What are the ways to realize intelligent manufacturing in plastic processing?

In the past 10 years, the development of digital computing and communication has fundamentally changed the operation mode of manufacturing plants. Through the integration of industrial automation and information technology (IT), intelligent manufacturing will rapidly improve the production flexibility of the factory, save energy, protect the environment, reduce costs, improve quality and personal safety, thus greatly optimizing and improving the production efficiency and quality of the factory. This emerging intelligent manufacturing technology is going through the following three stages.

The first stage-the integration of lean manufacturing and informatization

At this stage, a manufacturing-centered system integration is formed, which runs through workshops, connects departments and spans enterprises. The integration of information and data will significantly improve the cost, safety and environmental impact, which is of great significance.

At this stage, lean process reengineering and information construction will interconnect factories and enterprises, better coordinate all stages of manufacturing production and promote the improvement of workshop production efficiency. A typical manufacturing workshop uses information technology, sensors, intelligent motors, computer control and production management software to manage the operation of each specific stage or production process. However, this only solves the efficiency of a local manufacturing island, not the efficiency of the whole enterprise.

The manufacturing information system will integrate these manufacturing islands and let the whole factory enjoy the data. The integration of data collected by machines and human wisdom has promoted the goals of workshop-level optimization and enterprise-level management, including a substantial increase in economic benefits, personal safety and environmental sustainability. The emergence of this "manufacturing intelligence" will open the second stage of intelligent manufacturing.

The second stage-from workshop optimization to manufacturing intelligence

A large number of real-time data generated in the first stage, combined with advanced computer simulation and modeling, will create powerful "manufacturing intelligence" and realize the change of production rhythm, flexible manufacturing, optimal production speed and faster product customization.

At this stage, the application of high-performance computing platform (cloud computing) to connect the whole supply chain system, modeling, simulation and data integration can build a higher level of manufacturing intelligence in the whole supply chain system.

In order to save energy and optimize the manufacturing delivery of products, the whole production line and workshop will change the running speed in real time and flexibly, which is of course not feasible now. Enterprises can develop advanced models and simulate production processes to improve current and future business processes.

For example, when the company's demand exceeds sales expectations. To this end, the factory must start to operate around the clock and create new jobs. In order to minimize the waste of each production link, the company began to use simulation tools for analysis. In order to eliminate waste in the supply chain process and improve production efficiency.

Supply chain simulation technology highly integrates and optimizes the traditional lean production testing and analysis methods. It solves the disadvantages of traditional lean line changing research and other improvement strategies to absorb part of production capacity, and optimizes the relationship between lean supply chain and lean production process through virtual world experiments without disturbing production.

Under the 7*24 all-weather production mode, lean production cannot use idle capacity for engineering calculation on weekends. The simulation system enables you to test the actual equipment before making continuous changes.

The next goal of supply chain management is to turn to a leaner and smarter supply chain, which makes manufacturing enterprises begin to pay attention to further reducing waste and formulating more environmentally friendly operations. It has become a general trend for the company to seek ways to optimize production, tools to reduce excess inventory, determine the best "correct plan", reduce fuel and logistics costs, and reduce overall exhaust emissions.

Waste and inefficiency can be seen intuitively in the factory. But when it comes to the supply chain, it is very difficult to do this, because you can't go there and see where the waste is.

APS intelligent planning and simulation optimization production system has realized the integration with supply chain: the system extracts the forecast demand from the company's sales operation organization, quantifies it by using the system's demand management module, and then transmits it to the supply network planning module, and finally calculates when and where the product needs to be produced to meet the demand.

Suppliers can also benefit from this "lean planning" process to cope with the sudden uncertainty in order delivery cycle, delivery quantity and transportation.

This kind of data runs smoothly and is constantly optimized in all aspects of the manufacturing supply chain, which enables enterprises to connect with customers' needs more quickly, speed up the response to all changes and be able to connect flexibly, and ensure the efficient operation of product quality, cost and delivery.

The third stage-intelligent manufacturing driven by data.

With the accumulation of manufacturing data, big data analysis leads to the progress of manufacturing intelligent technology, which will stimulate manufacturing process and product innovation, realize intelligent manufacturing and subvert the market order.

At this stage, information technology will be widely used to change the business model, and the industrial supply chain used by consumers for mass production in 100 will be completely subverted. Flexible and reconfigurable factories and IT-optimized supply chains will change the production process and allow manufacturers to customize products according to individual needs. Just like producing drugs with a specific dosage and formula, customers will "tell" what kind of cars the factory produces, what kind of personal computers it makes, and how to customize a perfect pair of jeans ... This dramatic competitiveness is crucial, and more and more production knowledge innovation has laid the third stage of intelligent manufacturing. These changes will not stop at the level of quantitative change, but will completely change the rules of the game and bring subversive changes to the product and process market.

Intelligent manufacturing is an information-based manufacturing that faces the whole product life cycle and realizes ubiquitous perception. This is a highly networked and knowledge-driven manufacturing model. Intelligent manufacturing optimizes all business and operation processes of manufacturing industry, and can achieve the goals of sustainable productivity growth and high economic benefits. Moreover, intelligent manufacturing combines information technology and engineering technology, which fundamentally changes the process of product development, manufacturing, transportation and sales. Intelligent manufacturing technology is based on modern sensing technology, network technology, automation technology, anthropomorphic intelligence technology and other advanced technologies, and realizes the intelligence of design process, manufacturing process and manufacturing equipment through intelligent sensing, human-computer interaction, decision-making and execution technology. It is the deep integration and integration of information technology, intelligent technology and equipment manufacturing technology. Intelligent manufacturing is the general trend of the deep integration of informationization and industrialization in the world, and it has increasingly become a symbol to measure the scientific and technological innovation and high-end manufacturing level of a country and region.

Development of manufacturing technology and application of simulation technology

Intelligent manufacturing is the collaborative innovation of intelligent equipment and Internet. Intelligent equipment is the development of intelligent hardware, which makes traditional manufacturing equipment have many activities such as analysis, reasoning, judgment, conception and decision-making. Internet technology extends the manufacturing process of a single device to the distributed manufacturing network environment, and superimposes the wisdom of network groups on the basis of the intelligence of a single device, thus realizing an intelligent manufacturing system under the global manufacturing network environment based on the Internet. Intelligent manufacturing carries out perception, analysis, reasoning, decision-making and control in the whole life cycle of manufacturing, and realizes the dynamic response of product demand.

To realize the intelligent manufacturing of production system, it is necessary to break through the key intelligent basic technology. We must make breakthroughs in real-time automatic identification and processing of information, wireless sensor network, information physical fusion system, network security and so on. Which involves the following key technologies of intelligent manufacturing.

Germany proposed Industry 4.0, and the United States proposed intelligent manufacturing, and the key technologies of intelligent manufacturing developed rapidly. They all painted a beautiful blueprint for the future manufacturing factory. Intelligent manufacturing in the United States emphasizes the integration of information and physics, while Industry 4.0 in Germany emphasizes the Internet of Things technology and regards the future factory as an IOT factory. But in any case, the key technologies are the same.

In the future, on the basis of real-time, reliability, high efficiency and low cost, we should solve the sensor technology, network technology and artificial intelligence technology needed for intelligent manufacturing, and connect the existing communication facilities, Internet resources and personal digital equipment terminals in daily life to the future factories to be fully applied.

The great advantage of intelligent manufacturing lies in its gradual realization. According to the problems that must be solved in current management and informatization, enterprises can allocate resources according to the four-stage diagnosis report of intelligent manufacturing development, and gradually upgrade their software and hardware strength by applying the technology of information physics fusion system, and gradually upgrade their operation factories, and can integrate sensors and install micro-server system components instead of bus system as needed. This means that you can start from a single machine, expand to the demonstration line, and then expand to the whole factory.

However, we should also realize that many key technologies in intelligent manufacturing are still immature, such as over-intensive wireless planning, lack of more frequency resources, vulnerability to environmental changes, poor real-time transmission performance and so on. In order to meet the real-time, reliable, efficient and safe requirements of industry, it should also play a role in real-time and efficient key applications. In addition, there are some problems in real-time positioning, such as unstable sensing system, low precision, no industry standard for real-time positioning, and inability to handle sensitive information (privacy). Therefore, in order to have a reliable and high-precision indoor real-time positioning system iGPS, we must pay attention to sensitive privacy issues.

If we want to create the future of intelligent manufacturing, we must make breakthroughs in these key areas, form China's own standard definition, and quickly apply it to form standardized products. Only in this way can we overtake in the changing curve and stand at the forefront of the world manufacturing industry.