Differences In The Concept Of Intelligent Manufacturing Between China And Japan

"When I first came to 2017, I was in the forefront of the world in terms of intelligent manufacturing." "In the past two years, the development speed of Intelligent Manufacturing in China is very fast. In the past few years, those small and medium-sized enterprises which had no advantage in intelligent manufacturing have also started to set foot in intelligent manufacturing, which has greatly changed the business opportunities of the whole market."

During the 22nd China Industrial Expo 2020, Hitachi participated in the exhibition in the form of a group, and demonstrated for the first time the intelligent products and solutions covering the whole value chain of the industry provided by Hitachi based on the innovative solution lumada.

Sasaki said that this year's exhibition form has changed a lot from before. When Hitachi participated in the Expo for the first time in 2018, it was not sure how to display it. Therefore, the contents of the exhibition were mainly part of the contents of individual processes.

"But in 2020, we want to show China all the contents of Hitachi's industrial automation control in the whole industrial chain before, after and after the whole factory production is completed." Sasaki told reporters.

Masaki Sasaki also pointed out that Japan has always believed that man-made manufacturing is more than all machine-made, but some people in China think that the things produced by machines are better than those made by human beings. Different concepts make China and Japan need to keep running in the practice of intelligent manufacturing.

Differences in manufacturing concepts between China and Japan

As a Japanese who came to work in China only three years ago, Sasaki has his own understanding of the differences between China and Japan in the concept of intelligent manufacturing.

"In terms of manufacturing, the Japanese have always believed that manual manufacturing is more than all machine-made, that is to say, only skilled workers and manual control can produce the best products." "But when you come to China, because the skill level of skilled workers is very different from that of Japan, some people in China will think that the products produced by machines are better than those made by hand."

Such differences in concepts have led to many differences in the practice of intelligent manufacturing between China and Japan.

"In the Japanese concept, maybe intelligent manufacturing is more not to reduce the labor on the production line, but because of the shortage of labor force in Japan, there will be machines to replace manual work." "The purpose of Intelligent Manufacturing in China is to reduce the errors in the production process and make the mistakes caused by unskilled as much as possible," Sasaki said

In the end, what is used to improve the quality of the products manufactured by Japanese workers is to make up for the defects in the number of skilled workers. Therefore, what is more likely to be used to improve the quality of the products manufactured in China is to reduce the number of skilled workers.

"In terms of intelligent manufacturing, China and Japan are very different from each other at the very beginning. In this case, if we suddenly bring Japanese intelligent manufacturing technology to China, will it be able to meet the needs of China?" he said Sasaki said.

As a result, Hitachi needs to make greater changes and efforts to adapt to a completely different and rapidly developing Chinese market.

"First of all, we should open up our own technology and win over more partners through open technology, so that these partners and Hitachi can jointly develop solutions suitable for the needs of Chinese enterprises." "Especially in the new infrastructure, there are many technologies that hope to be involved through the construction of new information infrastructure. We are conducting relevant investigation and analysis, hoping to open up a new commercial market in this area," he said

Evolution of intelligent manufacturing to whole industry chain

In fact, the whole industrial chain of intelligent manufacturing is the inevitable development of Chinese enterprises at this stage.

Sasaki said that China's intelligent manufacturing is actually making great strides, so the speed will be very fast. "For example, in Japan, it is through wired control first, and then step by step, it enters the stage of wireless control step by step, but in China, it may directly enter the stage of wireless control at the beginning." "Japan has to take several steps to achieve it, and maybe China will get there in one step," he said

However, this situation has also caused some problems in the current intelligent manufacturing industry in China, and also produced a difference between the current situation of intelligent manufacturing between China and Japan. For example, a large number of factories can achieve very good automatic control in individual links of manufacturing. However, in the process of integrating the whole factory, many of them are under balanced and have not achieved the best effect of the whole process. They can not achieve the intelligent manufacturing with the whole process optimization like Japan.

In 2016, Hitachi launched its own industrial Internet platform, lumada, which soon entered China. From 2020, Hitachi has decided to treat this platform as a new cause. However, the promotion and landing of this platform in China in the early stage was not particularly smooth.

"In fact, China's manufacturing needs are very different from Japan's, and also very different from other countries in the world." "Whether Hitachi can clearly meet the needs of Chinese customers on the lumada platform is a very big issue for us," Sasaki said

In the past, Hitachi only developed a technology in Japan and exported it to China, but now it is more difficult to solve China's practical problems in this way, he said. "We need a new way to adapt to the current Chinese market. Maybe the original technology was developed in Japan, but this technology needs to be developed in China in the Chinese way." He said.

Another difficulty in the promotion process is that users are not willing to tell Hitachi the solutions and usage methods after using lumada to solve practical problems; at the same time, due to Hitachi's emphasis on information protection, technology transfer from one industry to another has encountered multiple obstacles, but the final result is that the technology transmission of the whole platform slows down.