How Can Flexible Platforms Bring Rigid Factories To The Global Market?

Manufacturing has always been an important advantage for Chinese enterprises to stand in the global market. But to make this advantage a Changqing advantage, China's manufacturing industry must not be a labor-intensive subcontracting industry, but a technology driven, high-tech industry difficult to replicate by other countries.

The industrial Internet has become an opportunity for upgrading the manufacturing industry. Big data guide production, flexible supply chain and other keywords gradually become the label of this new business form. The track of different industries is pregnant with their own unique industry internet enterprises and nurturing the development of the industry.

Hangzhou agile Mdt InfoTech Ltd (hereinafter referred to as "agile") is a product Internet platform running on the circuit board industry track. At present, the platform has more than 100 thousand global customers, serving customers in 116 countries and regions, with more than 2000 odd orders per day. Among them, overseas orders account for up to 40%. It is expected that orders will be increased to 5000 daily at the end of 2019, and sales will be conservatively estimated to be 4 times that of 2018.

Unlike the ordinary consumer goods industry, the PCB printing industry is a highly customized and highly skilled track, and the factory can only manufacture according to the customer's design documents. This highly customized and industrial Internet mode that can only be realized in China may be a new idea for Chinese industrial brands to establish a leading position in the world.

　　 Turn non-standard products online

According to the chairman and CEO Zhou Bangbing, PCB is the product of electronic industry. At present, the global circuit board printing industry has an annual output value of about 60 billion US dollars, but it has driven over 10 trillion US dollars in the development of the global electronic information industry. As far as home appliances, such as refrigerators, color TV sets, air conditioners and so on, are needed, such as mobile phones and other communication devices.

The best thing to do is to build a self operated platform to complete the online ordering of the order, valuation, customer service, production engineering, manufacturing and logistics of the PCB products, so that it can serve the global market in 24 hours without interruption.

The demand for this 24 hour online service mode is more for customers than bulk orders, but for research and development orders. Zhou Bangbing said that before the commercialization of an electronic product, it is necessary to experience the process of research and development. At the same time, each product will need to do more than ten circuit boards proofing at the time of research and development.

This R & D order has two characteristics: first, because it is only used as a test, so the R & D orders are all small batch production; second, the unit price of the customer will be higher than the order of mass production, the order price is in the 100 yuan level, roughly 3 to 5 times the scale production order.

It is worth noting that in the past few similar companies were specially designed to receive orders for R & D. Zhou Bangbing told the billion state power that the traditional factories are usually free to make R & D orders for their customers, but the premise is that the customers promise to complete the large scale orders to the factory.

In the view of Zhou bang, Jie can enter the R & D order market, mainly based on its delivery speed. At present, the R & D orders of the Czech Republic are generally able to deliver within 24 hours. For overseas orders, the cross border logistics time is only 4 days. For ordinary factories, 5 days' delivery is normal.

"For R & D orders, customers are not very concerned about the price, but the product launch time. For example, if a product is tested 10 times, it will take 40 days to separate the product from the traditional factory order. Zhou Bangbing said.

　　 Efficiency of supply chain Online

So, what is the difference between the 4 day delivery efficiency of the traditional factory compared with the agile plant?

To understand the role of online industry, we must first understand the operation process of PCB industry. According to Zhou Bangbing, in the printed circuit board industry, the customers need to go through the process of checking the documents and assembling the board after the order is placed into production. These processes are very complicated for the factory.

The process of audits is mainly to check whether there are detailed errors in the circuit diagrams provided by the customers, and whether the processes match with the process manufacturing. In addition, in this process, printed circuit board enterprises will also make an audit of the customer's order quotation, that is, whether the price is suitable.

Splicing is a key process in PCB industry. Small orders are usually single board production. The efficiency of single board shipment is usually very low. If we order a few customers' orders into a large board, their production efficiency will be improved. However, there is enough order pool to ensure that the order waiting time will be extended, and the order delivery period will be lengthened.

Zhou Bangbing told the billion power that in fact, whether it is a fast match or a traditional factory, it can produce a single circuit board product. So the transformation of the jigsaw is not the process of machine production, but the process of processing a series of engineering documents before production. JCP uses the advantages of the Internet to get massive orders, stores enough order pools, and makes order audits and make-up through technical means, so that bulk production can be used to produce proofing orders, reduce production costs and improve production efficiency.

In the order of customers, because PCB is non-standard products, every PCB order is required to confirm the price and delivery time through telephone or e-mail. If a traditional factory takes 2000 orders a day, it needs at least 100 people to make quotations. At present, the company has realized the online subscription order and realized the 1 second system automatic quotation.

When the project document is finished, the entry is entered. In traditional factories, the panels need to be manually classified, and then manually assembled. With the help of big data, AI and image recognition technology, we have realized the way of cloud machine processing and manual audit.

There are many factors to be considered in the puzzle, such as the material, thickness, technology and time of delivery. Under these preconditions, the factory also needs to make sure that the production efficiency is ensured and the production line is not interrupted. This will involve powerful algorithmic capabilities and graphic analysis. Zhou Bangbing said.

That is, the difference between the processing and data processing of these engineering documents makes the gap between the agile distribution and the traditional factories in the light of the efficiency of small orders. Zhou Bangbing pointed out that the traditional factory without information technology needs 500 people's engineering team to meet the requirements of processing 3000 orders a day, but for agile equipment, only 50 to 60 people's team can be satisfied.

In order production and production implementation links, the client and the production end are synchronized. Customers can clearly know the production schedule of their orders directly through their own background, and reduce the cost of communication. Agile is used to sort order production by intelligent algorithm, and accurately arrange the production order of each order in each production workshop, linking the relationship between order and machine and people, and helps the factory to improve significantly in terms of production capacity, delivery time and quality.

　　 From custom orders to scale orders

It is worth noting that R & D orders are not the goal of agile. How to cut from R & D orders to the development of batch orders is the key to win win in the industrial Internet competition.

In the Internet blueprint of Zhou Bang's production, the small order is an important breakthrough to bring customers to the Internet. He believes that small orders can cultivate customers' habit of placing orders online. When this habit is formed, customers' middle size orders will also be ordered online.

"2B's business is different from 2C's. 2B customers are more cautious in changing suppliers because they need mass production. Helping customers to produce small orders with similar R & D orders will make it easier to change customer supplier decisions. Because customers feel that the delivery time of the platform is faster, they will gradually hand over large and medium-sized orders to the platform. Zhou Bangbing said.

And when customers slowly transfer bulk orders to the Czechoslovakia, they also need to solve the problem of capacity. Zhou Bangbing revealed that in solving capacity problems, the company will allow more factories to produce bulk orders to join the agile platform. The rapid deployment platform colligate orders, unify processing of engineering documents, and collate panels, and then uniformly distribute them to factories. After the production, the factory is ready to do quality control and control.

Of course, for the order allocation, agile distribution will also classify the cooperative factories to meet different customer needs. Simple classifications are standard and superior products. The standard is aimed at those customers who are more sensitive to the price, while the superior customers are not sensitive to the price, but the quality requirements are very high. "Some factories can make very beautiful circuit boards, and some factories have the main advantages at cost." Zhou Bangbing said.

This planned order expansion has also changed the capacity of agile equipment. According to the agile distribution, at present, 40% of orders are R & D orders, while 60% are non R & D orders. Non R & D orders are mainly completed by cooperative factories.

　　 Flexible platforms and rigid factories

From the perspective of the development mode of the agile distribution system, the industrial Internet platform can help the factory to deeply integrate with orders and technical means, or become a feasible way to develop the Internet industry in depth. This idea is of reference to B client or C client.

Zhou Bangbing pointed out that for the industrial Internet platform, what needs to be done is to gather together many users or orders with common needs, and then find factories for mass production. In his view, China has a large population, large market and complete industrial chain. Therefore, it is easier to create an industrial Internet platform with highly flexible supply chain in China.

It is worth noting that the flexible supply chain does not mean that a factory with flexible production needs to be established. Zhou Bangbing emphasized that once the factory is flexible, there will be no scale advantage for the factory. Therefore, the direction of flexible supply chain must be flexible platform combined with rigid process.

"The division of labor in the future manufacturing industry will be very clear, and products will also develop towards differentiation. For a single category, the product will be done as well as possible, that is, becoming rigid. As a flexible platform, the task is to do the order processing efficiently enough for order distribution and brand. To serve as a service in mass production, to support the factory for entry, quality control, logistics and so on. Zhou Bangbing said.

He believes that in this mode, the platform can meet the needs of various users, both small orders and large orders, both high quality and cost-effective products, can be met. The satisfaction of this service experience enables the platform to get more orders and drive the development of the whole industry's Internet platform structure.

The industrial Internet platform has two driving forces. In addition to enabling the industry to achieve Internet driven technology, another driving force is orders. If the platform does not have enough orders, it will be very difficult for the factory group to build on its own platform. The platform must be widely ordered around the world, thus forcing itself to form a large manufacturing network in China and allow some global factories and parts suppliers to join. Zhou Bangbing emphasized.