Ten Years of ups and downs: Digital empowerment and reinvention of non-standard service manufacturing such as 3D printing thinking and prospects

Like birds, we bow into the game and fly to the mountain top that belongs to us. In this article, the Unionfab intelligent manufacturing team (unionfab.com) in the past two years to struggle, efforts, exploration, and constantly practice, knowledge and action unity, and constantly in many branches of the road to break through the thorns, looking for our own road day and night. It has been seven years since our team first worked together. This article is the review, introspection and summary of the past, but also the prospect of the fog of the future.

Our team is recruiting For Java/ front-end/testing, send resume to [email protected] > Company Industry: Liantai Technology (ROUND B+), 3D printing/small batch manufacturing/intelligent manufacturing/Industrial interconnection

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The first time I was involved in 3D printing-related entrepreneurship was in 2015, when people were innovating and starting businesses. At that time, AS a representative of flexible manufacturing and additive manufacturing, 3D printing itself was also full of imagination in the direction of industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing due to its high degree of integration with digitalization. Typical TECHNOLOGIES of 3D printing, such as FDM and SLA, have emerged for a long time, including Liantai Technology (www.uniontech3d.cn/), which began to transfer additive manufacturing technology from the laboratory to the industry from around 2000.

But as the Gartner curve demonstrates, the industry inevitably goes through bubble periods; When the whole 3 d printing equipment, materials, technology is not yet mature, the appearance of the finished goods, hardness, strength, durability and cost are difficult to really break through to the actual industrial production field, the cloud, online manufacturing factory, on-demand manufacturing, the concept of small batch manufacture these since the popular at that time also is no root of wood, cannot fall to the ground, our first attempt to stumble and back. What struck me about this failure was that the consumer Internet and the industrial/industrial Internet were two distinct and crisscrossed tracks. If you think you can restructure, empower, and disrupt industry/manufacturing just by using the so-called (consumer) Internet thinking, it’s a fantasy. However, the author does not quite agree with the idea of abandoning the industry and time limitation of digitalization, turning up his nose at it because of the inevitable setbacks in its spiral growth and rise, or thinking that it is nothing but a decoration and a topic for discussion.

Over the years, I’ve been sticking to some of the bottom lines:

• The future must be 3D: In the past two decades, with the improvement of hardware capabilities, network communication has changed from 2G, 3G, 4G to 5G, and the way of information communication between people has also changed from one-dimensional text to two-dimensional images and videos. The author firmly believes that with the acceleration of 5G and the maturity of VR/AR and other technologies, the carrier of information in the future will inevitably be 3D. From 3D design and modeling, VR/AR 3D presentation and many other aspects will bring changes, 3D printing is bound to become a bridge between the virtual and real world, just like the so-called Create Your Imagination.

• Discrete and personalized needs: The world is becoming more and more fragmented, and people’s needs are becoming more and more discrete and personalized. In the field of consumer goods such as clothing, C2M has been deeply popular. The supply side innovates products through the feedback information of big data on the platform, and then feeds back consumers to stimulate demand. At the same time, it reduces inventory through flexible production (such as Ali’s Rhinoceros Smart Manufacturing). In the wider field of industrial products, small batch manufacturing has become the consensus of many people, with a shorter product development life cycle rapid iteration, to meet the personalized needs of a specific group. Small batch manufacturing needs to integrate a series of capabilities from design modeling, to intermediate product manufacturing, to multiple post-processing coordination, and not to organize production as the center of the enterprise, but to organize production as the product. As far as I am concerned, the integration of the entire supply chain is still hard, and it is difficult to realize consumer-oriented flexible manufacturing and on-demand manufacturing with the high adaptability of 3D printing alone.

• Decentralized small-batch manufacturing: In large-scale manufacturing, marginal cost is constantly reduced through aggregation of supply chain and large-scale production, while 3D printing itself has nothing to do with economies of scale and can be produced in small batches locally. It is naturally suited to the discrete, individualised world of consumer demand, and has, for example, reduced the global trade in hearing AIDS by 15%. In more industries, the near future will see this kind of distributed, non-economies of scale production erode the trading power of mass production.

• Distributed manufacturing of value network chain: Distributed manufacturing is also a consensus. From the perspective of operating cost, supply chain coordination and local fast service, the production capacity will inevitably change from a single point to factories distributed throughout the country and even the world in the future. However, distributed manufacturing is not to say that in other places to send people to open a point or find the right to join the factory/partner, the author believes that distributed manufacturing should have the following characteristics:

  • Multi-plant rapid replication: Just like the distributed system of software system, the real distributed manufacturing is capable of rapid replication and rapid expansion. The opening of traditional factories at different points is time-consuming and time-consuming, which depends more on the management ability of leaders. Of course, any enterprise must rely on a strong middle management to do support. But how to achieve speed and efficiency compatible, how to avoid too big steps, this is one of the core capabilities of truly distributed manufacturing.
  • Multi-plant effective cooperation: Distributed manufacturing requires effective cooperation and dynamic deployment of production capacity between factories distributed in different places. The whole system should be like the nervous system, with strong connection and interaction between each synapse and the core brain, and each unit is like arm to arm.
  • Multi-link value coordination: Distributed manufacturing is not only the distribution facing its own internal production system, but also the value network chain of connection, coordination and symbiosis. This network includes upstream and downstream partners, transforming what was once a chain/fixed supply into a dynamically scalable, transparent and predictable value chain with a net-like exponential effect.
  • Equal emphasis on safety and efficiency: The COVID-19 pandemic has made life difficult for many enterprises, making the safety and risk resistance of the entire industrial chain particularly important. In the value chain formed by distributed manufacturing, it makes single chain into network chain, any point of fracture can not make the whole network stop, network chain can self-repair, self-adjustment.

• Vertical and horizontal and software-defined manufacturing: as mentioned above, small batch manufacturing, distributed manufacturing is the consensus for the future, there are many players from different angles into the game, but also divided into horizontal and vertical two contexts. There are hidden champions rooted in such segmentation fields as PCB/CNC/ injection molding/mold, and horizontally expand to other process manufacturing capabilities through self-support or franchise; The ability to dig deep into a single process and expand its application scenarios and capabilities into more vertical areas. The common feature of these players is that their outward tentacles rely on their own software system to ensure effective control and integration of nodes after extension through digital twin, industrial Internet, MES system, digital factory system and so on.

In the past few years, I have also been struck by the fact that many people agree on the lowest level of thinking in the industry, or the macro narrative at the level of enterprise strategy. However, many people often find it difficult to express or lack of practice how to land the strategy through tactics and how to reach the other side of the ideal from the present. Generally speaking, a lot of industrial Internet, intelligent manufacturing of the article for a little yangchun snow, and many manufacturing business owners of the core relationship is how to make money! Make money! To make money, this paper also wants to combine macro narrative with practical practice through the discussion of the following topics:

1. Decentralization, decentralization, digitization: Internalization and fragmentation of industrial manufacturing
2. Software, platform and hard technology: to match, to win; Build a firm camp and fight a foolish battle
3. Service-oriented manufacturing: service transparency/ultimate experience, high throughput and flexibility, predictable and consistent quality/delivery time
4. Cost reduction and Efficiency Increase: Singularity of digital value cost curve
5. Have we proved the value of digitisation?

1. Decentralization, decentralization and digitization: Internalization and breakdown of industrial manufacturing

This section mainly discusses the future manufacturing trends in my mind and some thoughts on how to break out of the inner volume of manufacturing.

Previously, we discussed the judgment of decentralized demand and decentralized manufacturing. Meanwhile, we can also see the serious internalization of industrial manufacturing at present, as can be seen from the growth difference between PPI and CPI. Take 3D printing hand button service for example, its price has dropped rapidly in the past few years, and many practitioners and up-and-comers are also the first choice to break out of the siege. This has led to many enterprises into a negative cycle, the decline of profits makes the investment in reproduction, service capacity to improve the investment is not enough. However, the price drop is not a bad thing. In recent years, THE author has personally witnessed the rapid increase of 3D printing application industries and scenes, and the number of customers served, the number of customers, and the total single volume are geometrically increased. The small-batch manufacturing industry represented by 3D printing is experiencing an inflection point of volume increase and decrease. This inevitably requires enterprises to continuously reduce cost and improve efficiency, improve competitiveness and build moat by improving their throughput, reducing marginal cost, improving single customer service ability and added value.

From the author’s point of view, digital transformation is the key to break the situation of many enterprises; Great waves rush the sand, only lifted towering waves, in order to find a chance between the waves.

From Henry Ford’s invention of the assembly line to mass manufacturing giants like Foxconn, the way production management and organization has evolved from the convergence of the supply side and the consumer side. We can also foresee that in the future, personalized and discrete demand and decentralized and distributed manufacturing supply will inevitably form a new production model under these two big backgrounds. This production mode can fully rely on the digital platform brought by information technology to complete the whole process remodeling from digital marketing, digital service, digital production, digital collaboration, digital delivery and other diversified integration. As the Internet changed the way people interact, is at the heart of information acquisition, expression, digital storage, transmission, processing and delivery, it will be the real phenomenon is abstract or object with information, make information in a new media, expressed in the form of different, with a highly efficient computing information processing, can obtain knowledge; And as digitization progresses, everything in the whole society will be digitized.

Digitalization is the generalization of a series of information technology, organization style, code of conduct, which is combined with the various industries we are familiar with, forming the digital economy; Generally, digital economy is divided into digital industrialization and industrial digitalization (Jiang Xiaojuan, economist and president of Tsinghua School of Public Administration: Digital technology will change the mode of economic operation) :

• Digital industrialization refers to the products and services brought by digital technology. Without digital technology, there would be no such products, such as electronic information manufacturing, information and communication industry, software service industry, Internet industry, etc. All these industries came into being with digital technology.
• Industrial digitalization refers to the fact that the industry already exists, but the use of digital technology has brought output growth and efficiency improvement, which would not have been possible without digital technology. Digital production can realize intelligent interconnection of production process, consumption chain and supply chain, intelligent interconnection of consumer and service platform, and intelligent matching of social resources.

Traditional large-scale manufacturers are faced with the problem space, there are mainly three types: reduce the production cost, improve production efficiency, and reshape the mode of production, to the future of personalized C2M small batch manufacturing scenario, companies often need to go out to the consumer side, establishing a direct connection with the user, at this point we need digital solutions, will across services, manufacturing, and supply chain. Finally, it should be emphasized that digitalization is only a means of empowerment, and the externalization of digitalization capability to consumers is practical service-oriented manufacturing. We will first discuss the specific product form of digital capability and then discuss the goal of using digital construction for service-oriented manufacturing

2. Software, platform and hard technology: to match, to win; Build a firm camp and fight a foolish battle

This section discusses some business models from the perspective of software technology and moat.

In 2019, when I first visited shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan and other manufacturing centers, I was surprised to find that many small and medium-sized manufacturing owners had already gone through digital baptism for many times, with success or failure, and most of them were not satisfactory. Based on the practice of these two years, there are the following business models or product categories with software as the core:

• For basic software: the so-called hard technology is a general term for advanced and sophisticated original technologies that are generally characterized by independent research and development, long-term accumulation, high technical threshold, difficult to copy, clear application products and industrial basis. Such as CAD/CAE/CAM model processing software, can build a powerful moat. However, this technology needs a large amount of R&D resources investment, long-term engineering practice running-in and optimization, and long-term operation to gain user trust; In addition, the horizontal expansion of its commercial space is often limited by the depth of its industry, and the user’s ability and willingness to pay often cannot cover the input cost, so it is difficult to have both.

• For business software: the competition on this track is no longer manufacturing, but the entire ToB/ToM software services industry. Vertical industry software development department, r&d resources objectively speaking, cannot be compared with professional software enterprises, but the advantage is that the software enterprises will not put too much resources on a single industry, their value is more versatility and flexibility, vertical areas of software development is the only thing that can deeply understand the characteristics of the industry, and to meet market and customer needs. For enterprises in a subdivision field, if they only solve their single point of problem, it is difficult to form attractive; The value of this kind of software can only be realized by helping them realize the digital coordination of the whole process and achieve the closed-loop production. Similarly, small and medium-sized enterprises are limited by the internalization discussed above, and their ability and willingness to pay for software is not high. They are only willing to try software that has successful implementation experience and can quickly reduce cost and improve efficiency. Can not survive the present winter, how can see poetry and the distance.

• For the platform model: cold start and long-term operation investment are unavoidable sharp problems, if you can not have self-hematopoitizing ability as soon as possible, have long-term stable cash flow, it is likely to die after a little wind and rain. The platform model also needs long-term and continuous investment, and it is difficult to establish a moat in the field of technology for the platform model, so it can only establish advantages in volume and capital to pull away from competitors.

From the stage of software landing, it can be divided as follows:

• Digital tools: Software is gradually introduced into the existing production system. The first step is to digitally reproduce the process and form software tools to replace the original paper records or offline collaboration. For example, MRP, ERP and other systems are gradually applied to material management and financial management; The popularity of 2d and 3D digital modeling tools; Use simulation analysis tools to verify the practicality of process design and improve the success rate of new process; And around the production process for data acquisition, analysis, monitoring and so on.

• Networking: Digital tools solve the problem of basic digital twin. The next step is to realize the integrated association control and collaborative optimization in the digital environment from point to point, and improve the transmission, association and sharing level of all links. For example, in product data management, data consistency of product design, process design, production and manufacturing, installation and after-sales is realized, and then product design and manufacturing integration is realized. Through the association, transmission and sharing of product models, the whole process of product research and development, process design verification, process management and manufacturing can be realized in parallel.

• Intelligent: After networking, we can break the information island, gather the scattered data, and realize the service-oriented manufacturing based on intelligent products, such as personalized customization, precision marketing, online operation and maintenance, etc. And crowdsourcing design, cloud design and other new r&d and manufacturing systems. The product mechanism system will also change from simply providing products to providing overall solutions, and the proportion of service elements will continue to increase. The corresponding R & D and manufacturing mode has emerged to realize online and remote collaborative R & D and manufacturing between multiple entities, as well as cloud computing to carry out design and production.

2.1 From MES to industrial Internet: Roots in industry, not interconnection

As mentioned above, a large number of manufacturing enterprises have already launched or are preparing to launch MANUFACTURING execution System MES. Most MES in the market include material warehousing, production scheduling, production execution, quality inspection, equipment maintenance, storage management and other functions. However, the single-point, process-solidified MES system is often only a display of some macro data in the production process, so that the production order to the various stages of product delivery form digital records. There may be a lot of data in production scheduling, production execution, quality inspection, equipment maintenance and other links, but how to make good use of these data to make the collection, storage, cleaning, aggregation and processing of industrial data more real-time and in-depth, so that a lot of micro information originally hidden in the production process, For example, real-time personnel, material inventory status, equipment status and other mining, so that it clearly show, become completely transparent and visible, has become an urgent problem to be solved.

When enterprises start to push forward digital transformation in the direction of production mode transformation, such as personalized customization and network collaborative manufacturing, they need to obtain more extensive data to achieve real-time insight into production process and operation management. With data integration or Internet of Things data collection, the industrial Internet platform integrates all the data from equipment at the field level to ERP at the enterprise operation level. The platform uses big data and AI capabilities to mine and utilize the value of the data, and finally realizes dynamic perception and intelligent decision-making of production and operation. Such as car production line to use six arm shaft automation, each axis are more connected to the Internet of things, you can measure it quite a lot of dynamic information, its state can be perceived in the operation, the previous automated production equipment only when the product problems or not after operation to know production line out of the question. In the intelligent production process, through a lot of connected equipment can be real-time perception of its running status, and can do online repair and remote shutdown, boot.

The above is the elaboration of the value of the industrial Internet, but the industrial Internet is not a silver bullet, not equipment even come in, present the data, you can. In fact, many software research and development teams are not able to go deep into manufacturing plants and understand expert advice, which makes it difficult to achieve data mining and discovery that truly brings deep value to enterprise operations. The industrial Internet most need to solve or to be able to really in-depth customer, find demand, combing demand, define demand; Industrial Internet is developing vigorously, and it is bound to have a bright future, but the way forward is bound to be tortuous and spiraling.

The root of the industrial Internet is still in the industrial end. The Internet just builds the information highway. How to truly excavate its value still requires long-term industry deep cultivation and trial and error.

2.2 Artificial, intelligent (semi-automated) and automation

Big data analysis, artificial intelligence and other technologies have been introduced into the manufacturing industry.

Digital for the reshaping of the industry is not achieved overnight, I get on the bus at the beginning, for example, think of is the use of the APS scheduling algorithm, AI visual image detection, automatic processing methods such as 3 d model to quickly solve some problems, but ignore the from tools, network finally to intelligent series of necessary data in the process of accumulation, accumulation of experience, knowledge accumulation. Looking back, digital landing requires the following steps step by step:

• Digital twin to achieve standardized management: Manufacturing enterprises are often labor-intensive and have formed a lot of production management systems. The first thing to do in digital transformation is to copy equipment, system and process, and carry out digital mapping between equipment and behavior. Of course, this kind of reproduction can not be based on gourd gourd gourd gourd gourd gourd, or thousands of different aspects, in the early stage of growth must form their own methodology, and constantly remove the wheat from the chia, through the stone of other mountains.

• Intelligent and semi-automatic assistance: after having a certain basic process, some process nodes can be automatically replaced, and simple rules and conditions or algorithms can be used to extract information from massive data and feed back to the implementer. The typical scenario here is message notification, which automatically detects abnormal conditions of equipment and potential risks of orders, actively analyzes them, and then pushes them to people to solve problems quickly.

• Use RPA, robots, Headless software, etc., to achieve whole-process automation: automation is the link that can really save labor and improve efficiency. With the accumulation of the above two stages and the combination of some basic software, we can realize the qualitative improvement of efficiency through whole-process automation. What needs to be emphasized here is that for many companies engaged in basic software and hard technology research and development, in the background of future automation, they must complete the transformation of software as a service, so as to integrate into the value network chain more quickly.

2.3 Digital management of the whole process

The author has also discussed in the previous article that it is difficult to achieve leapfrog development just to help enterprises solve single point problems separately. Manufacturing digital management is the application of information system, according to business needs and strategies, the production and operation process of the whole chain management activities. Specifically, digital management of manufacturing enterprises can be divided into four aspects: design and manufacturing collaboration, process and quality improvement, resource optimization and collaboration, and supply chain management (nfoQ: Advanced Exploration of digital development mode of manufacturing industry).

• Design and manufacturing collaboration: the component-centered product development approach is the key to realize design-manufacturing collaboration, that is, parallel design and manufacturing planning is implemented through simplified, component-unit data sharing. First, component delivery manufacturing processes, quality planning and job descriptions should be defined digitally; Then, through PLM to connect CAD, PLM, ERP and other system information; Finally, change information is automatically fed back into all functional area systems to achieve design and manufacturing synergy.

• Process and quality improvement: Product quality is jointly determined by various variables in the manufacturing process. The application of automatic prediction models and monitoring tools will effectively help us understand the associated attributes of product quality. Automated visual inspection, machine learning, blockchain and other technologies can find potential problems more timely than traditional SPC or manual inspection, which will directly help enterprises reduce labor costs and improve production efficiency. Monitoring consumer feedback in digital channels can also help identify and resolve supply chain quality issues in a timely manner.

• Resource optimization and collaboration: The combination of Internet of Things, data analysis, machine learning and other technologies will effectively help enterprises achieve resource optimization and collaboration. It is important to assess the factors affecting resource consumption in manufacturing enterprises. These resource consumption can identify the energy distribution of the production process, so that enterprises can accurately identify the efficiency of resource consumption, thus reducing operating costs, improving throughput, productivity and profitability, and achieving low carbon energy saving goals.

• Supply chain management: Massive supply chain data scattered in different processes, sources and systems is the key for enterprises to understand supply chain and optimize supply chain management. In the manufacturing supply chain management framework, information flow based on data becomes the key to connect commercial flow, logistics and capital flow, and supply chain operation platform plays the role of coordination, overall planning and operation. Understanding of the above core enterprise supply chain plan to work with upstream and downstream participants in the supply chain; Organize all kinds of resources to promote the efficient operation of each link of the core enterprise supply chain.

3. Service-oriented manufacturing: transparent/extreme experience of service, high throughput and flexibility of capacity, predictable and consistent quality/delivery time

This section focuses on the manifestation and key indicators of future service-oriented manufacturing.

Throughout the history of the industrial age and the information age, the continuous explosion of disruptive technologies has driven the transformation of industries, and thus affected the restructuring of the entire economic system. Since the first Industrial Revolution, the leading industry of the economic system has gradually developed from the machinery and electromechanical industry to the information industry. Not only the basic science, industrial chain and value chain have undergone major changes, but more importantly, the logic of industrial development and the underlying methodology have also undergone fundamental changes. From deterministic and predictable mechanical theory to cybernetics, system theory and information theory, industrial development in the new era demonstrates the underlying thought connotation of the new methodology from technological strategy, organizational development to external ecology. We are already seeing a deep convergence of the Internet and industry, and we can expect this process to accelerate in the future.

The transformation from the definition of new manufacturing to the servitization of manufacturing is basically the transformation of an enterprise from a simple product or service provider to a comprehensive solution provider. It is a changing process of increasing the proportion of value in input and output, increasing the added value of products and brand benefits. Service-oriented transformation often depends on the accumulation of rich knowledge assets, which is realized as a process of service content from simple to complex and from low-end to high-end. It can often be divided into the following stages:

• In the initial stage of manufacturing service-oriented transformation, enterprises generally regard installation, after-sales, spare parts and other services as the supplement and extension of product production.
• Further, some enterprises began to explore one-stop solutions for users, enrich service content and increase user stickiness;
• Finally, the enterprise will gradually improve the innovation value of service business, overturn the whole business model, and turn to the service-oriented organizational structure, thus driving the development of enterprise service business.

Returning to the scene of non-standard small-batch manufacturing such as 3D printing hand, the author believes that service-oriented manufacturing should contain the following characteristics:

• Transparent service/extreme experience: Whether ToB or ToC, customer representatives are accustomed to online shopping experience like Taobao, JD and Pindoduo. From product selection, ordering, tracking to receiving feedback, consumers hope to get a good experience. Similar to the parallel upgrading and sinking market on the consumer side in recent years, there is also a certain stratification of users of 3D printing services: we need to be able to provide cost-effective services for price-sensitive users, but also provide extreme services for experience/quality sensitive users.

• High throughput and elasticity of production capacity: 3D printing technology, materials, processes and upstream and downstream industries have been greatly improved as 3D printing has become more and more capable of being applied to industrial production after the silence and reshuffle after the hype period in the past. However, due to the characteristics of 3D printing technology, it is not feasible to increase production capacity in traditional large-scale production to reduce unit price. When the number of equipment grows rapidly and the industry applications continue to enrich, increasing production capacity is an obvious market opportunity. The whole process of 3D printing production is highly digitized. The model data of production is 3D data, the raw materials are standardized, the whole software controls the production process, and the production time can be accurately predicted. However, in the current 3D printing application, there is no good low utilization characteristics, but because of the production process of curing, a lot of production capacity is lost. For example, the pre-processing, typesetting and production scheduling of data in the whole industry at present, manual non-standardized processing of 3D model data, accuracy and processing efficiency are quite low; The initialization of production and timely deplaning after production cannot be guaranteed, resulting in a large amount of production capacity waste.

• Predictability and consistency of quality/delivery time: we cannot guarantee the delivery time and quality of every customer. While pursuing high throughput and high elasticity of production capacity, certain losses/anomalies will inevitably occur. Of course, we will be responsible for this kind of abnormality, mainly affecting the latest delivery date. However, what we need to do is to ensure quality, predictable delivery and consistency in the process of rapid expansion of distributed manufacturing. In other words, when customers place orders on our side, they can clearly know our ability boundaries and possible anomalies, and the ability to provide a bottom, which is very important for large-scale and small batch manufacturing.

4. Cost reduction and efficiency increase: singularity of digital value cost curve

This section mainly describes the inevitable detours in the process of digital transformation and landing of manufacturing factories.

In the past two years, we have been practicing with clients of different industries and backgrounds, and we have failed repeatedly. Ryan Holmes, CEO of management systems company HootSuite, even jokingly likens big data to “teen XX” : Everyone talks about it, but no one really knows what to do about it; Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone says they’re doing it… When it comes to the goal of digitalization, everyone is eager to quickly reduce cost and increase efficiency, and quickly convert digital input into high-value output; When it comes to digital capabilities and access, people have different opinions and come to the same conclusion, but most of them are blind. For example, the primary sense of digitalization, such as Protolabs and other industry platforms provide online ordering services, which become a gateway for many people to understand digitalization; But they often overlook the powerful organizational underpinning of a single software system. As Conway’s Law states, the architecture of design systems is constrained by the communication structure of the organization that produces those designs; If we want to deliver a new Internet experience to our users, we need a whole set of organizational changes behind it, coupled with the right software systems.

It is precisely because the digitalization of manufacturing industry is different from the consumer Internet, consumers only need to open the web page or download the App, that is, they may carry out the main activities; The landing of digital transformation in factories is often accompanied by the first rise and then fall of the cost curve.

As discussed above, to give full play to the value of a business system, it is necessary to realize full-link harmonization, which means that many roles with different responsibilities need to work together to maximize throughput and global efficiency. For small enterprises, it is one person holding multiple jobs, and the handover of affairs between people is small, so digital transformation is often not as convenient as using Excel directly. What they need instead is a handy tool or two. For medium and large enterprises, in the early stage of digital transformation, the overall cost will inevitably rise; Then, as the progress progresses, the cost will drop rapidly and the marginal cost will be constant.

Specifically, in the process of enterprise digital transformation, hardware, software, operation and maintenance are the basic costs that cannot be bypassed; These cost pressures are already considerable against the background of inwinding. But the biggest difficulty and challenge in the real landing process is organizational reform.

• After the beginning of digital transformation, it is inevitable that in the first stage, different teams need to run in with each other due to changes in processes and methods, bringing additional cost increase. Some enterprises choose gradual reform to smooth the cost curve, but often will gradually lose the motivation of reform; It’s not an urgent life-and-death situation. Better to leave it for the flood. There are also enterprises to choose a one-size-fits-all reform, and will cause internal turbulence. Digital reform needs the whole management to push forward with great courage and courage. In the process, it also needs to walk on a tightrope, balancing the left and right and coordinating all parties of interests.

• Top-down management, such as lean manufacturing, naturally inhibits bottom-up innovation, which makes digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises much more difficult than that of Internet enterprises. Add to that the natural resistance of many front-line workers, accustomed to repetitive work, to change. In the face of internal rebound, or the middle implementation of slow sluggishness, how to promote, is also a test of the determination and ability of managers.

The world trend, haohao Tang tang; The middle way and the almighty from it.

5. Afterword.

There was another section here: Have we proved the value of digitization? ** due to involve more internal product introduction is not open, interested can contact me ([email protected]) exchange inquiries.

Wall ten years figure broken wall, difficult pay and water is also a hero; The wind has started at the end of qingping, welcome to join unionfab.com, let us join hands, go to the future of digitalization. Job links: https://jobs.51job…