From “Grey” to “Blue” – How can China learn from IoT to revolutionize its industry
“Blue is the symbol of technology, renewable energy, internet & big data, and harmony between human and the nature”
Beginning
We all know that nowadays, Internet has changed people’s daily life from bottom to the top. We now live in a world that cannot run without the internet. Social media, e-commerce, sharing economy, and so on are becoming a crucial part of our daily life. But only a few people know that internet is not only changing civil life, but also changing the industrial world.
Internet of things, industry 4.0 and industrial internet, all these concepts are becoming more and more popular among people. Especially, Chinese Government proposed “Internet +”, “Made in China 2025” and “The belt and road”. It is noticeable that China does not want to lag behind in the forth industrial revolution wave and is trying to merge its traditional resources-concentrated industry with the internet, by fully utilizing internet as an infrastructure and the data generated from it. Different from the US and Germany, Chinese revolution always starts from the top to the bottom, led by the government and import most technologies from the abroad.
This article will introduce some basic concepts about Industrial internet and then, by combining some cutting-edge ideas from GE, shed new lights on how China can utilize GE’s experience to boom its traditional industry, especially the Northern East Chinese heavy Industries.
What is Industrial Internet, Internet of Things (IoT), industry 4.0 and "internet plus"?
Industry 4.0 is led by Germany, they proposed this concept based on three previous types of industries: The first improves the productivity trough using of machines; The second sub-divides different types of productivity, as known as jobs. The third develops automation and information technology, releasing people from machines; The forth is going to connect all the machines and build an internet of things.
The revolution seems to be: people work with people, people work with machines, machines work with people and finally, machines work with machines, people finally get fully free from the manufacturing process. People can put more efforts into the design, research, more creative and interesting jobs, leaving the boring or dangerous jobs to the machines
So, in a nutshell, internet 4.0 is the terminology proposed by German government that explain how the new generation industry should be, Industrial internet is a more general concept that means to transfer the internet from civil use to the industrial use, to build the internet between all machines as well as people, and internet of things is the main part of industrial internet
The differences between these concepts are insignificant, but industry 4.0 is more concentrated on automation, intelligent machines, which Germany always be good at, starting from manufacturing industry to the internet. On the contrary, Industrial internet is more about American’s information system and software ecosystem, starting from internet to the industry. The "Internet Plus" concept proposed by the Chinese government is wider. It contains the consumer-oriented internet, industrial internet and even the government internet. Due to the large customer base in China, it is reasonable to believe that the development of Chinese industrial internet must be based on the consumer-oriented internet. It is such a Chinese style.
Industrial internet has three basic effects, and three features which can be concluded with three words:
Connect, Flow, Analyze
"Connect" means industrial internet needs to connect every single machine, sensor, control unit into the internet and eventually to connect people. It requires higher efficiency and stability than the internet.
"Flow" means after building the fundamental infrastructure, information and data will flow between these terminals and create an “invisible assets”. Data is the asset that can be extremely valuable to the company. When the flow stops, storage capacity needs to be considered as well.
"Analyze" means the final process. When data is generated and collected from the internet, people now turn their jobs from control, manage, maintain machines to analyze data and programming software. Data can be tremendously mass and need people to clean, to analyze and to dig insights from it. Eventually data assets is transformed into business values.
To make these happen, pre-installation of sensors, controls and software is important as well. Therefore, the industrial internet also needs to be supported by the basic scientific subjects such as information system, automotive control, material science, and even physics science.
What is the status quo of Chinese traditional recourses-concentrated industry?
"Coming from a north-eastern Chinese city Qiqihar, a heavy industry city near Russia, I saw the gradual economic depression of my hometown due to pollution, drain recourses and outdated manufacturing methods with my own eyes. Qiqihar used to be a centre for heavy industry and military industry in Northeast Asia in the 20th century, when the Soviets invested money and resources to help China rebuild after war. However, after the opening of the Chinese economy to market-based competition under Deng Xiaoping from 1978, the large state-owned enterprises that had dominated Qiqihar could not survive as private enterprises, and economic opportunities in the town became fewer. The GDP per capita of Qiqihar (US $ 3592 in 2016) and the surrounding Heilongjiang province are among the lowest in China."
------ Boyuan Li
Every one is realising that big data is revolutionizing traditional sectors in a wide range. But we all need to constantly ask how, with the ever-increasing ability to harness sheer amount of data, data analytics can be used to help manufacturing industry in cities such as Qiqihar in china, to recover and prosper? leveraging the strength of environmental friendly and energy saving data-driven manufacturing practices may be the correct answer.
What is GE’s concept of Industrial Internet?
We now are heading for the third industrial revolution. GE has defined that there are total three revolutions in the history: The first is the industrial revolution, the second is the internet revolution, the third, which we are undergoing now, is the industrial internet revolution.
According to GE, after its launch of Predix, a software platform that can manage all the data generated by all GE assets, such as airplane turbine engines, oil platforms or even healthcare MR machines. Software becomes another focus that GE is investing heavily on. GE is planning to become one of the top 10 software companies in the world, ranking after Google, and so many other internet companies. A concept proposed by GE says the physical machines are the "reflections" of software, if we have the sensors, which can be used to monitor and generate instant data, and if we have control system which enable us to control physical machines, we can then build a "virtual world" in which we analyze the performance of machines, optimize the operation, predict the maintenance, and really make "product life cycle management" come true. Then, physical machines become the "reflections" of software. In this virtual reflection, it does not only has three dimensions such as virtual reality, but also adds two more dimensions: the variables / factors that can influence the machines, and the historical data that can be used to predict the future. All five dimensions can make a huge difference in the industry. For example, in a turbine engine, the information can be exported into a virtual system, engineers can not only virtually see the engine, but also see the other factors such as temperature, weather condition or even more data, engineers then can combine them all and predict the next maintenance time precisely to avoid any operations delays.
"GE China Digital department was settled in 2016, different from traditional IT department, which is a supportive function, GE digital is going to be a function that really produce and sell software products, as well as support other functions to digitalize. GE digital is planning to be one of the top 10 digital software companies and expect a 15 billion revenue by the year of 2020."
------------- Boyuan Li
How can Chinese government adapt GE’s concept on Northern East traditional industries?
Here are some brief idea of mine:
Dismiss the organizational management hierarchy of traditional state-owned enterprises (SOE), release the labour, transforming to more technology-concentrated industries
Increasing the productivity by reducing the use of fossil fuel and coal, at the same time reduce the over productive resources, increase productivity and profitability, improve the natural environment in the Northern East China. This is implemented by increasing manufacturing efficiency.
Based on the original industrial infrastructure, updating the software, building the internet and to build the first industrial internet experimental zone in China. In this case, government's efforts is the main leading factor.
Such as Germany, government takes the lead and has made a great improvement. In China, such huge market, government still need to take the leading role. The revolution is really different from the customer-oriented internet, which is started by companies, and government only plays a role as a "monitor" in this case.
Conclusion
Above all, even though there are a lot of excellent idea on how to leverage Chinese traditional industry, yet China, especially the Northern East China, still has a long way to go. It is because the original industrial infrastructure, the population structure (population aging in Northern East China is really serious), government financial budget and technological supports are all important factors that can influence the development of Industrial internet. But, to see this from the other side, it is actually a great chance to start from zero, as an experimental zone in China, to build a really complete industrial internet empire, to try other innovative ways which US, Germany or Japan never had tried, and really create a Chines style industrial internet.
Even though we can see there is a long way to go, yet at least our goal is clear, and we can be sure that industrial internet is going to be the next generation technology, eventually, the infrastructure that we rely on and live on in the future.
