Characteristics of Industry 4.0: Evolution from Industrialization to Intelligence

The outdated human labor can no longer meet the needs of modern manufacturing industry, and some developed countries have been investing in automation technology to improve productivity for a long time. In recent decades, with the informatization, digitization, and networking of various products, the production structure of the manufacturing industry itself has become more complex, refined, and automated. The information flow inside the production line and equipment, as well as the data of management work, have increased dramatically. Previous automation systems are no longer able to meet the higher demands of the manufacturing industry in terms of information processing capabilities, efficiency, and scale. The application of new generation information technology has to some extent solved this problem.

Today, a new wave of industrial revolution and innovation represented by the Internet is emerging in the world. The core of the change is also the application of new generation information technology such as the Internet. When new forms begin to inject into the manufacturing industry, a new challenge also begins, which is to shift the manufacturing industry from mechanization, electrification, and digitization to networked, data-driven, and intelligent manufacturing.

1） Rule: Evolution from Industrialization to Intelligence
The technological characteristics of traditional industrialization are the use of mechanization, electrification, and automation to achieve large-scale production and mass sales. In the current complex international competition and Chinese environment, in order to enhance the position of China's manufacturing industry in the global industrial value chain and solve the problem of large but weak manufacturing industry, it is necessary to transform from traditional production methods to intelligent production methods.
The technological characteristics of modern industrialization, in addition to physical systems (mechanization, electrification, automation), also require the integration of information systems (computerization, informatization, networking) to ultimately achieve information physical systems (intelligence). In the era of Industry 4.0, China's manufacturing industry is developing towards intelligence, and there is enormous space and potential. At present, China is in the process of industrialization development, and the rise of the economy must first rely on the manufacturing industry. The new round of industrial revolution, while bringing many challenges, will also provide many rare "opportunities" for the development of China's new round of manufacturing industry. Because historical experience has shown that every industrial revolution provides an "opportunity" for developing countries to successfully catch up, and countries such as Britain, Germany, the United States, and Japan have all succeeded by seizing the opportunities of the industrial revolution. In terms of the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry, the new round of industrial revolution will also bring opportunities for catching up and development.
Previously, China's manufacturing industry had low technological content and was always at the low end of the international industrial value chain. The deep integration of industry and information technology has effectively laid a solid foundation for the networked and intelligent development of manufacturing. Undoubtedly, in the era of "Industry 4.0", a new round of industrial revolution will accelerate the deep integration of the two industries. The comprehensive integration of information technology into the manufacturing industry will break traditional production processes, modes, and management methods. The deep integration of production and manufacturing processes with business management systems will achieve highly flexible configuration of production factors and enable large-scale customized production. Thus, it will effectively promote the acceleration of the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industry.

（2） Rule: Internal and external network collaboration
Industry 4.0 "defines the network collaboration structure between manufacturers, suppliers, and even developers, with the main purpose of achieving synergy between market and research and development, synergy between research and development and production, and synergy between management and communication, thus forming a complete manufacturing network composed of multiple manufacturing enterprises or participants who exchange goods and information with each other and jointly execute business processes. The three dimensions of enterprise, value chain, and product lifecycle run through the manufacturing participants in each value chain. Above is the management function, below is the manufacturing function.
At the same time, the "intelligent production" of the "smart factory" focuses on researching intelligent production systems and processes, as well as the implementation of networked distributed production facilities. Its core is to strengthen information management and services in the entire industrial production process through the use of information physical systems (CPS), IoT technology, software technology, and communication technology, improve the controllability of the production process, and achieve comprehensive information coverage in research and development, production, manufacturing processes, and industrial control, comprehensively control various information, and ensure that each production and manufacturing link can be in a better state. Thus guiding the manufacturing industry towards intelligent transformation.

1. Internal network collaborative manufacturing
For a manufacturing enterprise, its internal information is centered around manufacturing, including production management, logistics management, quality management, equipment management, personnel and hour management, and various production related elements. Traditional manufacturing management is based on a single workshop/factory as the management unit, with a focus on production and a scope of management within the manufacturing industry.
However, with the advancement of information technology, many manufacturing enterprises have continuously developed different systems according to the needs of management at different stages of development, and gradually used them internally, such as inventory management systems, production management systems, quality management systems, product lifecycle management systems, supply management systems, and so on. Different systems are used to achieve different functions, and some systems are composed of self-developed or systems from different suppliers. With the development of enterprises, there is a growing demand for collaboration between different production element management to avoid information silos in the manufacturing process. Therefore, there is an increasing need for interfaces and compatibility between various systems, and internal collaboration between systems is becoming increasingly important.
Especially, with the increasing demand for manufacturing agility and lean manufacturing, manual import and export of information can no longer meet the needs of manufacturing informatization. This requires network collaboration between different systems to achieve real-time information transmission and sharing.

2. External network collaborative manufacturing
In the future manufacturing industry, each factory will operate independently and have an independent production management system,Or adopt a production management system to manage the operations of all factories. However, with the development of enterprises, they have set up different production bases and multiple factories. Factories often need to coordinate with each other and make reasonable use of resources such as manpower, equipment, and materials. The flow of information between each factory in the enterprise is increasing, and the requirements for real-time performance are becoming higher. At the same time, the data volume and execution speed of each factory are also increasing. This requires network collaboration between different factories to ensure real-time information transmission and sharing.
In the era of globalization and the Internet, collaboration is not only internal collaboration, but also often involves collaboration between upstream and downstream organizations in the industrial chain. On the one hand, through network collaboration, consumers and manufacturing enterprises jointly carry out product design and research and development to meet personalized customization needs; On the other hand, through network collaboration, production resources such as raw materials, capital, and equipment are allocated to organize dynamic production and manufacturing. Shorten the product development cycle and meet differentiated market demands.
The horizontal integration in Industry 4.0 represents the integration of production systems, which is the integration of the entire industry chain. In previous factory production, the production of products or components was just an independent process with no connection or further logical control between them. External network collaborative manufacturing enables a factory to produce only a portion of a certain product based on its production capacity and schedule. The entire industry chain, including external logistics, factory production, and sales, can be interconnected. In this way, horizontal industrial integration on the value chain has been achieved.

（3） Future manufacturing industry: shorten construction period, reduce costs, improve efficiency, meet customization needs, and reduce energy consumption
With the popularization of information technology, Internet and e-commerce, the new requirements of manufacturing market competition have changed. On the one hand, manufacturing enterprises are required to continuously obtain information based on the internet and respond quickly to market demand in a timely and dynamic manner; On the other hand, manufacturing enterprises are required to dynamically integrate and share various resources, and make rational use of them. Connected manufacturing can quickly respond to market changes, by rapidly restructuring and dynamically collaborating manufacturing enterprises to quickly allocate manufacturing resources, improve product quality, reduce the time required for product launch, and increase market share. At the same time, it can also share infrastructure construction costs, equipment investment costs, etc., reducing operational risks. The integration of manufacturing resources has broken through the boundaries between enterprises and countries. It is becoming possible to seek resources globally based on the Internet. With the support of global economic integration and the Internet, logistics, capital flow and information flow will break through regional restrictions and flow dynamically, and the world will enter an era of global interconnected manufacturing.
As a future trend, the factory will realize the networking of internal and external services through the Internet and the Internet of Things, and develop towards the trend of interconnected factories. Subsequently, various information from the production workshop is collected and analyzed to provide feedback to consumers. The information collected from the factory can be analyzed as big data to explore more and new business opportunities. The processing of massive data collected from the workshop through hardware will also largely determine the value of services and solutions. In other words, under the interconnected manufacturing model, manufacturing enterprises will no longer centrally control production from top to bottom, engage in separate design and research and development processes, or separate production and manufacturing processes, or separate marketing and service processes. Instead, the whole process starts from customer demand, to accepting product orders, seeking cooperation in production, purchasing raw materials or parts, and jointly carrying out product design and production assembly. The whole process is connected through the Internet and real-time communication is carried out, so as to ensure that the final product meets the personalized customization needs of large-scale customers.
The ubiquitous Internet and convenient logistics system make the process of product R&D, design, production, sales and service may not be completed independently in one enterprise or even in one country, but may be decomposed, outsourced and crowdsourced to different enterprises or even countries. In the future, the strength of a company's competitiveness will not depend on how many resources and core technologies it possesses, but on its ability to analyze information and data, integrate resources, and internationalize resources.
The flexibility of this production and manufacturing represents the future development direction of the manufacturing industry, which will enable enterprises to respond quickly and easily to changes in customer needs, and ensure that their production is competitive, meeting the personalized customization needs of large-scale customers. The enterprise itself will achieve a transformation and upgrading from simple manufacturing to "manufacturing+service".
The Internet is characterized by its boundlessness, popularization, informatization and fast spread. Through the application of Internet technology, each link of the manufacturing industry visualizes the connection between digital information and physical reality society, comprehensively integrates the production process and management process, and realizes "Internet plus" collaborative manufacturing. In this way, it is possible to design and develop, purchase raw materials and components, organize production and manufacturing, and carry out marketing at the same time, thereby reducing operating costs, improving production efficiency, shortening product production cycles, and reducing energy consumption.
Through the Internet and the Internet of Things technology, the resource integration of the purchase, production, sales, transportation and other businesses of manufacturing enterprises and related parts supporting enterprises and users on the network platform will not only help promote the directness and transparency of business processes, but also improve efficiency and reduce transaction costs.
It can be said that the Internet and the Internet of Things have affected human society, played a great role in promoting social development, and are the major source of various changes facing society today. In the future, the manufacturing industry will use the Internet and the Internet of Things technology to make all links in the manufacturing industry's value chain more closely linked and efficiently coordinated, so that personalized products can be produced in an efficient batch way, and the so-called "mass customization" can be achieved. The intelligent manufacturing of the future manufacturing industry will also enable the product form, design and manufacturing process, management methods and organizational structure, manufacturing modeThe business model undergoes significant and even revolutionary changes, driving a major transformation in human lifestyles.