“Our company is a state-owned instrument company established in the 1960s. For decades, it has experienced restructuring and transformation repeatedly. We have chased the trend and gone through detours. However, after continuous transformation, upgrading and innovation, we finally achieved the in-depth integration of informatization and industrialization. ”
——Ma Yushan, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Wuzhong Instrument Co., Ltd.
Wuzhong Instrument Co., Ltd. (hereinafter "Wuzhong Instrument) was founded in 1959. It is a high-tech enterprise recognized by the state, with a postdoctoral workstation and a strong technical research and development team. After over 60 years of development, Wuzhong Instrument has become a leading enterprise in China's process automation and control valve industry.
Capitalizing on the opportunity of smart manufacturing upgrading and adapting to the development trend of digital transportation, Wuzhong Instrument responds to the state's call of accelerating the integration and application of "5G + Industrial Internet", and rolls out the "5G + cloud" digital transformation portfolio in joint efforts with eSurfing Cloud under the guidance of "Made in China 2025" and Industry 4.0. The Company has built new production facilities and management systems under the help of digital technologies, to promote its digital transformation and advancing the development of China's key instrument manufacturing industry.
Promoting the intelligent process of the instrument industry with IT solutions
Machine tool networking, intelligent warehousing and logistics delivery, remote manufacturing supervision... These advanced digital production technologies have greatly improved the quality of Wuzhong Instrument's products. Meanwhile, the monthly production of control valve products has jumped from more than 1,000 to over 12,000. Today, Wuzhong Instrument's factories are equipped with advanced digital processing, assembly, logistics and inspection processes with greatly improved production efficiency. Automated, informatized, networked and smart manufacturing scenarios are presented under the combination of simulated and virtual manufacturing with physical manufacturing.
These results are not achieved overnight, but accumulated through in-depth explorations and rich practices. When the wave of informatization flew into the industrial field, Wuzhong Instrument's digital factory experienced problems such as co-channel interference of wireless network, unstable network signals, and poor business continuity in the fields of automated warehousing, logistics and distribution. The company gradually found that its overall intelligence level cannot meet strong production demands. As a result, Wuzhong Instrument began to use digital technology as the driving force to launch new industrial IT solutions.
5G network access: Capitalizing on the low-latency and ubiquitous features of 5G technology, eSurfing Cloud replaces the original wireless network with a 5G network for the uplink network of the industrial control system in Wuzhong Instrument's factory, which solves the signal stability and business continuity problems of the wireless network in the original industrial environment.
IDC node: Based on the "2+4+31+X+O" resource layout of eSurfing Cloud, Wuzhong Instrument eventually selected the Zhongwei node. Zhongwei is less than 200 km away from Wuzhong. The delay of Zhongwei node is as low as 5 milliseconds, thereby effectively guaranteeing the stable and fast transmission of service data.
Cloud security: With the help of elastic cloud servers, the cloud-based security mechanism creates an efficient, reliable and secure computing environment to ensure the lasting and stable operation of services. The scenario-based security solution takes the security of cloud platform data as the core and sets up a security service network in front of the enterprise intranet, which is equivalent to a "moat". Covering all basic fields such as network, system, application, service, O&M, etc., it helps enterprises to save manpower and material investments in O&M.
Solution Advantages: High-performance support to improve system performance
Wuzhong Instrument's control valve products have more than 100 series, more than 100,000 varieties and specifications, and more than 1 million parts. The production characteristics of control valves determine that there are many synergistic elements in the production system. Problems such as mixed production, too many process data, and high product standardization are constantly emerging, all of which require the support of massive computing power and storage. Wuzhong Instrument and eSurfing Cloud mainly solve these problems from the following aspects:
Machine tool networking: More than 100 CNC devices are all networked, and the main CNC machine tools, automatic production lines, automatic storage and other equipment are integrated into the scheduling center, which can realize 24-hour uninterrupted monitoring of equipment status as well as accurate and visual presentation of idle, alarm, running and shutdown information.
Intelligent warehousing and logistics delivery: Wuzhong Instrument's three-dimensional warehouse, automated delivery line, hanging conveyor line, and 5G automated guided vehicle (AGV) realize the automation of key logistical processes such as warehouse entry and exit of parts, delivery of integrated equipment, painting, and connection of accessories under the unified management of the "intelligent warehousing and logistics management system".
Remote manufacturing supervision: The remote manufacturing supervision APP self-developed by Wuzhong Instrument allows customers to retrieve product orders according to the manufacturer's contract number and monitor the order execution progress and production quality through online videos; it also supports the preview and download of handover materials.
Collaborative manufacturing: The solution provides information on manufacturing tasks, design drawings, manufacturing processes and other information to "industry chain enterprises" timely through the Internet, and offers hardware, software, network and technical service supports to these enterprises free of charge, so that project plans can be coordinated and synchronized in an orderly manner. This could ensure that parts are processed on schedule, the integrated machine is completed on schedule, and the contract is delivered on demand.
Achievements and significance of Wuzhong Instrument's digital transformation
"Transparent factory" becoming a reality
Today, nearly 200 devices are carrying out processing and production in an orderly manner in Wuzhong Instrument's digital smart manufacturing workshops. Employees shuttle between workstations and terminal computers. Through intelligent digital operations, single and small-quantity customization contracts can be fulfilled in batch production. eSurfing Cloud helps Wuzhong Instrument to build a digital "transparent factory" featuring automation, informatization, networking and intelligence, which reduces operating cost by 14%, increases production efficiency by 30%, shortens R&D cycle by 40%, and decreases energy consumption by 10%. Wuzhong Instrument has also successfully integrated its own IT team. Based on the production characteristics of its own products, the Company has repeatedly explored and developed software suitable for its production processes. It has also built an industrial Internet platform and created application scenarios of Smart Manufacturing 4.0.
Continuing to explore "Smart Manufacturing"
After realizing digital transformation, Wuzhong Instrument has fully entered the stage of Industry 4.0. Through a series of IT measures, the Company has successively developed more than 100 international cutting-edge technologies in the fields of product structure design, new surface hardening materials, modern processing and casting, etc. The Company has passed 146 types of quality control documents, involving more than 1 million parts and 5,000 control points. Its core technical level has surpassed Germany and Japan. The Company has been rated as a "flagship" demonstration enterprise of smart manufacturing by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
In the future, Wuzhong Instrument will continue to join forces with eSurfing Cloud and jointly build industrial models. Leveraging on "cloud, big data, IoT, mobile Internet and AI" technologies, the Company will continue to promote the automation of the process industry in China and the development of the control valve industry towards the directions of intelligence, integration, high parameterization, large scale and high performance.