At the 5G+Industrial Internet Summit Forum, Mr. Wang Xinzhe, Chief Economist of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), pointed out that it is expected that more than 80% of the future 5G applications will come from vertical industries, such as the industrial Internet.
5G large bandwidth, low latency, massive links and network slicing, edge computing capabilities for intelligent manufacturing, safe production provides high-quality network support and data connectivity, combined with the industrial Internet platform's powerful arithmetic and artificial intelligence algorithms, the combination of 5G, cloud computing, and AI technology will boost the digital transformation and upgrading of industrial enterprises.
Wang Zhiqin, vice president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Research, pointed out that the industrial Internet platform is not to realize a certain degree of connectivity within a factory or locally, but rather to realize the full elements of the full link.
According to GE's forecast, by 2020, the annual value of the industrial Internet will reach $225 billion, exceeding the $170 billion value of the consumer Internet. And the industrialization needs of emerging economies such as mainland China continue to fuel the development of industrial Internet platforms in the Asia-Pacific region.
This can not be separated from the traditional manufacturing industry transformation and upgrading pressure. Wang Zhiqin said, the economic downward pressure increases, labor costs continue to rise and other reasons for business management efficiency put forward higher requirements. In addition, to improve product quality and value, accelerate business model innovation and reduce the threshold of information technology application also requires Chinese industry to accelerate the digital transformation.
The huge potential of the Industrial Internet market is attracting various enterprises to participate. According to the Industrial Internet Platform White Paper (2019 Discussion Draft) released by the Industrial Internet Industry Alliance, the number of various types of platforms in China has totaled hundreds, and the number of platforms with a certain degree of regional and industry influence has exceeded 50.
There are traditional industrial technology solution companies building platforms for transformation and development needs, such as Aerospace Cloud, Haier, Shugen Internet, Baoxin, Ali, Huawei, Wave, Ziguang and other platforms that started earlier; there are also large-scale manufacturing enterprises incubating independent operating companies focusing on platform operation, such as XCMG, TCL, Zoomlion, Foxconn and other large group enterprises divesting and integrating internal related resources. The company has injected capital to set up an independent operating subsidiary focusing on the industrial Internet platform business, and outputs results externally on the basis of serving the group well.
Telecommunications carriers, with their network connectivity and data center resources, naturally won't miss out on this market, with China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom all releasing their own industrial internet platforms. 31st of the day, China Telecom released its industrial internet open platform.
Chen Zhongyue, deputy general manager of China Telecom, pointed out that the platform is independently developed and operated by China Telecom, which provides manufacturing enterprises with data-enabling services for the whole element, the whole value chain, and the whole industry chain at three levels, namely, industrial data collection, industrial data center, and industrial data application.
Through the underlying industrial intelligent gateway, the platform can be loaded with different edge applications such as data acquisition protocol conversion according to the specific needs of the customer, and safely and credibly map various production elements in the physical space into data in the information space.
The next layer up is the industrial data center, which builds a virtual digital space in the form of a digital twin. Through data aggregation and exchange, information silos are opened and industrial knowledge is mined through big data and artificial intelligence.
The uppermost industrial data application will aggregate industrial APPs from self-research, cooperative vendors, and third-party industrial Internet platforms, **** with the construction of a data interconnection ecosystem.
Chen Zhongyue cited the example that after using the 5G+Industrial Internet platform, the steel structure enterprise Zhongjian Steel Structure's productivity has increased by 10%, the product defective rate has dropped by 10%, and the operation cost has been reduced by 6%.
Wang Zhiqin, on the other hand, cited the example of Qingdao Port, which grabs containers remotely via a 5G network, "The manipulators don't have to sit on a high crane, they can do the job in a very comfortable environment in the office."
However, as the industrial Internet is still in the early stages of development, it also faces many challenges. From the industrial field, complementary advantages, synergistic platform industrial ecology still need to continue to build. Most of the platform companies to fight alone, hoping to independently build end-to-end complete platform architecture, even if they are not good at their own field to invest unnecessary funds and manpower. Wang Zhiqin pointed out that synergistic cooperation should be actively carried out to build a national collaborative cross-field cooperation platform.