Intelligent manufacturing is to realize the intelligence and innovation of the whole manufacturing value chain, and to further promote the deep integration of informatization and industrialization.

At present, the "intelligence" of intelligent manufacturing is still at the level of smart. An intelligent manufacturing system has the ability of data collection, data processing, and data analysis. It can accurately execute instructions and realize closed-loop feedback. The trend of intelligent manufacturing is to truly realize "intelligent". An intelligent manufacturing system can realize independent learning, independent decision-making, and continuous optimization.

Among the key technologies of intelligent manufacturing, intelligent products and services can help enterprises bring business model innovation; intelligent equipment, intelligent production line, intelligent workshop, intelligent factory can help enterprises realize production model innovation; intelligent R & D, intelligent management, intelligent logistics and supply chain can help enterprises realize operation model innovation; and intelligent decision-making can help enterprises achieve scientific decision-making. Ten intelligent manufacturing technologies are closely related to each other. Manufacturing enterprises should gradually and rationally promote the application of these ten intelligent technologies.

1. Intelligent products

Intelligent products usually include mechanical, electrical and embedded software with memory, perception, calculation, and transmission functions. Typical smart products include smartphones, smart wearable devices, drones, smart cars, smart appliances, smart vending machines, etc., including many smart hardware products. Intelligent equipment is also an intelligent product. Enterprises should think about how to add intelligent units to products and improve the added value of products.

2. Intelligent service

Based on sensors and the Internet of things (IoT), the state of products can be sensed so as to carry out preventive maintenance, timely help customers to replace spare parts, and even help customers to bring business opportunities by understanding the state of product operation. It can also collect Big Data of product operation and assist enterprises to make marketing decisions. In addition, through the development of customer-oriented APP, enterprises are also a means of intelligent service, which can provide targeted services for the products purchased by enterprises, so as to target users and carry out service marketing.

3. Intelligent equipment

Manufacturing equipment has experienced from mechanical equipment to numerical control equipment, and is gradually developing into intelligent equipment. Intelligent equipment has the function of detection, which can realize on-site detection, so as to compensate for the processing error, improve the processing accuracy, and compensate the thermal deformation. In the past, some precision equipments have high requirements for the environment. Now, because of the closed-loop detection and compensation, the requirements for the environment can be reduced.

4. Intelligent production line

Enterprises in many industries highly rely on automatic production lines, such as steel, chemical, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, tobacco, chip manufacturing, electronic assembly, automobile and parts manufacturing, etc., to realize automatic processing, assembly, and testing. Some mechanical standard parts production also used automatic production lines, such as bearings. However, at present, equipment manufacturing enterprises are mainly discrete manufacturing. Many enterprises focus on technological transformation, which is to establish automatic production lines, assembly lines, and inspection lines. Boeing's aircraft assembly plant has established a U-shaped pulsating assembly line. The automatic production line can be divided into a rigid automatic production line and a flexible automatic production line. In order to improve production efficiency, industrial robots and hanging systems are more and more widely used in automatic production lines.

5. Intelligent workshop

A workshop usually has multiple production lines, which either produce similar parts or products, or have upstream and downstream assembly relationships. In order to realize the intelligent workshop, it is necessary to collect and analyze the production status, equipment status, energy consumption, production quality, material consumption, and other information in real-time, to arrange production efficiently and reasonably, and to significantly improve the equipment utilization rate (OEE). Therefore, no matter what manufacturing industry, the manufacturing execution system (MES) has become an inevitable choice for enterprises.

6. Smart factory

A factory usually consists of many workshops, and a large enterprise has many factories. As an intelligent factory, not only the production process should be automated, transparent, visualized and lean, but also the product detection, quality inspection and analysis, and production logistics should be closed-loop integrated with the production process. Information sharing, on-time delivery, and collaborative operation should be realized among multiple workshops in a factory. Some discrete manufacturing enterprises also set up production command centers similar to process manufacturing enterprises to command and dispatch the whole factory and find and solve unexpected problems in time, which is also an important sign of intelligent factory. Intelligent factories must rely on seamless integrated information system support, including PLM, ERP, CRM, SCM, and MES, these five core systems. The intelligent factory of large-scale enterprises needs to use an ERP system to make the production planning of multiple workshops, and the MES system will carry out detailed production scheduling according to the production plan of each workshop. The strength of MES production scheduling is day, hour, or even minute.

7. Intelligent R & D

In the aspect of product research and development, discrete manufacturing enterprises have applied tools such as CAD / CAM / CAE / CAPP / EDA and PDM / PLM system, but the level of many enterprises applying this software is not high. In order to develop intelligent products, enterprises need the cooperation of electromechanical software and multi-disciplinary; in order to shorten the research and development cycle of products, they need to deeply apply simulation technology, establish virtual digital prototype, realize multi-disciplinary simulation, and reduce physical test through simulation; they need to implement the idea of standardization, serialization, and modularization to support mass customization or personalized customization of products; they need to simulate the combination of real technology and test management can improve the confidence of simulation results. Process manufacturing enterprises have begun to use a PLM system to realize process management and formula management, LIMS (laboratory information management system) system is more extensive.

8. Intelligent management

The core operation management system of manufacturing enterprises also includes human resource management system (HCM), customer relationship management system (CRM), enterprise asset management system (EAM), energy management system (EMS), supplier relationship management system (SRM), enterprise portal (EP), business process management system (BPM), etc. domestic enterprises also regard office automation (OA) as a core information system. In order to manage the core master data of an enterprise, master data management (MDM) has been deployed in large enterprises in recent years. To realize intelligent management and intelligent decision, the most important condition is the accurate basic data and seamless integration of main information systems.

9. Intelligent logistics and supply chain

The internal purchase, production, and sales processes of manufacturing enterprises are accompanied by the flow of materials. Therefore, more and more manufacturing enterprises attach importance to the production automation as well as the logistics automation. Automated three-dimensional warehouse, unmanned guided vehicle (AGV), and intelligent hanging system are widely used. In the logistics center of manufacturing enterprises and logistics enterprises, intelligent sorting, stacking robot, and automatic roller table system is becoming more and more popular. WMS (warehouse management system) and TMS (transport management system) are also widely concerned by manufacturing enterprises and logistics enterprises.

10. Intelligent decision-making

In the process of enterprise operation, a lot of data are produced. On the one hand, the core business data from various business departments and business systems, such as contract, payment collection, expense, inventory, cash, product, customer, investment, equipment, output, delivery date and other data, are generally structured data that can be analyzed and predicted in multiple dimensions. This is BI (Business Intelligence), also known as a management cockpit or decision support system. At the same time, enterprises can use these data to extract the KPI of enterprises, and compare it with the preset goals. At the same time, KPI is decomposed layer by layer to assess the cadres and employees, which is the category of EPM (Enterprise Performance Management). From a technical point of view, memory computing is an important support of BI.

Touch Think was started in the year 2012 with the sole objective of manufacturing the best quality of industrial monitors, industrial computers, industrial embedded PCs for intelligent industrial automation fields.

Over the years with our products we have developed a niche market and we stand out as one of the leading quality manufacturers in China.