The AI wave is sweeping the global manufacturing industry. How can Guangdong, a major manufacturing province, take the lead in achieving a leap in intelligent manufacturing?
On June 16, a symposium on accelerating the development of new electromechanical integration industries in Guangdong was held in Guangzhou. A number of academicians, experts and business representatives shared the stage to take the pulse.
Guests at the meeting believed that with the dual advantages of electromechanical and artificial intelligence, which are scarce in the world, Guangdong must seize the decisive period in the next 10 years and promote the electromechanical industry to leapfrog from the “digital generation” to the “intelligent generation” so that it can continue to lead the global hard technology track.
Guangdong holds the “hard trump card” of new technology.
Zhou Ji, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out that from a global perspective, China has the ability to combine artificial intelligence and manufacturing. This advantage is particularly obvious in Guangdong and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
The next 10 years are a critical historical period for China’s electromechanical equipment and product manufacturing industry to achieve intelligent upgrading and leapfrog development. It is necessary to achieve a revolutionary leap from the digital generation of electromechanical equipment and products to the intelligent generation of electromechanical equipment and products.
What is the “smart generation”?
If traditional mechatronics allow machines to “run automatically,” new mechatronics equip machines with “AI brains” to achieve a leap from “automatic execution” to “intelligent decision-making.”
To seize the opportunity in this revolutionary leap, what confidence does Guangdong have?
Gao Wen, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of Pengcheng Laboratory, further analyzed Guangdong’s fundamental advantages, “Mechatronics is the foundation of Guangdong’s manufacturing. Electronic information, intelligent equipment, robots, new energy vehicles and other advantageous industries are essentially the product of the deep integration of machinery, electricity, network and intelligence. Guangdong has the most complete electromechanical industry chain and the densest communication infrastructure in the country, fully equipped with the hard conditions for piloting new technologies.”
However, having hard conditions does not mean that you can sit back and relax.
At a time when intelligent collaboration has become the core competitiveness, the existing industrial network architecture has become a constraint.
Gao Wen believes that the new industrial Internet is a prerequisite for the collaboration of massive industrial intelligence.
Whether equipment, production lines, factories, and supply chains can achieve efficient, real-time, and independent collaboration determines the overall competitiveness of the industry.
However, the existing industrial network architecture cannot meet the intelligent agent’s transmission requirements for low latency, high throughput, and high reliability.
The new industrial Internet is the core base for the integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing, playing a core role in driving intelligent transformation.
To this end, Gao Wen suggested that Guangdong should rely on the software and hardware advantages of the Greater Bay Area to actively connect with major national projects and build a new industrial Internet test and verification base with high authenticity.
In addition to building a good foundation for independent technology, we must also make good use of data and computing power.
“Constructing high-quality mechanical and electrical industry data sets and industrial knowledge corpora is a top priority.” Gao Wen said.
In terms of base construction, the business community is also making efforts.
Chu Jian, founder of SUPCON Technology Co., Ltd. and president of the Ningbo Industrial Internet Research Institute, said that during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, SUPCON will make Guangdong a top priority and invest huge human and financial resources to promote industrial AI technologies such as TPT to more than 4,500 process industry devices in the province. It is expected to create a total of 120 billion yuan in comprehensive benefits for enterprises and reduce carbon emissions by 10 million tons.
Based on platform thinking, Yao Weibing, chairman of Guangzhou Mingluo Co., Ltd., proposed building six world-class data-driven intelligent manufacturing industry service platforms based in the Greater Bay Area, including production lines, equipment, component pilot and evaluation platforms, green manufacturing and carbon footprint, carbon reduction, and carbon trading comprehensive platforms, industrial Internet of Things production line asset management platforms, robotic automation and intelligent manufacturing industry Internet platforms, robotic automation industry large-scale industrial trading platforms, and full industry chain financial services platforms.
No matter how advanced the technology is, it will eventually fall into specific industrial scenarios.
Guangdong has a strong manufacturing foundation, rich application scenarios, and a complete industrial ecology.
How to turn these advantages into winning momentum is a proposition that enterprises and governments must consider together.
Tao Jingwen, vice chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., suggested that Guangdong should further transform scenario advantages into data advantages, manufacturing advantages into platform advantages, and terminal advantages into ecological advantages, and focus on building benchmark demonstration clusters. Relying on advantageous industries such as electronic information, automobiles, and home appliances, a number of “mechatronics + artificial intelligence” application pilot bases should be deployed to build a transformational development pattern in which “leaders lead, small and medium-sized enterprises follow up, and the entire industry chain is linked.”
The rapid development of AI technology is both a challenge and an opportunity for the home appliance industry.
Wang Jianguo, CEO of Midea Group Co., Ltd., suggested that Guangdong should take the lead in formulating industry standards and technical specifications in key scenarios such as whole-house intelligence, industrial visual inspection, predictive maintenance, intelligent production scheduling, and intelligent warehousing, so that Guangdong’s practices can become common solutions across the country.
Humanoid robots are becoming masters of mechatronics.
Zhou Jian, chairman of Shenzhen UBTECH Technology Co., Ltd., revealed that UBTECH will rely on Guangdong’s high-quality policies and industrial resources, unite with universities and research institutes in the province, focus on key core technologies such as humanoid robot servo control, dexterous operation, and body-shaped large models, open up the “last mile” of deep integration of mechatronics and artificial intelligence, and create an autonomous, controllable, safe and stable humanoid robot industry supply chain.
As the industrialization of humanoid robots accelerates, core components are ushering in a new development cycle.
Li Qian, director and executive deputy general manager of Suzhou Green Harmonic Transmission Technology Co., Ltd., believes that market demand continues to expand, technological advancement, integrated development and domestic independence will become the core of the long-term development of the harmonic reducer industry.
Mechatronics integration has become a mainstream trend, and integrated joint modules will gradually replace single components to meet the design needs of miniaturization and flexibility of robots.
The integration of AI and electromechanics provides Chinese companies with a powerful tool to “change lanes and overtake” when going global.
“The greatest value in this wave of AI is not in the screen, but in the physical world.” Liang Zaizhong, chairman of Shugen Internet Co., Ltd., believes that in this field, China has the opportunity to “change lanes and overtake” for the first time.
In Liang Zaizhong’s view, AI plus hardware is to turn the decades-long skills of master craftsmen into capabilities that can be used at thousands of work stations, allowing industrial robots to be reborn.
AI plus management can solve the core bottlenecks of Chinese enterprises going global, and accumulate all mature domestic processes, service experience, and operation and maintenance standards into “digital masters” who can remotely empower every overseas site.
“It originally took 8 to 10 years to build service capabilities overseas. Now we have the opportunity to catch up with the established giants in a few years.” Liang Zaizhong said.
The development of the new mechatronics industry is inseparable from technological innovation, financial support and an excellent ecosystem of talent cultivation.
“The Greater Bay Area should stabilize the fab chip industry chain leader at the top and popularize the application of AI productivity for young talents at the bottom.” Yan Yijun, vice president of Shanghai Xiyujizhi Technology Co., Ltd., suggested that Guangdong should concentrate the province’s efforts to support the construction of advanced process production lines in Guangzhou, and in this way attract a large number of chip, computing power and other related component companies to drive the implementation of model and application companies.
At the same time, more than 50% of the original “AI+” education and information construction costs will be converted into productivity AI subscription fees to improve the AI capabilities and quality of college students across the province.
“In the past, we relied on talent pools and high salaries to attract talents. In the future, we must rely on ‘computing power + community’ to retain people and create an ‘AI native’ talent highland.” Li Qiang, vice president of Tencent and president of government and enterprise business, suggested that Guangdong should take the lead in exploring intelligent agent developers and OPC communities, provide some free token quota and computing power support, and increase intelligent agent application skills
Training, “Tencent is willing to leverage its technology platform advantages and be deeply involved in supporting policy implementation, computing infrastructure supply, and multi-dimensional agent application training services.”
In terms of funding and mechanism guarantees, Liu Qing, president of the Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute, suggested promoting the innovation and upgrading of existing industries and setting up special financial funds to match and support the technical needs put forward by leading companies.
Mainly funded by enterprises, special financial projects will be matched with funds in a certain proportion based on the difficulty and importance of the project, combined with the amount of enterprise investment.
At the same time, we will cultivate future industries and set up a special project of “combination of funding and investment” to support the industrialization of original and leading technology projects.
