A reporter recently visited some manufacturing enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta and found that many enterprises have carried out "intelligent manufacturing" to promote the improvement of efficiency and quality, drive the increase of average income level, promote the change of labor structure, and constantly enhance the overall competitiveness.

        It is understood that the direction of "intelligent manufacturing" is not simply to replace people with machines, but to use machines to assist people. After the implementation of "intelligent manufacturing", the manufacturing industry will mainly reduce simple manual labor with low technology intensity, while increase employment, mainly high-end technology and skill positions. Change is the intelligent production line and information production management system, the production of workers' technical level, knowledge structure put forward higher requirements. But at the same time, in the process of "intelligent manufacturing", capital, equipment, talent and other problems are prominent, costs and benefits must be considered, and the policy system needs to be refined and improved.

       On the production line, the mechanical arm easily grabs a piece of toughened side plate; In the factory channel, AGV handling robot "look for a picture" orderly consignment of materials in each region; On the command platform, the route trajectory of each elevator maintenance personnel is displayed in real time...... In the vast intelligent factory of Hangzhou Xi 'ao Elevator Co., Ltd., the reporter saw that most production lines were managed by only three or five technicians, who used computers to move their fingers and issue instructions, and a group of machine "workers" responded immediately.

      The company's industrial engineering manager Zhang Xuejian introduced that through the implementation of "intelligent manufacturing", the company's production process automatic equipment CNC rate increased to 80%, the production rate of good products increased to 99.8%, the production line automation station accounted for more than 70%, the per capita production efficiency increased by more than 60%.

      Reporters in the Yangtze River Delta and other places have found that "intelligent manufacturing" has become a powerful measure for local governments and manufacturing enterprises to deal with the problem of recruitment difficulties and high labor costs, effectively improving production efficiency and product quality.

      Wang Min, chairman of XCMG Group, introduced that through the construction of intelligent factories, the automation welding rate of key processes has been increased from 40% to 90%, the failure rate of products delivered for inspection has been reduced to 1%, the level of welding and numerical control has been improved to 1 person and 10 machines and 1 person and 3 machines, and the coverage rate of online detection has reached 80%.

        Jiaxing Jieshun Tourism Products Co., Ltd. business director Xu Jieqiong said that enterprises in 2017 investment of more than 6 million online injection molding automation factory technical transformation project, from artificial injection molding into automatic injection molding, workshop labor 120 people reduced to 60 people; In 2016, the project of automatic punching and unmanned factory for pipe fittings was implemented. The number of workers in the workshop was reduced from 60 to 70 to 6, the production capacity doubled, and the rate of excellent products increased by nearly 3 percentage points compared with that of manual punching pipe, reaching more than 98%.

       In June this year, SAIC set up its artificial intelligence laboratory, whose artificial intelligence product Spruce system can provide integrated logistics solutions on demand forecasting, path planning, and global optimal scheduling. Taking a logistics project in the Yangtze River Delta of an enterprise as an example, a specific plan that used to take 5 people in 2 hours can now be completed by one person in 10 minutes with the help of the Spruce system.

       Li Jinpeng, deputy general manager of Zhejiang Siling Automobile Bearing Co., Ltd., introduced that the intelligent transformation progress of one workshop of the company reached 40%. In the past, the workshop had 43 employees and a monthly output value of 3.42 million yuan. Now, it has 32 employees and a monthly output value of 3.47 million yuan. After the transformation, the product quality is improved, the machine response time is fast, the problem can be found and solved quickly, and the qualified rate of the product is increased by 3%.

       In recent years, Xinchang County, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province, has maintained a double-digit growth in its gross industrial product despite a small increase in the number of employees. Xinchang County Bureau of Economy and Information Technology Deputy Director He Xiaofeng said, since 2013, "intelligent manufacturing" has been placed in the county's industrial transformation and upgrading work in an important position, not only effectively improve work efficiency and product quality, but also become the enterprise to open the international market "pass". For example, after the "intelligent manufacturing" of the expansion valve production line of Sanhua Stock, the shift production efficiency has been increased by 20 times, and the company has established cooperative relations with internationally renowned enterprises such as General Motors, BMW and Mercedes Benz.

       "Smart manufacturing" is reinventing industrial processes. In the workshop, the workers and the machines cooperate closely and mutually; Outside the workshop, a screen displays the operator's list, temperature and humidity, material shortage warning and other information for each production line. This is a pilot and demonstration workshop for intelligent manufacturing of electronic components of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) based on digital twin technology established by the 14th CETC Institute in Nanjing.

      Such intelligent workshops are constantly enabling industrial upgrading. "Every tire moves with 'data.'" In Nanjing Kumho Tire Co., Ltd., Liao Jinrong, chairman of the labor union, introduced that traditional automation relies on human control and segmented control, but now the whole production process can be controlled through the database and the "brain" of software.

     Hu Mingchun, director of China Electric Power Research Institute 14, said that they not only independently researched and developed smart enterprise overall solutions, but also led the formulation of some industry standards, and independently developed industrial software and intelligent equipment.

       According to the introduction of the Department of Industry and Information Technology of Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu has created a total of 536 provincial demonstration intelligent workshops, through the demonstration and guidance to effectively drive the province's relevant enterprises to promote intelligent manufacturing, and constantly enhance the competitiveness of Jiangsu's industrial economy.

      Zhejiang Province economy and information office technology transformation department director Zhou Tufa said, "intelligent manufacturing" is to promote the enterprise to mechanization, information direction development, promote production technology technology. In the past five years since its implementation, Zhejiang's total labor productivity has increased by 51.2%.

          According to interviews with local governments and enterprises, the implementation of "smart manufacturing" is aimed at solving the problem of labor shortage. The demand for workers from enterprises remains strong, and the overall employment scale remains stable.

       "Intelligent manufacturing" in alleviating labor difficulties in enterprises, but also promote the replacement of new and old positions, improve the income level of workers. "Overall, the demand for employees is basically flat, but the personnel demand structure will change dramatically." Zhu Tianshu, director of Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province, said that with the deepening of "intelligent manufacturing", the demand for professionals in information management and software development, which used to be relatively low, is on the rise. In particular, talents with complex skills have become the hot property of manufacturing enterprises and high salaries are hard to find.

       Kunshan on the local "intelligent manufacturing" enterprise employment demand impact of the special survey shows that the implementation of "intelligent manufacturing", the average reduction of about 19% of the first-line operators, enterprises on the average demand for technical skills increased by about 18%, engineering research and development personnel average growth of about 9%.

       Shen Bin, deputy secretary general of the Industrial Internet Industry Alliance of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that the direction of "intelligent manufacturing" is not simply to replace people with machines, but to use machines to assist people. After the implementation of "intelligent manufacturing", the manufacturing industry will mainly reduce the number of simple manual labor with low technology intensity, that is, general labor, but also increase the number of jobs, mainly high-end technology and skills.

       Weeks for making said, intelligent production line and the production and management of information system, the technical level of production workers, knowledge structure is put forward higher requirements, manufacturing high technology talent demand, skilled technicians and automation, informationization professionals has gradually become the main direction of enterprise recruitment, labor structure optimization effectively promote the whole society and the improvement of per capita income. "This enables front-line workers to leave the high risk, high pollution, heavy physical labor positions, and to engage in auxiliary, monitoring, control, maintenance and other safe, healthy and comfortable work, but also fully reflects the humanistic care brought by advanced production mode."

      The initiative has also spawned some jobs in the smart equipment manufacturing services sector. Zhejiang Province has cultivated 80 provincial "intelligent manufacturing" enterprise engineering service companies, for small and medium-sized enterprises "intelligent manufacturing" to do third party services, not only to buy a new production line to use and maintain, more is to help enterprises to upgrade the original equipment. At the end of 2013, Zhejiang Litai Technology Co., Ltd. had only 20 employees, and now it has 380 employees, and will further expand to 500 employees by the end of this year.

       Recently, Jiangsu Provincial Department of Science and Technology approved the construction of two major science and technology public service platforms -- Jiangsu Intelligent Manufacturing and Robot Application Technology Public Service Platform and Jiangsu Artificial Intelligence Industry Public Technology Service Platform. This is a major public service platform for science and technology in the field of intelligent manufacturing and artificial intelligence, focusing on the needs of emerging industries, future industrial innovation and development of small and medium-sized enterprises in Jiangsu Province. Taking the latter as an example, a high-performance computer service platform and a public data service platform will be established to carry out the transfer and transformation of technological achievements and provide enterprises with services such as technology development, product development, process development and technical consultation.

      In addition, reporters found in the survey, many enterprises did not put the "intelligent manufacturing" after the surplus labor to the society, but through internal retraining and then on the post employment. Zhang Xuejian said that SIO has a special training institution for employees, SIO University. Workers who have been replaced from the production line can be trained in SIO University for three to six months, and they can be included in the team of maintenance personnel, or they can go back to work in their hometown cities according to their own will.

        Based on the reports of local governments and the interviewed enterprises, the smooth development of "intelligent manufacturing" mainly faces the following three problems and challenges.

       First, the implementation cost is high, the cycle of capital recovery is long, and the support needs to be strengthened.

       According to He Xiaofeng, among the surveyed enterprises in Xinchang, about 70.8% of them think that the primary problem of carrying out "intelligent manufacturing" is the high cost, which is mainly due to two reasons: one is the large investment and high interest expenses. According to the survey of enterprises that have completed the transformation of "intelligent manufacturing", more than 1/5 of them have invested more than 5 million yuan, which is not a small investment for small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, the financing cost of enterprises continues to rise in recent years, increasing the burden on enterprises. Second, the recovery cycle of capital investment is long. According to the survey, 42.3% of the enterprises that have completed the transformation of "intelligent manufacturing" have a payback period of more than four years.

       He believes that "intelligent manufacturing", as a long-term work to promote enterprise upgrading, needs to be supported by larger fiscal policies. It is suggested that on the basis of integrating the existing subsidy funds to encourage technological transformation, eliminate backward production capacity and technological innovation, additional industrial support funds should be added to form and promote the "intelligent manufacturing" support funds as a whole.

      Shen said "AI applications" are also a hot topic at the moment. You see, AI is also creating new jobs from the supply side. At the same time, "intelligent manufacturing" itself has a limit, and cost-benefit is a very important consideration.

      Zhou suggested that the policy system of "intelligent manufacturing" should be further refined and improved. On the basis of the existing policies, enterprises are allowed to enjoy other project support policies while enjoying robot purchase incentives, broaden the financing channels of "intelligent manufacturing" enterprises, coordinate the banking regulatory authorities to establish a list of key enterprises, key projects and key customers, and increase the financing guarantee for "intelligent manufacturing" projects.

     Second, the high dependence of imported equipment, the service system is not perfect. In the middle of October in Nanjing held in the World Intelligent Manufacturing Conference, participants in the analysis, China's key technology equipment and industrial software still have shortcomings, high-end CNC machine tools, low-level operating systems and so on are mostly dependent on imports; The overall application and promotion of intelligent manufacturing is still in the transition stage from automation to digitalization, and the collaborative promotion mechanism needs to be further improved.

      Wang Minqi, chairman of Changzhou Wuyang Textile Machinery Co., Ltd. and other business people believe that many enterprises' digital factories are basically imported equipment, and intelligent processing equipment determines the grade of products. The equipment gap may cause the final products to be reduced by one or two grades, and the quality is not enough to achieve the purpose of improving competitiveness.

      Made in the need for "smart" of the enterprise, a large number of single enterprise owns international advanced equipment, also need to automatic control, automatic detection, automatic assembly, automatic transmission, such as a link of special equipment, but few intelligent equipment manufacturing service enterprises can according to the characteristics of different industries and enterprises, to provide differentiated service equipment.

      Zhao Min, executive director of the intelligent research institute, said that "intelligent manufacturing" is the only way to the future of manufacturing, a bottleneck in China's manufacturing industry is that the industrial Internet software field is basically controlled by foreign countries.

      Third, there is a shortage of high-end talents, and enterprises face great training pressure. Many experts have judged that China's intelligent manufacturing is still in its infancy, and many enterprises are still making up for the digital "make-up". Zhu Sendi, honorary director of the expert committee of China Machinery Industry Federation, believes that intelligent manufacturing is still in the "opera" of large enterprises, small and medium-sized micro enterprises "onlooking" state, and the intelligent transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises is the focus and difficulty of promoting intelligent manufacturing.

      Reporters have learned that although most enterprises have the will to develop intelligent manufacturing, but many enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, due to the lack of high-end talents and other factors, unable or unable to implement intelligent manufacturing. Li Jinpeng said that after the implementation of "intelligent manufacturing", the company needs a batch of network engineers who know production management, but few colleges and universities cultivate such complex talents, so it had to send its employees to third-party service companies to learn knowledge of the Internet of Things, intelligent manufacturing and other aspects. Some companies report that their digital factories need to send people abroad to learn operating techniques, but they often encounter staff turnover problems every year.

        Some companies are already looking for solutions. Suzhou Bosch company set up the apprentice training center, mainly to carry out machinery, materials, electronics and other three categories of professional training, the future will also increase the software type of computer, sensor and other courses. The company has 6,000 front-line employees, but only more than 800 technicians with a certain "smart manufacturing" foundation. "The future training pressure is very high." The company said the relevant person in charge.

        Zhu Zheng, director of Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security, and others suggested that relevant departments take precautions, strengthen research on artificial intelligence and other topics, guide vocational technical colleges and enterprises to strengthen school-enterprise cooperation, actively adapt to changes in professional system, curriculum setting, technical research, personnel training and other aspects, and create a new workforce.

       According to the World Economic Forum's Future Jobs 2018 report, while 75 million jobs will be replaced by machines over the next five years, 133 million new jobs will be created simultaneously, representing a net gain of up to 58 million new jobs.

       Experts believe that artificial intelligence will replan the division of labor between machines and humans, forcing a deep adjustment of the employment structure. Shift from low-value labor-intensive production to higher-value jobs; From repetitive labor to creative labor transfer, industrial workers can prepare for the transition in advance. But the anxiety of having machines replace people doesn't have to create a "man versus man". With the change of production tools, the adjustment of occupational structure is an inevitable trend, but it will not be "a single blow to kill".