How managers' time spiralled out of control-

Journal of Business Management

In recent years, enterprises around the world have carried out intelligent transformation, smart factory, intelligent workshop construction boom surging, some places even appeared "work quickly," "no conditions to create conditions to go" situation, this is happy or sad? What is the root cause behind the wide demand for intelligent transformation? What is the relationship between man and machine? Is intelligence more important, or transparency?

The smart factory is "playing bad"?

From the dozens of smart factories and smart workshop cases, the author found that they exist several relatively common phenomenon.

1. The input and output of smart factory is better in industries with large production volumes.For example, in the chemical fiber, cotton spinning, medicine, electronics industries, from the investment to the finished product process, less and less manual work, through the intelligent transition of production equipment, enterprises have won a reliable scale advantage.

A well-known cotton spinning enterprise in Jiangsu has successfully built a smart factory in 2018-2019. The number of workers in the same spindle is only one fifth of the traditional factory. The overall performance is far superior to the local counterparts, and the competitive advantage is significant. Now the investment has been basically recovered.

2. The construction of smart factory in discrete manufacturing industry is easy to focus on hardware, light software and neglect system.This situation is common in machining, food and other industries.

On the one hand, hardware visible, but also relatively good price, procurement, installation will be smooth. On the other hand, the software mainly involves production management, material management and the docking of equipment control system and production planning system, etc. It is difficult to fully consider the situation after normal operation in the construction period, so there are a lot of mismatch in the late.

And systematicness includes not only information system, but also the mutual adaptation of upstream and downstream collaboration mechanism and smart factory. Basically, the problem is solved only after formal use.

There is a home floor enterprise, in the cutting section to achieve intelligent, However, due to the problem of industrial agreement, before the execution of each production task, it takes a long time to adjust the design parameters, and manually input the machine terminal, resulting in low efficiency, no two or three days of batch life, generally not easily arranged here. As a result, the factory "reduced" to a tourist attraction, and rarely turn on.

3. Planning is out of sync.Some enterprises attach great importance to the construction of smart factories, but they are sloppy in planning the new factory, lack of sufficient research and study, often difficult to imagine how to make each station work in a specific space, what will be the conflict and so on.

It was like a family suddenly moving from their accustomed bungalow to a building. There is an enterprise in the layout of a new factory, after the processing center is installed, It was found that AGV car logistics routes and fire channel design conflict, the solution is either hit the wall, or remove a processing center, the enterprise is very distressed.

The planning of smart factory, in fact, involves a lot of fields, including water and electricity pipelines, the spatial layout of production equipment, the shortest logistics route, robot working environment, the convenience of workers' operation, personnel moving line, fire protection and so on.

Usually, the understanding of the smart factory is to carry out the infrastructure work first, and then to consider how to place the equipment and plan the space more carefully after the construction is completed, but it is not effective to realize the setup in advance.

Overall, these phenomena reflect the following problems:

First, the law of scale economy is ignored, and the investment in intelligent factories is not well prepared.

Second, as an innovative container for factory construction, the smart factory has some processes and modes that are completely different from the traditional infrastructure construction. However, enterprises lack foresight in human-machine collaboration, functional space collaboration, upstream and downstream business collaboration.

Third, under normal business conditions, enterprises lack foresight on the allocation of resources, capabilities and external conditions needed to operate a smart factory, leading to an increase in new irreversible costs.

In a sense, the smart factory has been "played bad" in recent years. A considerable portion of the input becomes the "bubble" under these labels of industrial Internet and smart manufacturing. Some enterprises become "martyrs" on the road of innovation. Likewise, more companies are watching, increasingly fearful of the failures they see around them.

So what are the top considerations when making decisions, building and operating a smart factory?

Respect the law of scale economy

The law of scale economy is still the basic law of economy, especially in the field of microeconomics. Unlike in the past, economies of scale now allow for the production of products that are not identical, allowing "no" change-over during continuous production.

The scale economy of the digital era is based on the calculation of the operating share cost. The production changeover has the conditions to achieve completely different products can also be low-frequency changeovers. In order to win the scale, such as 3D printers, as well as CNC drilling machine drill bit in the preset can be automatically replaced according to the needs of the workpiece.

In the industrial scenario, scale is embodied in the efficient "reuse" of industrial capabilities. The higher the frequency of reuse, the stronger the economic value and the better its sustainability. The scale of the industrial scene requires the full socialization of industrial capabilities. In a single, closed value network, industrial capabilities are not often called by other management units (market players).

But through the online way of socialization, industrial capabilities can be more industrial scene "see," this is an interactive process. The scale of the industrial scene produces the order "siphon," bringing the industrial siphon. Keeping the scale means that the processing cost and purchasing cost of a single product can be lower, resulting in a "value depression" and a siphon effect. Scale economy is not the scale of real products, but with the same kind of production process longer, the same capacity structure reuse frequency higher, which brings the time value of scale benefits.

From the above, we can see that the size of the smart factory is limited in two ways:

First, the time cost of smart factory changeover is high, which often comes from the constraints of upstream and downstream industry environment; Second, the coupling between intelligent factory equipment is too strong, order matching cost is relatively high. When the production task is not saturated, the socialization of production capacity is greatly constrained.

Therefore, some entrepreneurs believe that smart factories do not need to develop in the direction of "black light" factories and fully automatic factories. Enterprises also need to proceed from the actual, breakthrough to improve the capacity of bottleneck equipment, and gradually improve the coordination between equipment, as well as between equipment and business order fulfillment.

A pragmatic approach:

1. In some areas of production with more repetitive work and relatively perfect norms and standards, we can make more use of digital technology to improve the level of machine automation, and even use robots.For example, for assembly, painting, handling and other work, workers as long as the monitoring machine status, timely adjustment can be. In the case of uniform working standards, the advantages of machines are more obvious.

For example, a force of one newton is applied to press the first part into the hole of the second part. It is easy for the worker to grasp the magnitude of a newtonian force by his own feeling and experience. Different people, even the same person at different times will have different feelings, the actual work delivery can only be "big difference." But robots do a good job of solving this problem.

With the help of the sensor, the force of a Newton is always that large, ensuring the same standard every time. If there is an abnormal situation, the robot will also make mistakes, for example, there is a foreign object in the hole of the part, but the machine can not sense it, it will still follow the fixed procedure. At this time, the need for human intervention, at any time to monitor the running state of the robot, eliminate hidden dangers. With some sensor settings, this type of problem is not difficult to solve.

Robots and workers have different characteristics, cooperate with each other in specific scenarios, perform their respective duties, and finally complete the delivery, which should be a more appropriate mainstream state.

Should human intervention be necessary in exceptional cases of robotic work? Can we develop new coping strategies, eliminate them independently and restore normal order? This issue may need to be further analyzed in different industries and scenarios, and belongs to the category of continuous iteration.

2. In the field of accessories and tools consumption, digital technology can be used to upgrade.There is a steel processing plant, in the steel cutting workshop, every day to consume more than 200 saw blade, is a high cost. Every day there are more than a dozen reasons for the saw blade aging, saw blade broken in the steel situation, increased the cost of maintenance, rework and other motor burn out.

How to decisively change before the saw blade life advent?

Electrical and energy engineers based on historical data, set a different operating conditions saw blade life of the basic data. At the same time, through the current sensor to detect the changes in current, saw blade aging, the motor working current will slowly increase.

When the current is detected for 3 minutes (different working conditions have different time) more than the rated value, timely with the working conditions of the saw blade life comparison, and through the alarm prompt manual intervention.

Half a month after the implementation of this technical improvement project, the consumption of saw blades in the cutting workshop was reduced by 20% and no additional losses occurred. Surprisingly, energy consumption has also decreased, saving the overall cost of more than 10,000 yuan.

This is a very significant example of "small change and small change" through digital technology, which is actually upgrading the enterprise value chain, saving costs and ensuring better production order. This does not require an immediate introduction of high-end sawing equipment.

Which is more important, transparency or intelligence?

One of the constraints of the smart factory mentioned earlier is that the standard smart factory is more suited to socialization as a whole, that is, for use by other peer enterprises, because it is highly coupled in terms of its components and environment. This is a limitation in areas where agile collaboration is required, particularly in the project manufacturing business.

There are some project manufacturing companies in China, they pay attention to the efficiency of a single equipment, but also pay more attention to how to maximize the benefits of existing production capacity through the transparency of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. In fact, it is to open the dynamic information of the working conditions of its single equipment and equipment combination to the industrial partners through digital technology.

Here is a fictional story based on actual business situations.

In August 2023, Li Ming entered the steel pipe processing workshop of Guangdong Henghong Metal Products Co., Ltd. as the representative of Ardmore Shipping Company in the UAE. He will work here for 3 months, responsible for 22 batches, 16 specifications of the pipeline welding process site verification.

September 5, 9: 00 am, after the regular online briefing, He came to the steel pipe processing workshop, the day's work is the number of C05D 30 steel pipe surfacing, this number of steel pipe diameter 115 cm and below from 260mm to 210mm. Previously and 3 #, 5 #, 6 #, 8 # surfacing machine operator Huang Xuanyu confirmed the process parameters and drawings. According to the plan, 9: 30 Huang Xuanyu test machine, and again in the welding workshop to confirm the processing technology.

Huang Xuanyu is adjusting the machine, as a skilled, he quickly adjusted the three machine parameters, and in the 3 # test machine, all goes well! Li Ming was about to swipe his card to confirm on the terminal in the workshop when a barrage of bullets suddenly appeared on the work app and he also received a text message. It was originally the quality director of Ardmore Shipping Company who requested to adjust the thickness of the inner wall surfacing from 2.5mm to 3.5mm for the parts below 115cm. The specific requirements and reasons for change are in the update package of the system, requiring on-site supervision and immediate disposal.

Li Ming opened the link of the message sent by the quality director on the APP, and immediately entered the process change release page. After clicking on the release, the project manager, technical director and dispatching room of Su Heng company were aware of it for the first time, and the system updated the version of the material surfacing processing parameters involved at the same time. Less than 2 minutes, HuangXuanYu APP also sounded a rapid bell, at the same time 3 # machine has stopped working, its terminal flashing red light in prompt revision of operating parameters, but he can not operate.

Huang Xuanyu rarely contact this situation, after Li Ming tips, he in the workshop terminal card, confirmed the process change. The 3 # terminal adjusted the parameters immediately. Li Ming confirmed that 3 # can work normally, 5 #, 6 #, 8 # welding machine also automatically use the same parameters preparation.

The site quality inspector Chu Chunyan synchronizes the process change on her APP and office PC, and updates the inspection requirements in real time. The parameters were updated in the template for the test report. The inspector's first item inspection work list shows the need for coordination at Huang's workstation at 9: 20 a day in advance.

Huang also confirmed the process parameters of 5 #, 6 # and 8 #. After testing and comparison, the thickness and density of surfacing welding machine meet the requirements, and the current is stable. Li Ming, Chu Chunyan and Huang Xuanyu successively brushed the card at the terminal of the surfacing workshop, and the surmounting operation of the project officially began on this day.

At 11: 12, Li Ming got the same screen interface of the terminal of 4 welding machines in the office. With the help of the system, the parameter check is normal. 8 # work progress slightly behind other machines, he saw Huang Xuanyu over there to confirm the barrage, the reason is that the train sent a new batch of steel 3 minutes late.

In the afternoon, Li Ming went to the workshop again and exchanged views with Huang Xuanyu and Chu Chunyan on the processing technology of a batch of steel pipes the next day. They looked at the inventory and found that the material had been locked in the warehouse, waiting for the process to be confirmed before it could be "ready to go" into the driver's job list.

The three people also connected the big screen to the terminal machine in the workshop. They checked the process change record after May 2022 about the change of surfacing thickness, and found that it was mainly caused by the change in the specific location of the prefabricated parts. They made a knowledge label for this finding, the thickness change scenario, that can be used later by designers.

At 17: 20, the system pushed all the production records, quality inspection reports and electrode consumption reports. Li Ming read, signed an electronic signature.

At 17: 30, Li Ming saw the next day's specific operation plan, which included the detailed time of the substrate (steel pipe) and consumables (welding rod) to arrive in batches. He found that Huang Xuanyu, Chu Chunyan have seen this plan, and confirmed the specific work node. He also refreshes the next day's work nodes, as suggested by the system, where he needs to coordinate with other partners. At this point, the individual's daily work system has also been generated, he signed the electronic signature. There are no more tasks on the to-do list for the day.

This deductive story vividly illustrates how the internal and external roles of an enterprise can collaborate in real-time manufacturing based on a unified system and transparent mechanism.

Factory intelligent transformation priority, or transparent transformation priority? Different companies have different choices. In terms of ultimate business benefits and market competitiveness, it is mutually reinforcing to enhance transparency in the production method dimension and intelligence in the productivity dimension.