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On June 15, 2019, CASIC launched the system-level industrial application of “one brain, one cockpit, two studios, two stations and one data mining subsystem” developed by CASICloud on the 2019 World Industrial and Energy Internet Expo. In recent years, the application has helped enterprises to realize social integration, allocation and coordination of resources, and helped manufacturing enterprises to realize strategic transformation, thus realizing high-quality development. Among the enterprises, Yonghong Radiator Company (hereinafter referred to as “Yonghong”) of AVIC Guihang Co., Ltd. cooperated with CASICloud in building a “cloud digital factory”, improving its equipment utilization rate by nearly 30% and remarkably reducing its equipment fault rate and maintenance time. With no equipment added and a 20% decrease in the number of employees, Yonghong improved its production capacity by nearly 70%.
Early manufacturing enterprises on the “third line of defense” in a transformation predicament
Founded in 1969, Yonghong is one of the traditional manufacturing enterprises that Guizhou CASICloud Co., Ltd. affiliated to CASICloud serve. It is the oldest automobile engine radiator manufacturer of China and is among the earliest enterprises participating in the building of the “third line of defense” for Guizhou. As an important supplier of Volkswagen, Yonghong mainly manufactures aluminum water radiators of automobile engines. With the surging of business volume in recent years, Yonghong is faced with difficulties in five aspects including difficulty in production management and control; high fault rate and low utilization rate of equipment; difficulty in production planning and man-hour reporting and inaccurate artificial data; difficulty in product quality control and tracking; no data support for management process and low efficiency in decision-making. All these have become a bottleneck restricting sustainable development of Yonghong.
There are thousands of typical “third-line-of-defense” enterprises like Yonghong in Guizhou. Their main industrial base is from the strategic plan for the 1960s when China financed building of the “third line of defense”, the industrial manufacturing was relatively backward and production equipment and management mode lasted from 1960s to 1990s. How to carry out digital transformation and how to carry out transformation and upgrading are two extremely urgent problems facing the enterprises. The harsh reality is pushing the “third-line-of-defense” enterprises at the crossroads to accelerate transformation.
Look for “new growth drivers” under the market pressure
To walk out of the transformation and upgrading predicament of the enterprise, Yonghong established cooperation with Guizhou CASICloud. Staff of Guizhou CASICloud conducted field research on the R&D and Production Departments, workshops and factories of Yonghong to sort out and analyze deep-seated problems, and created a “cloud digital factory of Yonghong” by use of CASICloud’s “one brain, one cockpit, two studios, two stations and one data mining subsystem”.
The enterprise cloud service station serving as the “digital nerve” of Yonghong realizes equipment cloud networking and data acquisition, and automatically analyzes fault causes and alarms based on overall analysis of equipment operation, equipment efficiency and utilization rate, thus effectively reducing the equipment fault rate and response time.
The cloud business studio acts as “wings” of Yonghong in purchasing and marketing. With corporate product information and procurement demands for raw materials released on the CASICloud platform, Yonghong can acquire more resources for upstream and downstream channels and get acquainted with more customers and suppliers, thus laying a foundation for lowering purchase cost, improving product sales and raising business revenues.
The cloud application studio serves as “three heads and six arms (meaning a great helper)” of Yonghong. A cloud digitalized production and management platform is included in the Project to realize all-round digital monitoring, management and coordination of sales orders, production plans, manufacturing technologies, manufacturing process, product quality, warehousing and logistics, remarkably improving the enterprise’s work efficiency and capability.
The enterprise cockpit and data mining subsystem serves as “sharp eyes” of Yonghong. An enterprise data center and big-data application library were established through data management for original ERP and warehouse management systems of Yonghong. With data management driving critical business segments of the enterprise such as production and quality management, business management personnel of Yonghong are enabled to rapidly master corporate operation data and rapidly locate corporate operation problems.
The enterprise decision-making support system (enterprise brain) acts as a “smart brain” of Yonghong. Such functions as data cleaning, sorting and analyzing of the enterprise decision-making support system enable the enterprise to make business decisions with data support, which has remarkably optimized and enhanced the decision-making capability of Yonghong.
Digital workshops thoroughly reshape the enterprise.
Before transformation, although equipment in the radiator factory of Yonghong has been under full-load operation, the overall production efficiency is actually low, only 53% as shown by the system. A great deal of time has been spent on equipment fault, fault response and personnel arrangement. With transformation realized through cloud digital workshop, Yonghong has gradually realized lean production and its monthly production capacity has been improved from an average of 93K in 2017 to an average of 140K in 2018, registering an increase of nearly 70%.
Three months after the cloud digital factory was launched in Yonghong, a comparison was carried out between the output data collected through the digital factory and that reported by staff, and a total of more than 100 sets of radiators were found missing from the actual output reported daily. According to analysis, comparison and inspection, a direct cause for reduced output was successfully found: Due to unstandardized operation of staff in equipment calibration, point inspection and patrol inspection, a 16% loss of aluminum foil was found for each set of radiator manufactured on the production line. The discovery and handling of this critical problem will help Yonghong save cost of about RMB 10 million every year.
Based on digital management, massive data like record, production capacity, output, quality and progress data are directly available via the system backstage. Customers can finish review work in their offices without running around as usual, which greatly improves work efficiency. Many customers spoke highly of the change made by Yonghong and even raised their order amount.
Put more enterprises on the cloud platform by making breakthroughs little by little
As the explorer and navigator in the industrial Internet industry and relying on its sound aerospace industry system and advantages in new-generation information technology development, CASIC has been constantly exploring the industrial Internet industry development direction, technological path and application innovation via the CASICloud platform. According to Gao Hongwei, Secretary of the Party Leading Group and President of CASIC, re-enabling traditional manufacturing industry of China with the industrial Internet and the advanced tools, methods and means provided by new-generation technologies on which the industrial Internet is based will generate a series of unprecedented innovation results. CASICloud will focus on building cloud manufacturing industry clusters to gradually boost development of cloud enterprises from three levels “saving money, making money and making a fortune”.
CASICloud’s system-level industrial applications have currently been adopted in different industries, enterprises and regions of China with practical efficiency achieved. Yonghong with its successful transformation and upgrading is only one of the more than 1.4 million of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises that have adopted the CASICloud’s cloud platform. In the future, CASICloud will provide abundant industrial and ecological applications for more enterprises via its “one brain, one cockpit, two studios, two stations and one data mining subsystem” to facilitate better use of the cloud platform by the enterprises and truly realize digital transformation, upgrading and innovation of enterprises.
