Full of vitality and transformation, the workers are skillful and strive for the new. In the past, Longgang was full of wasteland and tidal flats, and today, it has become a large industrial zone and a strong industrial area in Shenzhen. At the recent 2023 County Industrial Economic Development Forum, Longgang District has made a series of outstanding achievements: it has topped the list of top 100 industrial zones in China for six consecutive years, and jointly established the Huawei (Longgang) Industrial Internet Innovation Center with Huawei, helping more than 1,200 small and medium-sized enterprises in their digital transformation. As an important support point for the implementation of the "14th Five-Year Plan" in Shenzhen, Longgang District has run out of the "acceleration" of industrial upgrading with practical actions!
Behind the remarkable achievements, it is inseparable from the earnest practice of the regional development strategy of Longgang District by local science and technology enterprises. Shenzhen Shiruida Automation Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shiruida") is one of the prominent representatives. Founded in 2010, Shiruida is a one-stop production and demand docking platform for parts and components in automated factories, and its overall business covers the whole process of R&D, production and sales of parts and components. However, in the course of 13 years of development, the internal management system of Shiruida has gradually emerged with the industry problems of data fragmentation and difficult integration, based on this, Shiruida actively joined hands with Huawei (Longgang) Industrial Internet Innovation Center to explore the spring of enterprise digital transformation.
If the business is not smooth, how can it break the situation?
In the field of automation equipment manufacturing, parts procurement has always been a recognized problem. These parts are like the cells of the equipment, with a large number, complex content, and different standards, each of which has specific application scenarios and working conditions, and the slightest carelessness will affect the quality and stability of the equipment. In addition, enterprises often encounter a series of other problems when purchasing, such as opaque prices, long customization cycles, high intermediate costs, and poor delivery results. It can be said that the difficulty and depth of parts procurement are stubborn diseases that have plagued the development of the industry for many years.
In recent years, driven by digital technology, some MRO procurement management platforms have also emerged in China. Many equipment manufacturers also want to use MRO to improve efficiency, however, in the actual implementation process, enterprises are often faced with the situation that the results are not as expected.
An in-depth analysis shows that this phenomenon is caused by a combination of multiple factors. First of all, there are many types of industries in the mainland, and more than half of them are non-standard parts, which require special customization and design, so it is difficult for enterprises to purchase with common specifications when trading online. In addition, the fragmentation of the procurement supply market is also a concern. At present, in the streets and alleys of the mainland, hardware stores of different sizes can be seen everywhere, and these products are displayed in disorder and uneven in quality. If the product knowledge and practical experience of the procurement personnel are not rich enough, it is difficult to make accurate judgments.
Finally, in terms of data utilization, it is difficult for existing platforms to integrate relevant data such as order information, platform consultation, inventory preparation, and product matching. This will lead to a low degree of data utilization, and it will not be possible to provide scientific data analysis services for upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain.
Such stubborn diseases that plague the industry also affect Shiruida. It is understood that the business scope of Shiruida covers more than 170 categories, more than 2,000 sub-categories and more than 60 million SKUs (stock keeping units) of factory automation parts and components, which is extremely rare in the industry in terms of breadth and complexity of the business. Under such challenges, how should Shiruida break the situation?
With "number" as the wing, break through the information cocoon
In order to solve a series of challenges encountered in sourcing automation components, SCREDA has taken a variety of approaches. Invest heavily in digital transformation and build multiple data systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Supply Relationship Management (SRM), and Office Automation (OA). In practice, however, problems gradually surfaced. These systems are "chimneys" among each other, and it is extremely difficult for data to interact and circulate, resulting in serious information islands and process fragmentation. After learning about each other, the senior management of STARDA decided to make full use of the advantages of HUAWEI CLOUD's digital layout in Longgang District, launch a strategic cooperation with Huawei (Longgang) Industrial Internet Innovation Center, and introduce HUAWEI CLOUD IoT digital factory platform.
In this cooperation, the IoT digital factory platform plays the role of "hub" and "brain", mainly to store, process and analyze various OT data generated in the production process (data generated by industrial control systems and OT equipment), and at the same time, the IoT digital factory platform also serves as a base link to open up MES, ERP, SRM and other information systems, and interacts with the processed OT data and IT data generated by various information systems. In this way, the edge perception layer and various information systems are interconnected, efficiently integrated and organically collaborative, breaking the information silos, so as to more efficiently support managers in data analysis and decision-making.
With the help of the unified management and real-time scheduling of the HUAWEI CLOUD IoT digital factory platform, the procurement efficiency and production efficiency of the company have been significantly improved.
First of all, the previous data silos of Shireda have all been solved. By integrating the real-time data of the edge perception layer with the production data of various information systems in real time, the IoT digital factory platform can ensure that the platform data is updated and iterated in a timely manner. According to statistics, the timeliness and completeness of this data can reach 100%.
On this basis, the platform data can provide managers with scientific and reasonable decision-making support. In the event of a special situation, such as a change in the production schedule, decision-makers can quickly evaluate and adjust the production line's schedule. According to statistics, the response period for such emergencies can be controlled within 0.5 hours.
At the same time, in the daily operation process, enterprises can reasonably arrange production tasks through refined data analysis, and can also deepen their understanding of customer needs, so as to target production more accurately. For example, when customers need to customize non-standard parts, Shiruida can rely on the support of the IoT digital factory platform to accurately design and produce according to customer requirements to ensure on-time delivery. The relevant person in charge of Shiruida said that under the fine guidance of data as the core, the overall production capacity of the company increased by 8% in a week, and the on-time delivery rate reached 93%, which greatly improved the trust and satisfaction of customers.
In the face of the grand blueprint of "accelerating digital development and building a digital China" in the 14th Five-Year Plan, digitalization and intelligence have become an important starting point for high-quality development. As a microcosm of the industrial transformation in Longgang District, the marriage between SRDA and Huawei (Longgang) Industrial Internet Innovation Center will provide a more prominent model for local enterprises to digitally transform and empower innovation.
In the future, Huawei (Longgang) Industrial Internet Innovation Center will work with more local enterprises to break down the barriers to information flow and release the core value of data with a combination of technology injection and experience integration, and provide a more three-dimensional, diversified, and accurate intelligent manufacturing transformation plan for industrial enterprises and cloud migration plan for small and medium-sized enterprises, driving the transformation and upgrading of the overall manufacturing industry cluster in Longgang District, consolidating the industrial Internet capability that radiates from the region as the center to the surrounding areas, and helping Longgang District become an innovation-driven, The leading area of the national industrial Internet with leading application and active ecology will eventually bring a steady stream of "digital spring" to the high-quality development of the county economy.
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