"When the industry is in a stage of rapid growth, enterprise competition depends on the 'upper limit', that is, profits; When the growth rate of the industry slows down, the competition of enterprises will have to compete for the 'bottom line', and whoever can have cost advantages through technology, manufacturing, supply chain and management can 'break the volume'. During the 5th New Energy Vehicle and Power Battery (CIBF2024 Chongqing) International Exchange Conference, Tang Li, CEO of Zhanwan Technology, said in an exclusive interview with Battery China.com, "The 'volume' of the battery industry can be solved, and the key is to jump out of the original model of the industry, and achieve deeper and subversive cost reduction and efficiency increase through the big data of the industrial Internet." ”
The picture shows Tang Li, CEO of Zhanwan Technology, being interviewed by Battery China Network at the exhibition site
At the exchange meeting, Tang Li also delivered a keynote speech entitled "To be an 'industrial doctor' in the wave of intelligence in the new energy industry".
After experiencing a surging wave of expansion in 2021 and 2022, the lithium battery industry chain has experienced a phased and structural surplus in the power and energy storage battery industry at this stage, and the market is fierce. Industry insiders pointed out that with the emergence of overcapacity, industrial development is more rational, relying on technology, manufacturing and process to reduce costs, is becoming the industrial chain to seek a "broken" path.
Tang Li believes that if enterprises want to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and win in involution, they must seize the opportunities brought by digital and intelligent transformation, and reduce costs through equipment management, quality improvement, process optimization, energy conservation and carbon reduction based on digital and intelligent means, so as to enhance their competitiveness as a whole.
As a high-end manufacturing industry, power batteries have developed rapidly in recent years with production lines and equipment, and leading battery and material companies have achieved extremely high automated production lines. In this context, human management alone can no longer meet the in-depth understanding of production lines and processes. Tang Li pointed out that lithium battery equipment is a real "front-line worker", take data from the equipment, "know what the equipment thinks", and then based on the data and manufacturing situation reflected by the equipment, formulate the optimal plan, reverse control the equipment, so that the equipment "speaks people, does personnel", and all the production and manufacturing in the future is to spell the process, the understanding of the equipment and process iteration.
In order to help the battery industry reduce costs and increase efficiency, Zhanwan Technology proposed the "1+X Industrial Internet Innovation Solution". Among them, 1 refers to a digital factory platform for "physical examination and diagnosis", and X refers to the "right medicine" for multiple intelligent scene applications.
"Conduct a comprehensive digital 'physical examination and diagnosis' of the factory to help operators gain a comprehensive insight into the core KPIs of business segments such as efficiency, equipment, production, quality, energy and carbon, safety and environmental protection." Tang Li further explained, and then "prescribe the right medicine" for the crux of the enterprise, solve or improve the specific pain points of the energy efficiency improvement of the production and operation of the enterprise, and further promote the enterprise to upgrade to intelligence on the basis of the digital factory, which is "1+X".
Founded in 2014, Zhanwan Technology has deeply improved and solved problems such as quality, safety, and energy consumption in specific practice, helping enterprises to reduce costs, improve quality and increase efficiency, and the company's "1+X industrial Internet innovation solutions" have been widely used in the automotive and parts, glass, new energy and equipment manufacturing industries.
At present, Zhanwan Technology has helped the leading enterprises in the battery industry chain such as Agile to carry out in-depth digital and intelligent transformation.
The picture shows Tang Li, CEO of Zhanwan Technology, giving a speech
According to Battery China, for the battery industry, Zhanwan Technology has an in-depth understanding of the characteristics and needs of the industry, combined with powerful data collection, industrial Internet of Things, big data platform, industrial scene data analysis algorithms and applications and other technologies, and has built 6 major scenarios of "virtual reality, energy saving and carbon reduction, process optimization, quality improvement, predictive maintenance and global collaboration", covering the whole process of lithium battery production, from the production of front-end electrodes to the synthesis of middle-end cells to the back-end formation and packaging, fully empowering the digital and intelligent development needs of battery manufacturing enterprises.
>>> Virtual reality and digital twin technology
Whether it is to reduce costs, improve efficiency, or improve quality, it is a matter that the management of the enterprise needs to make decisions, so the managers of battery companies need to visualize the front-line situation through technical means, and what you see is what you get.
Relying on the four core technologies of AIoT, big data, AI algorithm and digital twin, Zhanwan Technology opens and shares the long-term accumulation and common technologies in the field of industrial manufacturing, combines them according to the needs of the battery industry, and cooperates with the core modules of the industrial Internet such as digital space, industrial mechanism model, and knowledge graph to simulate and optimize the production process in the digital environment.
By virtually testing and optimizing the production line, you can reduce the cost of trial and error and line adjustment time, improve production efficiency and quality, and prescribe a strong "combination" prescription for the "intractable diseases" in the transformation.
>>> Energy saving and carbon reduction
Based on virtual reality and digital twin technology, using data to reduce costs is one of the purposes of the industrial Internet. According to Tang Li, on the one hand, the equipment in all aspects of the battery production line can be transformed and optimized based on data to achieve energy saving; On the other hand, change the traditional energy consciousness, consume due to orders, and use the industrial Internet to reasonably distribute energy from the demand side.
In addition to energy itself, with the industrial Internet of Things platform and data platform as the digital base, and energy as the starting point, we will carry out energy efficiency improvement, AI energy saving and carbon reduction, build an industrial ecological chain of digital and intelligent IoT, human-machine collaboration, green and low-carbon, and sustainable development, and realize the future zero-carbon factory of digital and green collaboration.
>>> AI + process tuning
In addition to energy conservation and carbon reduction, relying on the industrial Internet and data platform, the manufacturing efficiency of the production line can be greatly improved, the process can be optimized, and the yield can be improved.
Taking the slitting machine, which is widely used in the production of lithium battery separator and aluminum-plastic film, as an example, through intelligent mining, intelligent computing and intelligent control capabilities, the expert knowledge of various industries is structured and precipitated to the platform, and then the automatic control of processes and equipment is realized through AI algorithms, big data analysis and other technologies, so as to build a closed loop from data IoT to intelligent control, and widely implement industry AI applications.
In fact, the improvement of yield itself is one of the important ways to reduce the cost of the battery industry.
>>> Quality improvement
Carry out global tracking and control of lithium battery incoming material quality, process quality, and finished product quality, deeply excavate quality factors, comprehensively evaluate process capabilities, support quality anomaly traceability analysis, precipitate industry process knowledge and cycle optimization strategies, and realize systematic raw material testing, process quality control, and finished product quality standards and processes, improve product quality, and reduce production costs.
>>> Predictive repairs
Tang Li pointed out that based on data collection, observation and analysis, it is also crucial to prevent and ensure the safe and stable operation of key and important equipment in the production line. ”
Based on the in-depth analysis and data monitoring of the lithium battery production line, Tang Li believes that the application of a large number of cylinders and servo motors on the lithium battery production line has given birth to the predictive maintenance of key components, and through the use of advanced data analysis, artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning technology, real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance of equipment status can be realized, so as to reduce the failure rate, shorten downtime, optimize equipment availability and utilization rate, improve overall equipment efficiency and production capacity, and bring higher production efficiency and economic benefits to enterprises.
>>> Global synergy
Specifically, data collection, industrial Internet of Things, big data platform, industrial scenario data analysis algorithms and applications are used to connect people, equipment, systems and products, make the three core costs of efficiency, quality and energy transparent, and open the "cost black hole" based on the real-time perception of the whole process, and apply intelligent algorithms and big data analysis to achieve global collaboration of cost control.
It is reported that at present, Zhanwan Technology's 1+X industrial Internet innovative solution has been deeply applied by leading enterprises in the battery industry. Taking the world's leading lithium battery separator industry leader as an example, Zhanwan Technology uses the industrial Internet platform to greatly reduce its personnel costs and significantly shorten the commissioning cycle of its production line based on the process improvement of its separator and aluminum-plastic film factory, and the project has also won the industrial Internet pilot demonstration project of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China, becoming a benchmark for the application and innovation of the industrial Internet in the field of batteries.
At present, the power and energy storage battery industry is entering the stage of rational development from overcapacity, and at the same time, in order to get out of the fierce involution of overcapacity as soon as possible, the industry is accelerating the exploration of quality improvement and cost reduction paths, and reshaping new products and market competitiveness. Zhanwan Technology, relying on its rich experience and advantages in the field of industrial Internet, proposes the "1+X Industrial Internet Innovative Solution" in the lithium battery industry, which will provide support for the transformation of enterprises to high-end intelligent manufacturing on the one hand; On the other hand, through the application of digital and intelligent technology, it also provides a reference path for industrial chain enterprises to "break the volume".