He Jun, CEO of TCL Gechuang Dongzhi: The industrial Internet is heading towards a sinking market

Author| Yu Huiru Editor| Luo Lijuan

With the development of technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence and the promotion of policies, the industrial Internet has become a "fragrant food" in the capital market and manufacturing industry.

According to the iResearch consulting report, as of June 2021, industrial Internet companies established within one year account for 26.82% of all enterprises in the field. In addition, in 2020, there were more than 600 financing incidents in the industrial Internet field, among which there were many investors in primary market financing such as IDG China, Matrix Partners China, Yunfeng Fund, Tencent, Baidu and other first-line investment institutions and Internet giants.

Why do capital and manufacturing focus on the industrial Internet? Hillhouse Capital once analyzed that as a product of the deep integration of a new generation of information technology and manufacturing, the industrial Internet can accurately connect data information at both ends of supply and demand, improve the efficiency of key material allocation, and is an important way for traditional industries to achieve digital transformation.

In 2018, after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Action Plan for the Development of the Industrial Internet (2018-2020), a large number of industrial Internet platforms emerged.

Among them, there are manufacturing incubation platforms such as TCL Gechuang Dongzhi, Midea Meiyun Zhishu, sany heavy industry tree roots, etc.; there are underlying technology platforms built by Internet companies such as Ali and Tencent; platforms built by traditional software and hardware companies such as Youyou and Inspur; and there are also innovative enterprises that rely on their own characteristics to rise.

Consultancy Accenture predicts that by 2030, the Industrial Internet could bring $14.2 trillion in economic growth to the global economy.

But in the face of the next round of development trends, not all companies can seize the opportunity. Those enterprises that can really sink into the application scenario and solve the pain points of users can be favored by capital and industrial enterprises.

<h2>Usher in a period of rapid growth</h2>

In the plan of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the next three years are the rapid growth period of the domestic industrial Internet. At this stage, the core task of the enterprise is to precipitate value from the data.

In the view of He Jun, vice president of TCL Industry and CEO of Gechuang Dongzhi, after several years of development, the industrial Internet is moving towards a sinking market and entering the stage of "value realization".

Founded in 2018, Gechuang Dongzhi is an industrial Internet platform incubated by TCL in the last wave. At the beginning of its establishment, Gechuang Dongzhi relied on the experience of TCL Huaxing semiconductor display industry. Since its development, the company has focused on semiconductors, new energy, 3C and other fields.

According to He Jun, in the new stage, the industrial Internet has emerged new characteristics such as "sinking", "verticalization", "industrial security", and "soft and hard security".

"Sinking means to be closer to the scene and release value from the scene." He Jun said that in the past, everyone focused on "how to do platformization and standardization", but in the new stage, more industrial Internet platforms should start from the sinking scene and realize the value of the platform.

The final value of the industrial Internet is to help enterprises achieve digitalization, intelligence and networking. However, due to the large differences in the characteristics of various industries in the manufacturing industry, it is difficult to unify the construction of the standard system between different industries, and it is impossible for any industrial Internet platform to serve all industries. As a result, vertical industry platforms are favored.

"Around the entire industry, verticalization is also a trend that everyone recognizes. Therefore, Gechuang Dongzhi regards pan-semiconductor as the current focus. He Jun said.

At present, in the pan-semiconductor industry, the proportion of localization of industrial software is not high. "Taking a 12-inch fab as an example, its industrial software localization rate is almost 0, and the 8-inch and 6-inch fabs use a small number of manufacturing software systems provided by local software manufacturers, but the proportion is also very low." He Jun said that therefore, improving local independent innovation and thus promoting industrial security is an irreversible trend in the field of industrial Internet.

The network of the industrial Internet includes the enterprise intranet and the enterprise extranet, in He Jun's view, the construction of the enterprise intranet should achieve the integration of information technology network and production control network, that is, the integration of IT and OT.

In fact, the recently released "White Paper on Industrial Equipment Networking Technology and Practice" pointed out that nearly 80% of China's industrial equipment is not networked. Of the about 20% of the devices that are already networked, the communication protocols are various.

Therefore, the integration of IT and OT and deeper changes are of great significance to promote the industrial Internet to achieve the end of value.

<h2>Find the right entry point</h2>

Under the new trend, industrial Internet companies are looking for their own new positioning.

He Jun believes that at present, the industrial Internet industry is very fragmented, in this case, if you continue to develop according to the original idea, the growth is very limited. As a result, the industry will go through a process of first dispersing and then concentrating.

As the only industrial Internet platform enterprise in China incubated from the pan-semiconductor manufacturing industry, Gechuang Dongzhi's goal is very clear: to take Google as an example and become a leading product-oriented company providing standardized industrial software in China.

In the context of this goal and the support of TCL Huaxing, Pan Semiconductor has become the company's precise entry point.

"Industrial software needs to spend a lot of time and cost to develop, requires scenarios, customer patience, and many factors to be integrated to do this well." In addition, the threshold for the semiconductor industry to adopt new software is high, and in this field, there are few companies like Huaxing that jointly carry out large-scale innovative autonomous software substitution with Gechuang Dongzhi. Dai Haihua, vice president of TCL Gechuang Dongzhi Technology Co., Ltd., said.

The industrial Internet is a huge industrial ecology, each enterprise in the ecosystem has its own unique positioning, what is the status of Gechuang Dongzhi in this ecology?

"We are willing to do a role in the aggregate, using the big platform, brand and capital behind us to help the overall transformation of the old factory, and from the top-level architecture to help the construction of the new factory." In this ecosystem, we work with our partners to build a unified development environment and form a unified architecture and protocol standards. He Jun introduced.

It is worth mentioning that Gechuang Dongzhi has created a one-stop integrated production and operation management platform G-Fusion for business scenarios. Compared with the traditional independent production system architecture, G-Fusion realizes the complete integration of production management systems and the closed-loop management of business processes.

Recently, the "Pan-Semiconductor Forerunner Joint Program" was officially launched, and professional software companies in the field of pan-semiconductor - AIM, WeXun, Zheta, Corelli, and Shangyang Software worked together to jointly promote the digital transformation process of the pan-semiconductor industry, empower design, research and development, manufacturing, operation and other aspects, and promote the intelligent manufacturing development of the pan-semiconductor industry with "platform + software" technology.

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