In recent years, the competition in China's manufacturing industry has become increasingly fierce. The downward pressure on the economy and the increase in production costs and labor costs have enabled manufacturing companies to focus on digital transformation, use new technologies to improve production efficiency, and strengthen product innovation and management capabilities to win competitive advantage. . With the increasing popularity of the Internet, the rapid development of computing and storage capabilities, the widespread use of Internet of Things and sensor technology, and the continuous evolution of industrial software, data collection, storage, transmission, presentation, analysis and optimization have a good technical foundation. In this context, the wave of digital transformation in manufacturing is unstoppable.

In order to comply with the new situation, manufacturing companies are actively accelerating organizational change, business innovation and process reengineering, and promoting the digital transformation of key aspects such as R&D, production, management, and service, thereby realizing the openness of the R&D system, intelligent production methods, and personalized product services. The organizational boundary is flexible and the value network is ecologicalized, forming a new type of enterprise with digital technology as the core element, supported by the open platform, and driven by data. According to IDC research results, 84.9% of Chinese manufacturing companies are undergoing different levels of digital transformation, and digital transformation is becoming the core of manufacturing enterprise strategy.

For manufacturing companies, digital transformation is all-round, but traditional manufacturing companies still face many difficulties in achieving digital transformation. According to a research report issued by Accenture, 80% of Chinese companies are trying to make their business more efficient and promote business growth through digital technology. However, only about 4% of enterprises have truly released the potential of digital. In this regard, Dr. Huang Pei, CEO of e-works, believes that enterprises can start to deepen the application of digital technology from the following aspects, thus winning a significant competitive advantage for manufacturing companies:

1) Business model transformation, Pay by use is a new business model based on digital technology applications. Businesses are no longer selling products, but services used to sell products. To achieve Pay by use, enterprises should first realize the digitization of products, and on this basis, establish a cloud platform that monitors the operation of products, and can monitor the status of product operations to achieve predictive maintenance.

2) Service model transformation. Through the development of product service apps, companies can enable customers to implement self-service services to improve service efficiency. For example, Midea provides intelligent home-wide smart solutions that can monitor a variety of smart home products.

3) Transformation of research and development model. In the new product development process, digital technology is widely used. For example, through simulation-driven design, physical testing is reduced; R&D data and process management throughout the product lifecycle, improving component reuse rates, improving R&D efficiency, reducing R&D costs, enabling collaborative R&D in different locations; and even collecting customer pairs via the Internet Product demand, in the development process, to achieve crowdsourcing design.

4) Operational model transformation. In the course of business operations, there are many digital transformation scenarios that can help companies achieve refined management. For example, it promotes business process management and runs through multiple information systems; it promotes mobile applications extensively, and pushes data and fault warning information required by managers at all levels to mobile terminals to visualize business operations.

5) Transformation of manufacturing model. In the machining process, MAZAK, Makino Machine Tool, TRUMPF, FANUC and many other excellent companies have widely applied flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) to fully automate the machining of different mechanical parts. In the FMS system, what is seen is highly automated, but in fact, more important is the overall FMS system planning, logistics scheduling, tool management, processing program configuration, etc., fully realized digital control.

6) Transformation of decision-making models. By advancing the digital transformation, enterprises will have a large amount of operational data. By managing and analyzing these massive amounts of heterogeneous data, and combining the results of data analysis with the management methods of enterprises, it can truly improve management and optimize enterprises. The effect of operations.

From the actual situation of the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises, the industries facing individual consumers, such as home appliances, home, mobile phones, automobiles and other industries, the pressure of digital transformation is huge, and the transformation is relatively rapid; and the industry for enterprise customers, For example, in equipment manufacturing, energy, parts and other industries, the pace of digital transformation is relatively slow. E-works believes that regardless of the type and industry, each enterprise should promote digital transformation. However, the digital transformation of enterprises is not only a technical issue, but also a strategic issue. Enterprises must lay out their digital transformation strategies according to their own situation, build their own digital transformation roadmap, and steadily advance in order to achieve practical results.