What opportunities will agile manufacturing bring to traditional industries?

Since 1990s, with the rapid development of high-tech information technology and large-scale production of information technology products, agile manufacturing technology came into being. It was first put forward in the report "2 1 Century Manufacturing Development Strategy" which was co-operated by Lehigh University and the Office of Manufacturing Technology of the US Navy. It is a new manufacturing mode and a new manufacturing strategy to replace mass production. The operation mode of agile manufacturing technology is: after suppliers or enterprises get the information that users need a certain commodity, they immediately provide them with product combination software, so that they can design and choose the appearance of products according to their own choices, and the alliance will disintegrate. Its core is to establish a market mechanism that responds sensitively and quickly to users' needs. As a new manufacturing technology to replace the traditional industrial production mode, it marks the beginning of a new production and management strategy in the 2 1 century. Agile manufacturing technology makes the production methods of traditional industries such as automobile industry, machinery industry and chemical industry more flexible in the coming century. It is characterized by paying attention to modular combination of various scales and cooperative production among enterprises, giving full play to the advantages of many professional enterprises to adapt to the changing market demand, so as to reflect flexibility and rapidity.

Agile manufacturing means that manufacturing enterprises use modern communication means to quickly allocate various resources (including technology, management and personnel), respond to users' needs in an effective and coordinated way, and realize agile manufacturing. Agile is the core. Agile is the ability of an enterprise to adapt to the ever-changing and unpredictable business environment. It is the comprehensive performance of the enterprise's ability to survive and lead in the market, which is reflected in the agility of product demand, design and manufacturing. According to the development of agile manufacturing in recent years, compared with other manufacturing modes, the main characteristics of agile manufacturing are: (1) the goal is to meet the requirements of users and obtain profits; (2) Based on competitiveness and reputation, choose the partners who form the dynamic company; (3) on the basis of mutual trust, division of labor and cooperation, strengthen the overall strength and achieve the same goal; (4) Apply knowledge, technology and information to production practice.

With the improvement of agility, it will be faster and cheaper for enterprises to transition to refined production. In order to realize agile manufacturing mode, the production system and process of manufacturing enterprises should be reconfigurable, reusable and adjustable in scale. The agility of an enterprise will depend on its organizational form and flexibility, the adaptability and reliability of advanced flexible manufacturing technology, and the cultural quality and decision-making ability of employees, that is, to maximize economic benefits through the organic combination of personnel, organization and technology. Traditional industry is an important support for the application of agile manufacturing technology.

The emergence of agile manufacturing technology will make social productive forces develop at an unprecedented speed. Facing the increasingly fierce international market competition, China's industrial enterprises, especially the processing enterprises in traditional industries, must fully realize the economic benefits that advanced product development technology may bring to enterprises. It is an inevitable trend of the development of modern science and technology to adopt advanced technology and establish an agile, intelligent, integrated, digital and networked product development and manufacturing system and environment.

In the global market competition, agile manufacturing technology is a high-tech that was put forward in the 1990s and developed rapidly. This is a major change in the processing methods and means of the information society in the future, marking the progress of society. Traditional industries are the foundation of modern industrial social and economic structure, and are changing and developing from labor-intensive to knowledge-intensive. Small and medium-sized enterprises in China, in particular, have fully realized the possible benefits of new products and technologies in the face of market competition, and many enterprises have achieved results by adopting unit technology. The production of these enterprises usually adopts the form of division of labor and cooperation, and they are also very flexible in management. Nevertheless, there is still a big gap between the absorption and application of high-tech in traditional industries in China and the development requirements of agile manufacturing technology. Implanting high-tech development and transforming traditional industries is still one of the important tasks of China's economic development. In this process, on the one hand, the new ideas and concepts in agile manufacturing technology will have a great impact on the information processing, knowledge mode, social production mode, human thinking mode and working mode of traditional industries; On the other hand, we can't ignore the powerful supporting role of traditional industries to agile manufacturing technology.

At present, traditional industries are still the mainstay of China's national economy, mainly as follows: (1) traditional industries have a long history and a relatively solid foundation; (2) There are a lot of transferable resources in the accumulation of industrial production in traditional industries for decades or even hundreds of years; (3) The equipment, materials, resources, communication and transportation required for applying agile manufacturing technology are provided by traditional industries. Without the support of traditional industries, agile manufacturing technology can not achieve dynamic alliance, and resource integration is impossible. Therefore, it is of great significance to correctly analyze the dialectical relationship between agile manufacturing technology and the transformation and development of traditional industries for understanding the development and timely application of high and new technologies.