Steel, steel plates, precision bearings… A component that has just entered the factory has been laser-engraved and measured with three-dimensional coordinates. After a few seconds, the system determines its “fate”: qualified for storage, returned, or accepted under concession.
Subsequently, this part with a unique identification number will be warehousing, blanking, machining, assembly, and shipping until it is loaded into the finished equipment.
This scene took place in an equipment manufacturing workshop in Shijiazhuang.
What drives all this is not a general module in the ERP system, but an intelligent management system called WIMS.
Its operator is Hebei Jikai Information Technology Co., Ltd.
This company is opening up a market niche that is completely opposite to the general software path in the “traditional” industry of equipment manufacturing.
The typical idea of general-purpose ERP is “flexible configuration”. After companies get the system, they need to fill in the processes, set rules, and pull data themselves.
This may be feasible for large enterprises, but for small and medium-sized equipment manufacturing enterprises, the IT foundation is weak and the industry know-how is complex. This set of logic often results in the system being “idle as soon as it goes online.”
WIMS does exactly the opposite.
Wei Erhong, chairman of Hebei Kai Information, once revealed a core idea in an interview: “We do not let AI make judgments out of thin air. Instead, we load the management rules, quality standards, and process flows accumulated by the company over the years into the system in advance, and then the system automatically calculates, reminds, and transfers automatically based on real-time data.” This is a “Rule engine driven” architecture.
What is built into the system is not an empty table, but the process standards for machining, the thresholds for quality inspection, and the material matching logic for the blanking workshop.
When an order comes in, WIMS first performs resource balancing calculations, automatically generates procurement plans, outsourcing plans, and production plans, and assigns tasks to the smallest operating unit—workstations.
At the blanking station, the left side of the dual-screen computer is the product drawing, and the right side is the task list; the staff clicks on the task, checks, selects materials, and reports on completion – every step of the operation leaves a closed-loop mark inside the system.
The direct effect of this is: Order circulation no longer relies on human memory and verbal transmission. Wherever the work is done, the system will remember it.
The core value point of dismantling the business logic of WIMS is not “online management”, but forwarding financial accounting to the R&D and design stage.
“In the past, whether a product was profitable or not was often not known until production was completed and financial accounting was done.” Wei Erhong said.
Now, during the R&D and design stages, the system can calculate costs based on materials, processes, labor, energy consumption and other information, helping companies to have a clear account before accepting orders.
what does that mean?
For equipment manufacturing companies, a wrong order quotation may directly eat up the entire profit of the order, or even cause losses.
Upfront cost measurement is equivalent to adding an insurance valve to decision-making, allowing enterprises to change from “taking orders based on their heads” to “taking orders based on data.”
After this capability is added to the production process, the data is very impressive.
According to statistics, some enterprises that apply the WIMS system have shortened the production cycle by 50%, reduced the scrap rate by 80%, saved 20% of personnel, and achieved 100% accuracy and timeliness of full-link data.
If these data are translated into business language, the conclusion is clear: the compression of construction period means the release of production capacity, the reduction of scrap rate corresponds to the restoration of gross profit, and the saving of personnel directly affects the profit statement.
The money for this system is not made from software subscription fees, but “grown” from every cost the company actually saves.
The opponents of general ERP are too strong.
The manufacturing modules of players such as UFIDA and Kingdee serve medium and large group companies, with full functions, strong ecology, and high customization capabilities.
But their price is heavy deployment, long cycle, and high price.
The differentiated battlefield found by WIMS is the lightweight landing of small and medium-sized equipment manufacturing enterprises.
Its customer profile is very clear: Jikai Technology, Xiaojin Machinery, Guangjun New Materials, Zhongxing Machinery, Shandong Dimeng Group, and Jiangsu Yali—all are small and medium-sized equipment manufacturing enterprises mainly in North China. The production model is often multi-variety and small batches, with high quality control requirements and limited IT budgets.
Unlike Dingjie PLM and UFIDA manufacturing modules, which often have a deployment threshold of hundreds of thousands, WIMS takes the path of “industry know-how built-in + software and hardware integration”.
For example, dual-screen terminals at workstations, in-depth data integration with three-dimensional coordinate inspection equipment, and intelligent matching systems for remaining materials—these functions are not dragged out of general software, but can only be developed by going into the workshop, understanding workstation processes, and thoroughly understanding industry standards.
This will form a virtuous cycle:The more you understand the industry, the deeper the product will be; the deeper the product, the stronger the customer stickiness.
At present, WIMS has been implemented in more than 30 equipment manufacturing companies inside and outside the province, and has won many authoritative recognitions such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s typical cases of digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises, and the typical products and solutions for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises nationwide.
Although these case data are not nationwide universal samples, they have penetrated the vertical business closed loop of equipment manufacturing in North China.
So, what is the commercial nature of Jikai Information WIMS system?
It is not a software company, but a knowledge service provider that “productizes” management experience in the equipment manufacturing industry.
Its core asset is not the code, but the set of process rules, quality standards and cost models built into the system.
General ERP sells “tools”, while WIMS sells “industry rules”.
This model determines that its growth ceiling lies not in the number of functions, but in how many vertical scenes it can “gnaw”.
Judging from the current customer base, small and medium-sized equipment manufacturing companies in North China are still the basic market.
When expanding outward, whether it can quickly replicate industry rules in manufacturing companies of different categories will be the key to testing the depth of its moat.
But at least judging from the existing data, this logic of “making every part in the workshop born with a number” has allowed a group of small and medium-sized equipment manufacturing companies to truly go through digital transformation, instead of spending money to buy a system that no one uses.
