At the moment, Chinese economy has entered a new normal while the traditional manufacturing industry is standing at a deciding point. The new normal has forced the enterprises to speed up transformation and upgrading, in order to promote the integration of information technology and industrialization, and to enhance the intelligent manufacturing level, which is a critical choice to break the development bottleneck and respond to market pressures.
Weichai, as one of China's most comprehensive automotive and equipment manufacturing industry group in strength, has gained brilliant performance results in the last few decades thanks to transformation and upgrading. The future of Weichai is still nurtured and will be born in new transformation and upgrading. Under the circumstance of Chinese industrial revolution 4.0 in motion, Weichai starts moving according to the situation. At the beginning of 2015, Weichai first introduced the resource-sharing and win-win concept of "Intelligent Power Platform" to the public.
This platform includes four systems: WOS (Weichai operating system), global R&D community, preferred global supply chain system, and exclusive member-only service for the whole life cycle. The platform will provide customers with the efficient operation system, strong technical support, world's most competitive supply chain clusters, and perfect after-market service support. The constant development and innovation of the platform will become the incubator for Weichai's new products and technologies.
The establishment of "Intelligent Power Platform" owes thanks to the application of information technology means. The six major information technology support platforms including the product R&D platform revolving around the PDM system and the resource management platform revolving around the ERP system, as well as more than thirty other information systems, have covered the entire management, technical and production operation processes. The usage of information technology tools allows Weichai to gradually achieve optimal allocation and collaborative applications of resources, enabling Weichai to enter the high-end manufacturing level.
The concept of "Intelligent Power Platform" integrates the achievements of information technology and industrialization for over a decade on "intelligent factory", "intelligent logistics", "intelligent marketing", and "intelligent management". It coincides with the nature of "Made in China 2025" brought up by Prime Minister Li Keqiang, and is the rare and sound practice to explore intelligent manufacturing in the industry.
During the manufacturing process, Weichai spares no effort to create the "intelligent factory" and orderly combine the Internet with manufacturing through widely using robots at key spots. Applying intelligent manufacturing throughout the entire process of production has improved production efficiency and product quality, as well as having freed the workers from high-risk and heavy labor, which is the highlight of Weichai's humane care. The No.1 Plant of Weichai Power, manufacturing base of WD615/WP10 and other traditional engines, has realized the transformation of from "buying the automatic equipments" to "making their own equipments". In 2014, a total of 34 high-technology and well-applied automation upgrading were done, including fully automatic 8-axis cylinder head main bolt tightening machine, automated crankcase assembling unit, and automatic cylinder head valve guide hole hinging machine. All these work have laid foundations of technical experience and human resources to explore intelligent manufacturing.
The efficient operation of "intelligent factory" cannot do without the support from a strong logistics system. Weichai integrated the Internet and Internet of Things to effectively coordinate logistics resources, improve service matching level and efficiency of logistics provider, and meet delivery requirements to the maximum. With engine production, for example. Let us see an example. Manufacturing one engine needs to purchase more than 2000 kinds of parts from over 10,000 suppliers throughout the world. The different coding, labeling and other standards have brought great difficulties on traceability and visualization of supplier information and part quality information. Given the thought, Weichai used RFID and barcode to trace parts from different resources based on the company situation. It allows each part to have its own identity and a connection to the upstream suppliers. The public service platform based on this, Supplier Portal System, is able to release development and procurement information, confirm purchase orders, notice and confirm shipping, and do online invoicing. Integrated this system with quality management system, part quality information can be timely sent back to the supplier to prevent defective products and future quality improvement. Integration of multiple information systems not only provides support for part logistics information and real-time information acquisition during assembling, but also establishes a solid quality check system in the logistics process.
Faced with downstream distributors, Weichai has developed the after-market service system, global call center system, car-locating system, as well as the vehicle service platform based on Internet of Things and big data technology. These information systems and market operations together can achieve service management throughout the whole product lifecycle, forming a multi-dimensional "Intelligent Marketing" system. These works will provide a strong support for Weichai to innovate business models, test the water of O2O e-commerce market, and develop international business.
The application of information technology is the fundamental technical support for Weichai to advance management change, enhance operational efficiency and core competitiveness, and realize "Intelligent Management". From management of finance, R&D, subsidiaries to daily administration, Weichai has constructed a full range of information management systems. As an industry leader, Weichai tries everything in promoting the integration of information technology and industrialization, as well as accelerating the company transformation and upgrading. In 2012, Weichai won the "National In-depth Integration Model of information technology and industrialization" awarded by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology with the highest score. In the future, Weichai will continue to implement information technology enhancement, deeply integrated the Internet with production and operation, and create "digital Weichai" to achieve decision management digitization, collaborative product development, intensive customer service, procurement logistics networking, lean manufacturing digitization, and knowledge management sharing.