China's manufacturing industry is advancing with "people".



Author | Deng Haiying

What is the vision of a modern factory? Crowded, dimly lit workshops should be completely transformed, bright, spacious, mechanically automated assembly lines should be the basic configuration, and there may even be "smart brains" that monitor the factory's operations and help humans make decisions.

Such an imagination has become a reality. The aftermath of steam has drifted far away, electricity has long been integrated into the bones, information has become fuel, boosting the spread of intelligent production, and the global manufacturing industry is on the road of digital and intelligent transformation.

As early as 2018, the World Economic Forum selected a "lighthouse factory" for the emerging era of Industry 4.0 – a "guide" representing the highest level of global smart manufacturing and digitalization. On January 13, 2023, the list of a new batch of "lighthouse factories" was announced, and China ranked first in the world with 50 companies.

In the past few years, cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, edge computing, and digital twins have been gradually applied in enterprises in transformation.

After taking the step of "digital intelligence in production", leading manufacturing enterprises are promoting "digital intelligence of organization", so that the huge and complex production information and huge organizational structure can be smoothly mobilized. Thousands of manufacturing companies, such as Wei Xiaoli, a new force in the new energy vehicle track, Haier, a home appliance giant, and Sany Group, a leading machinery manufacturer, have all chosen Feishu to help organizations evolve.

01

Break through data silos,

Install an entrance to the Info Treasure Mine

Sany Heavy Industry, China's leading heavy industry enterprise, the only two "lighthouse factories" in the global heavy industry industry are under its umbrella, and the most recent certification is its "No. 18 factory".

Sany Group's factory located in Changsha Economic and Technological Development Zone is equipped with 8 flexible work centers, 16 intelligent production lines, and 375 fully networked production equipment.

Sany Heavy Industry's "No. 18 Factory"

Since the transformation of "No. 18 factory", the production capacity has increased by 123%, the personnel efficiency has increased by 98%, and the unit manufacturing cost has been reduced by 29%.

These detailed and massive real-time data allow managers to know the dynamics of R&D, production, supply, marketing and service through the screen, but when the information goes to the extreme of overload, it will become a burden. At most, there are more than 750 apps operating at the same time within Sany Group alone, and He Qi, director of Sany Heavy Truck Intelligent Research Institute, once had a headache for cumbersome and redundant management apps.

"I need to check whether there are any approval nodes that belong to me on different apps every day, and checking them one by one can easily delay the progress of the project." During that time, what He Qi was most afraid of was looking at the information maze piled up by countless company software on the desktop of his mobile phone, and the sparks of technological innovation were extinguished between the search and switching of the information entrance.

For Sany, an enterprise with perfect business digitalization, an integrated and collaborative foundation that can organize its own software platforms is the most urgently needed, and the arrival of Feishu in 2021 has solved the urgent need.

After the introduction of Feishu, Sany's daily communication, meetings, work records and other work communication processes are finally integrated into one software, and at the same time, this collaborative unified portal has also accessed hundreds of Sany self-developed applications and third-party applications to unify push notifications, and the complex maze finally has a clear signpost.

As a result, the increase in efficiency is visible to the naked eye. It not only saves time by reducing operational procedures, but also breaks down barriers between different departments and connects them into a smooth "digital twin" to bring deep speed and efficiency - things are easier to do right, the waste caused to the company is reduced, and the efficiency is improved; R&D, design, production, sales, operation and maintenance and other departments can communicate closely in a timely manner, making it possible to quickly promote the implementation of the project in parallel, and the efficiency has also improved.

Data islands are an important problem restricting the manufacturing industry to further release productivity, and Sany Group, the "giant" of machinery manufacturing, has crossed this hurdle by opening up the information scattered in various systems with the help of the integration of Feishu; Manufacturing enterprises in other fields also need easy-to-use information collection tools in the business scenarios of the production line.

SIASUN is the head enterprise of industrial robots, and has also replaced the traditional paper working hours with Feishu's multi-dimensional forms, so that the work of each employee is no longer scattered, and the person in charge can see the summary of each person's working hours at a glance under the automatic collection of software, and can adjust the follow-up work schedule and cost control in real time.

Different business divisions also use lightweight multi-dimensional tables to achieve the project management effect of the traditional heavy system: three tables for hardware delivery: master data table, project management table, and personnel information table to achieve multi-project whole-process management; The industrial robot department completes the full life cycle management of R&D through demand forms, priority boards, bug tracking record sheets, etc.

Unified entrance and unified dashboard drive the information of various departments to quickly gather to the equipment of decision-makers, and when the management needs to deploy quickly, this requires the information transmission network to operate like a capillary and accurately and conveniently reach specific individuals.

02

Operates like a capillary, informing people

In Sany Heavy Truck, testing is a very important part, and after the test finds an abnormality, it is even more important to be able to immediately feedback and correct. Now, when He Qi and his colleagues conduct assisted driving road tests, through the use of Feishu Meeting, the test data from the road surface can be transmitted back to the rear in real time, and the researchers can immediately analyze the data and guide the engineers in the field to correct the problem.

Anomalies are quickly stifled, which is very important in the manufacturing industry, especially when it comes to production, where a few minutes of line failure can cause tens of thousands of losses. "Our equipment failures require response and handling within half an hour, and some equipment failures even require response and handling within 10 minutes." Liu Yan, deputy director of Sany Heavy Industry's intelligent manufacturing headquarters, emphasized the timeliness requirements of this "slow as hate" enterprise for abnormal solutions.

The biggest secret to being able to solve production failures in 30 minutes, or even 10 minutes, is to be able to notify people quickly, just like during testing. In the No. 18 factory, a huge all-weather capture camera matrix is installed, once the picture does not meet the requirements of the "6S" system, abnormal messages will be pushed to the 6S specialists, and then they will be notified to specific management personnel and team leaders through their judgment. "Even if it is a piece of waste paper, it can be identified and cleaned up in time", problem identification, responsibility to post, abnormal problems can be quickly solved.

In other enterprises, there are also such abnormal notification and resolution mechanisms built with the help of Feishu: combined with MES and sensors, an ODM company can notify people of abnormalities with one click, and combined with remote control and one-click group pulling, human-machine collaboration can eliminate faults; SIASUN uses Feishu's multi-dimensional tables to locate device information, automatically summarize spot check status, and set up automatic warnings to create a real and efficient closed-loop security management.

This "capillary" flow of information that can inform people is far more than just playing a role when encountering problems, and the integrated collaboration platform that can be used for instant messaging can truly break the separation of physical space and reduce the wear and tear of online communication.

The pandemic has brought challenges to the offline manufacturing industry, but Sany Group has taken advantage of the transformation and changed the traditional work system of clocking in four times a day to remote work. From July 2021 to July 2022, Sany worked remotely more than 140,000 times, making the organization more flexible and efficient.

If overseas collaboration is needed, Feishu can even help break down language barriers and truly reach the limit. Feishu's time zone synchronization display function can help multinational personnel choose a more suitable communication time, the synchronous translation function can reduce the difficulty of foreign language communication, and collaboration tools such as Feishu Docs make it possible for R&D personnel from dozens of countries to collaborate on the same platform. An easy-to-use collaboration platform makes every point-to-point communication thousands of miles away without obstacles.

With a smooth information flow channel, every employee can be truly connected to the company's organizational network, and every grassroots voice can stir up ripples, and finally set off a wave of enterprise transformation and reform.

03

industrial digital transformation,

Ultimately, we need to "put people first"

By catching all kinds of detailed information like a fishing net, and distributing all kinds of instructions to the end like a capillary, top players in the manufacturing industry such as Sany Heavy Industry, AAC Technologies, and SIASUN are relying on Feishu as an integrated platform to evolve into a flexible and agile organization.

Hardware upgrades, software assembly, mechanism building, but Sany Group is far from satisfied, in the eyes of this enterprise, the most important thing is human learning and transformation.

In TrinityTruck cranesThe company has a middle management who has come up from the blue-collar collar, and Li Dawei, the director of manufacturing, was just an assembly electrician ten years ago, and he has come to this position in continuous thinking and learning. He has experienced the changes in the manufacturing industry in the past ten years, and deeply feels that in the current digital transformation, most of the manpower is replaced by machines, and the "self-charging" and transformation of front-line employees are more important than ever.

In the face of this shortage, we should not only think about recruiting more high-end technical talents, but also think about how to make every ordinary employee in the organization familiar with, get used to and love digital operations, further stimulate their potential, and "renovate" talents.

Sany Group introduced Feishu to provide 50,000 people with a handy production tool in the digital era, helping them carve out shortcuts in traditional workflows and optimize redundant labor. At the same time, the group also hopes to stimulate employees' subjective initiative through unified digital collaboration tools with OKRs, so that employees and the company can be more closely connected, so that all talents can work together.

"OKR has turned the past single execution into 'I want to think', and communication at all levels is more sufficient, which has a huge impact on the transformation of corporate culture." Du Jialin, Minister of International Human Resources of Sany Group, explained. By aligning the key objectives layer by layer, each employee has a deeper understanding of the relationship between their work tasks and the development of the group, and everyone sends energy to the group in the same direction.

And Sany's expectation of digital transformation to stimulate the potential of employees is not only that, they hope to empower the growth of employees.

It is the long-term expectation of Sany Group to let front-line workers master advanced technology and grow into engineers. "But this is not easy for many front-line 'big bosses' to learn and study, and they are disgusted with boring training." Li Dawei is aware of the difficulties of front-line workers learning transformation, and the senior management has also noticed this. When thinking about how to break the situation, decision-makers keenly found that Feishu is just right for knowledge management.

Knowledge fragmentation, visualization, and practical cutting, through Feishu document sharing, so that front-line workers can easily access knowledge at any time; But at the same time, Feishu can crystallize and precipitate these wisdoms to form a constantly updated heavy industry knowledge bonanza.

Feishu has become a "university", and Li Dawei is also pleased to find that more and more employees are taking the initiative to learn knowledge, and even "asking" him to systematically answer technical problems in digital business.

Through the construction of the knowledge base and the cultivation of the learning atmosphere for all employees, Sany Group is one step closer to the "three three goals" of "300 billion sales, 3,000 workers and 30,000 engineers". The "three three goals" are to turn the current talent structure around, and this journey depends on knowledge to allow producers to evolve.

Making people become new productive forces with digital thinking, understanding digital tools, and digital processes must be the ultimate goal of industrial digital transformation.