How does the distributed cognitive industrial Internet platform empower enterprises to transform digitally?

The summit will further explore how the blockchain can create a credible digital foundation by integrating with other digital technologies, protect data privacy, tap data value, empower and accelerate the digital transformation of all walks of life.

Before the summit, the team of Zou Chuanwei, the chief economist of blockchain, wrote a series of industry research reports on the topic of "How the blockchain enables digital transformation", which deeply explained how the blockchain can integrate with other technologies and play its due role under the background of new infrastructure and digital migration.

Author: Wang Puyu Proofreading: Zou Chuanwei

According to the definition given by Beijing Guo Xin Digital Transformation Technology Research Institute (Guo Xin Institute) and Zhongguancun Information Technology and Real Economy Integration Development Alliance (CITIC Alliance), digital transformation is to conform to the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation trend, continuously deepen the application of new generation information technologies such as cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and blockchain, stimulate the innovation-driven potential of data elements, build and enhance the survival and development ability in the information age, accelerate business optimization and upgrading, transform and upgrade traditional kinetic energy, and cultivate new kinetic energy. Around the digital transformation, this paper will discuss the following three questions: First, from the enterprise level, why digital transformation? Second, what role does the industrial Internet platform play in the digital transformation? Third, what can the distributed cognitive industrial internet provide in the digital transformation of enterprises?

one

Digital transformation and development

In the fierce market competition, enterprises need to rely on product quality, price, service and long-term accumulated brand image to maintain market competitiveness. However, with the rising labor costs caused by the disappearance of China's demographic dividend, as well as the uncertain international trade situation and the market development hindered by the epidemic situation, the original competitive advantage of enterprises is disappearing, and the industrial enterprises at the bottom of the value chain are even worse. How to get out of the predicament? At present, there are two main ways to break the ice. The first is to reduce operating costs and continue to maintain the price advantage; The second is to increase profits by expanding market sales through innovative business models.

Before discussing operating costs, let's introduce two concepts. The first group is the supply chain model: supply-driven and demand-driven; The second group is the four major profit sources.

1, supply chain mode

Supply-driven means that enterprises design, produce and sell products according to market forecast data;

Demand-driven means that enterprises can respond quickly according to market orders and meet product production and supply through efficient planning, organization, coordination and control.

2. Four major sources of profit

The market always pursues lower prices and higher quality. In terms of price control, as shown in table 1, it mainly goes through four stages: in the first stage, it mainly gains profits by controlling the cost of raw materials and expanding the scale effect. When the first profit source reaches the upper limit, starting the second profit source can improve the working efficiency, extend the working hours of employees and reduce the labor cost through lean management. When the new profit source enters the upper limit again, people find that logistics cost accounts for 30% of the total operating cost of enterprises, so reducing logistics cost becomes the third profit source.

Table 1 Comparison of four profit sources

The first three profit sources are all around the internal cost control of enterprises to increase revenue, but when the internal operating cost savings of enterprises reach the upper limit, people are concerned about the operation and management of upstream suppliers and downstream customers. Before a fully functional product enters the market, many companies in the supply chain need to cooperate. The high operating cost of any one of them will lead to the price increase of the final product and make the product lose its competitiveness in the fierce market competition. So around the information integration and information sharing of supply chain, a new wave of cost reduction has begun, which is called the fourth profit source.

As shown in table 1, from the first profit source to the fourth profit source, there are various systems supporting information processing, storage and management at each stage, such as MES, ERP, WMS, SCM and so on.

After four profit sources, where is the new profit source in the future? Governments, enterprises and research institutions are all trying to find the answer. For example, Professor Hao Hao of shanghai second polytechnic university put forward reverse logistics as the fifth profit source on 20 15, and realized the whole life cycle management of product resale, reuse, recovery and remanufacturing through reverse logistics. Some enterprises also believe that demand-driven personalized customization will become the fifth profit source. All the above statements are reasonable, but they are not accurate. This paper holds that the real fifth profit source is already on the road, that is, the digital transformation of enterprises. In the past decade or so, the rapid development of technology has spawned a large number of new business models, including new retail, live delivery, community group buying and so on. However, the upstream industry still maintains the traditional operation mode. Whether it is the closed-loop management of the whole life cycle driven by the development of reverse logistics or the customized business model of C2M, it needs to rely on the rapid response of each link, which requires high digital management of enterprises. Therefore, whether it is the need for enterprises to tap new profit sources or the demand of the market, the digital transformation of industrial enterprises is imperative.

Different from the independence of the first four profit sources, the fifth profit source gives new life to the first, second, third and fourth profit sources by applying new technologies, and at the same time, there will be a large number of innovative business models driven by data. Therefore, the fifth profit source can not only reduce operating costs, but also improve active profitability.

two

The Value of Industrial Internet Platform

1, the first profit source of industrial internet platform

The integration of IT and OT can realize real-time data collection and transmission of people, machines, materials, methods and environment, and can realize real-time monitoring of production process. Then AI, big data analysis and other technologies can be applied to realize automatic intelligent inspection, intelligent quality inspection, intelligent fault prediction, intelligent parameter optimization, intelligent energy consumption optimization, intelligent equipment operation and maintenance, intelligent inventory and so on. , can improve production efficiency, reduce costs and upgrade from single machine intelligence to system intelligence.

2. The second profit source of industrial Internet platform

The management of traditional manufacturing industry has always revolved around the process of people and products from 0 to 1. It is difficult to achieve inefficient work by relying on manpower, and mechanical equipment can be used instead. However, due to the influence of industrial revolution and information age, a large number of labor-saving mechanical equipment and operating systems (MRP, MRPII, MES, etc. ) has improved production efficiency and reduced production costs. With the development of information technology, although there are lagging data for reference, its essence still revolves around people's experience and field operation. Industrial Internet can give the second profit source a brand-new role, liberate people's execution tasks from operation management, such as quality inspection and troubleshooting, and realize intelligent operation management through AI and big data analysis. After the number of executives is reduced, enterprises need more innovators to make the iterative speed of enterprise innovation and development faster. Secondly, with the transformation of human experience into knowledge map, experience and knowledge domain are visualized to guide the iteration and decision-making of artificial intelligence algorithm.

3. The Third Profit Source of Industrial Internet

In the field of industrial internet of things, the development of logistics is relatively advanced. After experiencing manual logistics, mechanical logistics, automated logistics and now intelligent logistics, the management efficiency and cost of logistics have been greatly improved. For example, in transportation management, from the early days when the monitoring data of goods transportation depended on the data return and summary of the anchor points of transportation vehicles, now we can grasp the information of temperature and humidity, geographical location, quantity of goods and so on during transportation in real time through GPS, RFID and various sensors, and plan the transportation route according to the transportation destination and real-time traffic congestion. Influenced by technology and capital, at present, the rapid development of intelligent logistics is mainly the third-party logistics enterprises and e-commerce enterprises, while the slow development of industrial logistics, most of which are still in the stage of mechanical logistics and automated logistics. Industrial Internet platform can help industrial enterprises achieve rapid upgrading and transformation, and reduce the technical difficulty and cost of system development. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and other platforms can shorten the development time of the system from 0 to 1, and realize rapid and low-cost digital transformation and upgrading.

4. The fourth profit source of industrial Internet

Supply chain integration can promote enterprise cooperation and reduce supply chain cost and inventory bullwhip effect to a certain extent [1], but both internal supply chain and social supply chain leave a multi-party cooperation problem, that is, data island problem. Earlier, we introduced the first to fourth profit sources, and mentioned MRP, MRPII, ERP, SAP, MES, SCM and other systems. Each system is like an isolated data chimney, which has a great influence on the cooperation efficiency. There are two main reasons: first, the existing EDI data island opening scheme is too expensive for small and medium-sized enterprises to bear; Second, when it comes to multi-party cooperation between supply and demand, it lacks mutual trust and is unwilling to share internal data with the outside world. Industrial Internet platform provides a variety of data collection and processing solutions to break the data island and realize the unimpeded data. In the use of data, data security is ensured through privacy calculation, and at the same time, reasonable authorization is made to make the data available and invisible, thus solving the worries of data enjoyment.

5. The fifth profit source of industrial Internet platform

At the digital 1.0 stage, it belongs to the human adaptive system; Entering the digital 2.0 stage, customized software that adapts to the company's existing operating mode will play a vital role.

Figure 1: digital transformation 1.0 and 2.0 comparison.

Therefore, from a technical point of view, how the platform enables enterprises to develop customized software quickly and efficiently will play a very important role in the digital transformation of industrial enterprises. From the existing products in the market, including IaaS as infrastructure, PaaS as platform and SaaS as software, industrial enterprises can easily use low-code or even zero-code tools provided by platform providers to complete system development, and realize that "everyone can become a developer", that is, to solve the problem that "technicians don't understand business, business personnel don't understand technology, and the developed system is not easy to use". In the future, low-code (or zero-code) development tools will be like office software such as word and excel. The platform will make all kinds of interfaces into graphical interfaces, so that people who don't understand code development can develop the software they need by dragging icons, reducing inefficient duplication of work. Employees have changed from passive executors to innovators, participated in the top-down digital reform, and used tools to really facilitate the work of business people.

three

Distributed Cognitive Industrial Internet Based on Blockchain Technology

Social economy is divided into two areas: production and circulation. Centralized industrial internet platform uses digital technology instead of information technology to solve the problems in production field, and distributed cognitive industrial internet based on blockchain technology solves the problem of data trust in circulation field, but the data in circulation field will affect product research and development and product quality management in production field.

1, reducing trust cost

The business model is moving from unilateral (scale effect) to bilateral (network effect) and into multilateral platform (ecological effect) after entering the digital age. It seems that the centralized model can also solve the trust problem, but the trust under the centralized model mainly depends on the endorsement of the third-party authority, which is costly and inefficient. For example, in the case of distrust between buyers and sellers in international trade, the letter of credit service is used to solve the payment problem through bank endorsement; In order to meet the requirements of banks, both parties need to provide a large number of certificates to meet the terms of the letter of credit, which is very inefficient and costly. However, if the blockchain technology is used, the real data will be chained from the source to ensure the security, credibility and tamper resistance of the data. Before the transaction, both the buyer and the seller have the real transaction records of the other party and the production information of the products. Does this information help to reduce the matching cost of the transaction? In the transaction process, through the application of smart contract, once an agreement is reached, the payment can be automatically completed, which greatly reduces the transaction cost and transaction time. Especially on the multilateral platform, if the centralized credit authentication system is still used, it will be impossible to build a moat of ecological construction-trust.

2. Redefine the cooperative relationship.

Multi-party cooperation and centralized knowledge mechanism and governance scheme of supply chain are more reflected in the contract level, but they can't really bind each other's interests and it is difficult to promote the benign development of ecology. In the decentralized solution, participants put assets on the chain in the form of tokens or points, and technically realize multi-interest binding. Once any party does something that is not conducive to ecological construction, it will affect the value of tokens or points, and then affect the interests of all participants in the alliance chain. In the distributed cognitive industrial internet platform, each participant in the alliance will actively safeguard the ecological interests, because this is equivalent to safeguarding their own interests.

3. Trusted data flow

In product development or product life cycle management, industrial enterprises need to obtain the circulation data of multiple downstream partners. However, it is difficult for traditional technology to guarantee the authenticity and security of data. In the distributed cognitive industrial Internet, privacy computing can make a variety of data available and invisible, and ensure the security and compliance of data. In addition, according to the data contribution, the partners will be rewarded with tokens or points to encourage multi-party data enjoyment and flow. In the future, there may be more forms of compliance in the data trading market, such as data trust and data banking based on blockchain technology.

4. Ensure data security.

In the traditional mode, industrial enterprises rely on physical isolation to isolate the data in the factory from the outside world. However, with the integration of OT and IT, the physical barrier has been broken. How to ensure the security of data after leaving the local area depends on the joint efforts of many parties. In device communication, it is necessary to do a good job in device identity authentication management to prevent data from being attacked, and the distributed cognitive industrial Internet platform realizes anonymous management through the public and private keys of devices, which effectively reduces the attack risk. In data storage, distributed storage technology is adopted, and even a single point attack can't let the attacker get complete data.

5. Promote business model innovation

Trusted data will open a new era of business model innovation, and the business role of each organization may change. Under the traditional business model (supply-driven model), information is very fragmented, and different participants in the supply chain have some fragmented data related to products. It is difficult to achieve the best goal by using these incomplete data for product upgrade and customer service. However, today, with the development of technology, the market began to tap the needs of every consumer according to consumption habits, consumption characteristics and other factors, and the manufacturing model has also entered the C2M era from M2C, requiring more complete, credible and compliant data. For example, for electric cars, not everyone needs a battery with a battery life of 1000km. Through blockchain technology, users authorize driving data to electric vehicle companies and configure them with the most suitable and cost-effective batteries. For another example, car insurance no longer takes the value of the vehicle and the number of accidents as a single indicator of insurance costs, and may charge insurance premiums based on credible mileage data in the future. In addition to the change of business model, the business role of each organization may also change. The role of electric vehicle manufacturers will also change from producers to service providers. Taking Weilai Automobile as an example, the separation mode of automobile and electricity and the rental and sales mode extend the business of automobile manufacturers to the management of product life cycle. These model innovations are only the beginning of the digital age.