for the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. So what important role will intelligent manufacturing play in China’s manufacturing industry?
In the current world situation, a strong manufacturing industry has become the cornerstone of the country’s overall strength. “Made in China 2025” has laid the foundation for China’s strategy of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse. To develop advanced manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing is undoubtedly the key point for the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. So what important role will intelligent manufacturing play in China’s manufacturing industry? In my opinion, intelligent manufacturing will play an important role in the development of China’s manufacturing industry in at least three aspects:
The first is the improvement of the existing manufacturing industry, including shortening development cycles, reducing costs, and improving efficiency. The use of virtual manufacturing technology can simulate the entire lifecycle of the product during the product design stage, thereby organizing production more effectively, economically, and flexibly, achieving the guarantee of shortest product development cycle, lowest product cost, optimal product quality, and highest production efficiency.
The second aspect of intelligent manufacturing will promote the development of new manufacturing models in the manufacturing industry, including flexible manufacturing, biological manufacturing, green manufacturing, fractal manufacturing, etc. Flexible manufacturing pursues customization, which is a consumer oriented and on-demand production model that opposes traditional mass production. In flexible manufacturing, the test is the reaction speed of the production line and supply chain. For example, the emerging models such as “C2B” and “C2P2B” in the field of e-commerce reflect the essence of flexible manufacturing.
The third promotion through intelligent manufacturing will include a large number of intelligent manufacturing equipment industries, including petroleum and petrochemical intelligent complete sets of equipment, metallurgical intelligent complete sets of equipment, automated logistics complete sets of equipment, intelligent food manufacturing production lines, intelligent textile complete sets of equipment, intelligent printing equipment, etc. Accelerating the development of these industries and accelerating the popularization of market applications can form new economic growth points.
Based on the above considerations, China has chosen intelligent manufacturing as its main focus for the next decade to become stronger.
Intelligent Manufacturing Consolidates China’s Low Cost Advantage
As is well known, in the past thirty years, Made in China has successfully achieved industrial development and once again promoted the output value of Made in China to become the top in the world (2010). However, developed industrial countries in the West have realized the challenges brought by Made in China and are gradually implementing re industrialization, which has forced Made in China to undergo transformation and upgrading again.
However, the transformation and upgrading of China’s manufacturing industry, which lacks demographic dividends, faces significant challenges. On the one hand, the manufacturing cost index (according to BCG research report) is close to the United States, and there is no significant advantage compared to it. On the other hand, excessive investment and competition in Chinese manufacturing have led to overcapacity, which is extremely unfavorable for Chinese manufacturing in the context of global trade rebalancing.
However, the challenges faced by Chinese manufacturing
