When the artificial intelligence (AI) wave sweeps the world, manufacturing is becoming a new competitive high ground.
At the 21st China Rubber Annual Conference, participating experts and entrepreneurs said that for the tire industry, “artificial intelligence +” is not only an industrial policy trend, but also a proposition of the times related to the future.
“In the wave of global industrial change, the rise of new technologies such as autonomous driving, AI revolution, and humanoid robots are reshaping the research and development logic of the tire industry.” Lin Wenlong, director and president of Senqilin, said that as industry practitioners, we must actively embrace change, keep up with the technological frontier, and identify the direction of research and development, so as to seize the opportunity in future competition.
He took autonomous driving as an example. When human drivers retire from the stage of history, the performance priorities of tires will undergo a fundamental change: handling will take a backseat, and lighter weight, more comfort, quieter, lower rolling resistance, etc. will become the core pursuits. The grip and steering response emphasized by traditional tires will give way to ride experience,
Energy consumption efficiency and other indicators.
Zhongce Rubber Chairman Shen Jinrong believes that AI technology will reshape industrial value from four major dimensions:
First, it will open up a new technological track, help companies develop products that are comparable to or even surpass the world’s most advanced levels, break the dependence on traditional technology paths, and achieve lane change and overtaking;
The second is to improve product adaptability and actual use quality, and use AI to accurately match the needs of tires and vehicles, construction machinery and various production scenarios, so that quality is no longer limited to laboratory data, but truly implemented in users’ actual use scenarios;
The third is to improve efficiency and competition across the entire link, and significantly optimize production planning and manufacturing
, distribution, logistics and other whole-process efficiency, further strengthening the core competitiveness of Chinese tire companies and occupying a more favorable position in the global market;
The fourth is to support the dual-carbon goal, accurately control energy consumption and material consumption through AI, continue to reduce the loss of various resources, and contribute to the green and low-carbon transformation of the industry.
Shen Jinrong emphasized: “These values are not utopian, but are proven practical results of Zhongce Rubber in AI R&D, intelligent manufacturing, quality inspection and other scenarios. In the future, we will continue to deepen the application of technology and promote the development of China’s tire industry in a higher quality, higher efficiency, and more sustainable direction.”
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However, Shen Jinrong also admitted that the implementation of AI currently faces many practical challenges: First, the value of AI must be tested in practice, and only companies that have actually done it can judge its authenticity; second, the trade-off between the high cost of AI transformation and the uncertainty of efficiency makes it difficult for many projects to succeed; third, the conclusions given by AI often have huge leaps or even completely contradict the actual production line and human experience, making it difficult to directly trust; fourth, when AI decision-making is inconsistent with traditional
How to build trust and reshape the decision-making system when experience conflicts; fifthly, many projects only focus on AI technology, local optimization and visual display, and it is difficult to truly generate in-depth value.
In general, AI brings a good opportunity for the tire industry to overtake, but it is also a severe test.
Chinese tire companies need to actively respond, give full play to the advantages of AI, and overcome the challenges they face in order to achieve better development in the global market.
