"It has been invested for five years, and I hope to reach a profitable balance point next year." Wang Lei, director and general manager of Hefei Heforging Intelligent Manufacturing Co., Ltd., said in an interview with China Business News.
As an equipment manufacturing enterprise founded in 1951, Heduan Intelligent began to carry out digital upgrades relying on the industrial Internet platform in 2017.
"Digital transformation can improve production efficiency, but the premise is that it needs to continue to 'burn money', which is undoubtedly a huge sum of money for equipment manufacturing companies that have invested heavily in assets. The investment income from the 'digital upgrade' project Judging from the rate, we have not generated profit in the past few years. Ideally, we still need 2 to 3 years of layout to become a new profit growth point." Wang Lei said.
This is not only an individual story that happened to a traditional manufacturing company, but also a microcosm of the digital transformation of domestic manufacturing companies in recent years.
The scale of my country's manufacturing industry has been ranked first in the world for many years, but the overall level of informatization is still not high, and the depth of integration with industrialization is not enough. The digitalization of manufacturing enterprises, especially small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, is still in the early stage.
At the beginning of November, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Printing and Distributing the Guidelines for the Digital Transformation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises", which put forward the digital transformation ideas of "from easy to difficult, from point to surface, long-term iteration, and multi-party collaboration" for small and medium-sized enterprises, and put forward the industrial Internet platform Providers of digital transformation services, such as digital transformation service providers and large enterprises, put forward the requirement of "promoting business collaboration, resource integration and data sharing between upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain and supply chain, and helping small and medium-sized enterprises to achieve 'chain' transformation".
The "small and medium-sized enterprises" here, according to the interpretation of the Information Technology Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, especially refer to small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing industry.
According to a survey recently released by iResearch, the current digital transformation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises is still dominated by central state-owned enterprises and large private enterprises. The demand is concentrated between 1 million and 5 million. month, with the characteristics of high amount and long duration.
Amid multiple factors such as "demand vs cost vs effect", several interviewed industry insiders told reporters that for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies, especially those in traditional asset-heavy industries such as equipment manufacturing, how to achieve sustainability in digital transformation is still an issue. Problems to be solved.
Is digitization a "compulsory course"?
"Digitalization is not the goal." Wang Lei said that ideally, the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry is a means to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and expand new business models.
He believes that the transformation includes two aspects: one is the digital transformation of the whole cycle from production to sales within the enterprise, and the other is to realize the value increase of the data loaded by the product.
The former aims to improve quality and efficiency, while the latter aims to increase the market competitiveness and customer stickiness of products by optimizing product use experience, and ultimately help enterprises realize the transformation from island type to user experience type.
"For enterprises in the industry, it is still a question mark whether digital investment is just needed and what degree of digitalization can bring the greatest value to the enterprise. If transformation is carried out, small and medium-sized enterprises still face a problem: as leading enterprises have already relied on Information means such as the industrial Internet and big data platforms implement full-cycle digital integration innovation of enterprises, if we continue to rely on a single link of digital transformation, the marginal utility of small and medium-sized enterprises to obtain digital dividends is weakening." Wang Lei said.
With the superposition of multiple factors, is the motivation for the transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises still sufficient?
This problem once troubled Zhang Youming, general manager of UFIDA Jingzhi Industrial Internet Division.
However, after participating as a lecturer in the training activities for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs at the Industrial Culture Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, he had a more positive answer to this question: "Within a week after the meeting, many students took the initiative to contact me, and some of them later contacted me. They have also become our customers, and many of these trainees are at the helm of small and medium-sized equipment manufacturing enterprises."
Zhang Youming told Yicai Global that the informatization foundation of such enterprises has always been relatively weak.
"The automobile and process manufacturing industries have high requirements on the level of refined management and the automation of key machines required for continuous production, so the digitalization of the industry can be advanced relatively quickly."
In contrast, the equipment manufacturing industry "goes slowly" in the digital transformation. Zhang Youming believes that this is caused by multiple factors.
First, as a heavy asset-intensive industry, the equipment manufacturing industry in the production process, if iterative intelligent products for large-scale equipment, the cost of transformation will be even higher; Low, the power of new technology application of small and medium-sized enterprises in the industry is limited.
In addition, the supply chain and industrial chain of the equipment manufacturing industry have always been relatively fixed. After enterprises "go to the cloud", the space for business expansion is relatively limited.
"Positive factors are increasing." Zhang Youming believes that at present, with the upgrading of downstream demand, the strength of customized production capacity has directly affected the competitiveness of equipment manufacturing enterprises, and this mode of simultaneous design and production is difficult to manage collaboratively. Let digitalization gradually become the rigid demand of enterprises.
"Complicated products and many parts are the characteristics of the equipment manufacturing industry, and small and medium-sized enterprises are no exception. With the increase of upstream parts manufacturers in the industry, whether they can find suppliers with better cost performance and whether the supply channels are smooth are directly related to the production of enterprises. and sales. To solve this kind of coordination problem of all factors and the whole industry chain, it is necessary to build an industrial Internet platform.” Zhang Youming said.
According to Zhang Youming, the Industrial Internet can help small and medium-sized enterprises connect the upstream and downstream of the supply chain, reduce their raw material costs, connect with more downstream customers, and increase their ability to capture business opportunities and market bargaining power.
In addition, after enterprises go to the cloud platform, production, research and development, procurement and sales are all digitized. This method of "converting traditional assets into industrial data and then converting data into credit" also provides solutions for the financing difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises. found a solution.
Integrate into the digital ecology
"I have contacted many small and medium-sized manufacturing companies, and there are almost no business decision makers who do not know the industrial Internet, but few can really explain what the industrial Internet architecture is? What are the enterprise operation management business software suitable for the big data ecological environment? Which business of the enterprise needs to 'go to the cloud'?" A person in charge of related businesses of an enterprise cloud service and software provider told reporters.
In early November, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the "Evaluation Form for the Digitalization Level of SMEs in the Manufacturing Industry (2022 Edition)".
In the "Digital Foundation" indicator, 20% of the weight is "the enterprise realizes the digital management of business through the deployment of industrial Internet public cloud/private cloud/hybrid cloud platforms and other forms."
He Dongdong, co-founder and CEO of Shugen Internet, told China Business News that the "Industrial Internet" has many extensions, including automation equipment sensors, 5G communication solutions, and many industrial solutions, but its real core is these operating systems Or the Industrial Internet platform.
"As leading manufacturing companies take the initiative to build an industry-level industrial Internet platform, it will provide convenience for small and medium-sized enterprises to take advantage of the digital transformation of the industry."
It is also mentioned in the "Guidelines for the Digital Transformation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises" that small and medium-sized enterprises should integrate into the digital ecology.
Apply the industrial Internet platform built by core enterprises in the supply chain of the industry chain, integrate into the ecosystem of core enterprises, strengthen collaboration and support, and realize the coordinated transformation of large and medium-sized enterprises.
Apply industry common solutions output by industry leading enterprises to accelerate the improvement of their own digitalization level.
According to the guidelines, in addition to industry leaders, service providers for the digital transformation of SMEs also include Internet platform companies, industrial Internet platform companies, and digital transformation service providers.
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the third quarter of 2022, the industrial Internet has been fully integrated into 45 major categories of the national economy, and more than 150 characteristic platforms with certain industry and regional influence have been cultivated, and 28 cross-industry and cross-field industrial Internet platforms have been selected. Among them, 32 key platforms connect more than 79 million units (sets) of equipment, and carry more than 280,000 industrial APPs.
In the face of more and more regional, industry-level, and enterprise-level industrial Internet platforms, small and medium-sized manufacturing companies have begun to increase their choice and bargaining power in digital investment.
But new problems follow: How can small and medium-sized enterprises "get on the platform" at a lower threshold and at a lower cost?
"SMEs have three main concerns: first, applications that can generate value; second, they are affordable; and third, the threshold is low, that is, there are not many IT engineers who know how to use them." He Dongdong said that on the supply side, for SMEs, According to characteristics and actual needs, digital transformation service providers have begun to provide lightweight, subscription-based services to alleviate the concerns and costs of digital transformation for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The so-called "subscription service", He Dongdong said, is to deposit various industrial best practices on this industrial Internet platform, and then let small and medium-sized enterprises directly subscribe to these industrial application apps above.
According to Zhang Youming's observation, the choices of SMEs are often diverse.
They can choose to share the platform with the long chain enterprises, or they can choose to rent, one-time or phased purchase of the industrial Internet platform built by third-party cloud service providers.
He Dongdong believes that based on the industrial Internet is a huge ecology and system, from the perspective of investment cost and time, even small and medium-sized manufacturing companies with abundant cash flow need to carefully consider building their own industrial Internet platform.
"If every enterprise builds the underlying general-purpose platform by itself, on the one hand, it will cost a lot of money and time, and requires a lot of talents; on the other hand, in terms of application scale, the cost cannot be amortized for the enterprise. Yes." He Dongdong said.
Two Challenges to Sustainability Transformation
One of the reasons for forcing traditional manufacturing companies to digitize is the rise in labor costs.
However, some interviewees told reporters that after undergoing transformation, the employment cost of some small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises has increased instead of falling.
"The rise in labor costs in the manufacturing industry really reflects the problem of talent shortage." He Dongdong said.
Zhang Youming said that, on the one hand, the Industrial Internet needs interdisciplinary talents who understand both industry and digital technology, and are also highly innovative. This kind of talent training cycle is very long.
The Ministry of Education has added a major in industrial Internet applications in 2021. That is to say, before that, the social supply of industrial Internet talents can only be cultivated by enterprises; It is impossible to recruit digital talents, and even cultivate enterprise digital teams. However, this will undoubtedly not work for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in the short term.
In response to the challenge of insufficient talent reserves for informatization professionals, the strategy adopted by Heforging Intelligent Manufacturing is to invite "foreign aid".
Wang Lei said that up to now, the technology companies that the company has cooperated with or invested abroad include HKUST Xunfei and Anhui Sanheyi Information Technology Co., Ltd., etc.
In the long run, there are two ways to solve the talent gap in the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry.
Li Yun from the Industrial Internet Research Office of CCID Research Institute told China Business News that on the one hand, it is necessary to give full play to the role of industry alliances and institutions as bridges, and focus on hardware infrastructure, industrial software, data transmission, and industrial control security to meet the application needs of the manufacturing industry. Jointly tackle a number of common key technologies for technical shortcomings; on the other hand, deepen industry-education cooperation, establish an "enterprise + university" joint training mechanism, and send a group of interdisciplinary talents who understand both IT and OT to the manufacturing industry.
It's not just "lack of people", Wang Lei said that data is the key value of smart manufacturing products.
However, at present, the recognition and utilization rate of digital applications by downstream customers are not high, the added value of products is difficult to show, and the R&D investment of manufacturing enterprises cannot form positive feedback, which also makes some small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises lose the motivation to transform.
There are also downstream customers in the industrial chain such as aerospace and military industry who have high requirements for digital applications in high-end smart manufacturing. However, in practice, Wang Lei found that the needs of these customers do not benefit much for smart manufacturing companies.
"Currently, downstream industries that have a higher demand for digital applications of products are often industries that have a higher demand for data security and privacy protection. This has led to the need for manufacturing companies to sign confidentiality agreements when serving customers in this type of industry, and to share data peer-to-peer. It is difficult to maximize the value of data."
Wang Lei called for the sustainable digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises, but also need to build a more mature data element market, and then promote the restructuring of manufacturing enterprises through digital transformation of competitive advantage.