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Against the backdrop of profound changes in the current global manufacturing industy, China is advancing the construction of a manufacturing power with unprecedented determination and strength.
In this magnificent wave of industrial transformation and upgrading, sheet metal smart manufacturing, as a core strategy of top priority, not only carries the heavy responsibility of enhancing the competitiveness of the country's overall manufacturing industry, but is also a key warning for promoting high-quality economic and social development.
Driven by the government's active guidance and the endogenous power of enterprises, my country's manufacturing enterprises have embarked on the transformation journey of intelligent manufacturing and explored a development path of intelligent manufacturing with Chinese characteristics.
The rise of sheet metal smart manufacturing is a product of the deep integration of information technology and manufacturing. It uses advanced technologies such as big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things to transform traditional manufacturing processes into intelligent ones, and achieve highly automated, digital, and flexible production processes.
This transformation has not only greatly improved production efficiency and product quality, but also significantly reduced energy consumption and costs, bringing unprecedented competitive advantages to companies. Among many manufacturing companies, a number of outstanding companies have not only gained a firm foothold in the domestic market by deeply embracing intelligent manufacturing, but have also stood out in global market segments, becoming industry leaders or hidden champions.
Currently, manufacturing companies are facing huge pressures on human resource costs and difficulties in recruiting workers. Therefore, many discrete manufacturing companies are actively carrying out automation transformation of production lines.
For some workstations with high repetitiveness, the company proposes process requirements and selects non-standard automation integrators to provide dedicated automation equipment to complete specific processes such as screwing, assembly, welding, marking, and testing, thereby replacing manual labor and achieving less-manpower.
At first glance, many production lines are quite advanced, but after careful study, it is found that on the one hand, many companies' automated production lines can only adapt to a single variety and are not very flexible.
On the other hand, many companies still do not pay enough attention to equipment networking and production line data collection, making it difficult to truly realize the visualization and transparency of the production process, and managers still find it difficult to understand the real-time status of the production site in a timely and accurate manner.
The production lines of process manufacturing companies generally use automated control systems, but the application of digital technology is relatively lagging, and there is also a problem of disconnection from the automated system.
Many manufacturing companies attach great importance to purchasing CNC machining centers or sheet metal processing equipment. Many companies are also equipped with industrial robots for loading and unloading, but they are often still single-machine automation and have not yet applied flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) or flexible manufacturing cells (FMC). Manual handling is still required during the production process, resulting in work-in-progress inventory, and the OEE of high-end intelligent equipment is relatively low.
International leading companies have begun to apply flexible manufacturing systems to achieve fully automatic and unmanned machining of different parts in machining and sheet metal processing. Machining FMS includes several machining centers, robot deburring units, cleaning units, rail conveyors and other equipment and control software, equipped with three-dimensional shelves to place workpieces and tooling, and can complete fully automatic processing from rough to fine. The sheet metal processing FMS system can realize the entire sheet metal manufacturing process from sheet metal cutting, punching, bending to welding.
Many companies pay great attention to automating bottleneck workstations or workstations that consume a lot of manpower, and promote "machine replacement". Although this method can reduce labor and improve the efficiency of a single workstation, it is of little significance to improving the overall efficiency of the production line, and often transfers the bottleneck process to other workstations.
The correct approach is to optimize the production line as a whole based on the concept of industrial engineering and the use of methods such as value stream mapping according to the product type, output, batch, manufacturing process, production capacity, production rhythm and work-in-process logistics transmission method.
At the same time, optimize the manufacturing process from the perspective of realizing automated processing and assembly to reduce the difficulty of automated transformation and try to meet the production and assembly of various variant products.
After decades of application, the functions of industrial software have been continuously refined, covering more and more businesses in manufacturing enterprises, and the number of information systems used by enterprises has increased.
Many enterprises often build an information system to solve a certain problem or a class of problems, to meet the needs of a certain business department or a certain business process, and lack overall planning, which leads to problems such as overlapping functions between systems, blurred boundaries, and diverse data sources.
In the process of promoting sheet metal smart manufacturing, manufacturing enterprises generally focus on construction and neglect operation and maintenance. During the system procurement and implementation stage, enterprises will conduct demand analysis, system evaluation, feasibility analysis and bidding selection. Senior leaders of major projects will also participate in the decision-making process and invest a lot of manpower, material and financial resources.
However, after the system was launched, it lacked continuous operation and maintenance. The application software had not been maintained and upgraded for many years. The gap between the system functions and the actual business processes became increasingly larger, and the value of the system was difficult to realize. The automated production lines also had problems such as untimely maintenance and high failure rates.
The development of enterprises is dynamic, and the only constant is change. Therefore, when selecting information systems, enterprises need to fully consider the flexibility, platform, configurability and scalability of the system. At the same time, enterprises also need to maintain and upgrade the system in a timely manner. The enterprise's IT team must be able to reconfigure the information system in a timely manner according to changes in enterprise needs, minimize language-level secondary development, and focus on IT governance.
In recent years, manufacturing companies have continued to increase their investment in product research and development (R&D) and have purchased 3D CAD, CAE and other software. However, most companies still focus on product development (Development) and neglect research (Research), mainly designing products based on customer order requirements, and lack research and exploration of cutting-edge technologies.
In terms of system applications, digital design software is widely used, and some companies have extended it to digital processes. However, the application of simulation technology is still in its infancy, mainly focusing on motion simulation, structure and fluid simulation and verification.
Simulation-driven design and multi-physical field simulation analysis and optimization design have not yet been achieved. Simulation applications are not systematic, and there is a lack of management of simulation specifications, simulation processes, and material databases. Simulation personnel have not established a special organization, and the value of simulation software has not been fully utilized.
In international advanced manufacturing companies, simulation has become an important means to enhance product R&D capabilities, improve manufacturing processes, and improve product performance and reliability.
Simulation technology is also constantly innovating, achieving real-time simulation, making simulation software more user-friendly, and enabling two-way integration of digital design and simulation. There are also software systems that integrate design and simulation analysis for specific products (such as gears, bearings, power batteries, motors, etc.).
Many manufacturing companies have applied a number of information systems in the process of digital transformation, but the effects and value of the system applications vary.
On the one hand, although the application areas of enterprise information systems are constantly expanding, enterprises lack analysis of the system data itself, and the value of the data has not been fully explored, making it difficult to support enterprise decision-making. On the other hand, enterprises want to use information systems to manage most business issues, but when building information systems, they ignore the management improvements that the enterprise itself needs to implement, and the norms and standards of business management are very incomplete, resulting in the application of the system.
As the country vigorously promotes smart manufacturing, some companies have spared no expense to build a luxurious version of smart factories, with all kinds of intelligent equipment and information systems, including well-known brands of BI, ERP, PLM, MES, SRM, ESB, production and logistics simulation systems, automatic three-dimensional warehouses, AGV, automated production lines, production command centers, etc., and have established special smart manufacturing exhibition halls, on-site visiting channels in workshops, demonstration production lines, etc., which are very visible.
The "lightness and heaviness" of sheet metal smart manufacturing are not absolute opposites, but rather interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Only by correctly understanding and avoiding misunderstandings in practice can enterprises move forward steadily in the wave of intelligent manufacturing and achieve sustainable development.