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When responding to the needs of the more complex and more
varied requirements of downstream industries in the future,”
says Zhang, “We need to be prepared to provide support using
technological approaches such as AI.
installed Huawei’s AI-powered chip in its control
systems, “Huawei has helped us quickly realise
digital and intelligent transformation.”
Partnerships for E2E success
Huawei’s many suppliers and system integrator
partners add to its pull. In Zhang’s words, “This
gives us the chance to find technology partners
to help the synthetic fibre industry solve the
problem of digital transformation. We’re enjoying
excellent collaboration with Huawei Cloud and the
Enterprise EI team.”
When working with system integrators, Sanlian
Hope has found that one key problem is the lack
of production-related data that’s ready for data
analysis - an issue that plagues manufacturing as
a whole, and one that requires partners to quickly
and efficiently work together to adapt data.
Sanlian Hope’s expectations of Huawei is that
it delivers industry insights. In turn, Sanlian Hope
needs to change how it expects to add value
from data, adjust the way its control systems
collect data, and maximise the value of analytics -
changes that it is already making.
According to Zhang, “Because we’re in
process-based manufacturing and the production
lines are automated, we tend to receive high-
quality data. So we can really extract value
and increase production capacity.” Previously,
manufacturing was all about Six Sigma and
process optimisation. “But by bringing data into
it, we’re able to use accurate data to identify
different situations in large-scale production and
adjust production. This kind of flexibility can’t be
matched by humans.”
In data collection, dimensions and frequency
are crucial. Machine data collection can
be performed at a frequency of seconds or
milliseconds, compared with the metrics of
human data collection whereby a scale of
minutes is considered to be very good. According
to Zhang, “Aside from dimensions, an explosive
increase in frequency allows for real-time, more
precise, and more flexible control. This is what
we want to achieve with Huawei. And we hope
to promote the results of our co-operation in the
industry.”
Intelligence means progress
In China’s synthetic fibre industry, production
capacity has increased from five million tons in
2000 to 40 million tons today.
“In the new era, digitalisation and intelligence
will help us utilise the experience of the industry.
It will bring huge opportunities for development,
and play a very important role in taking us into the
future,” says Zhang.
In the past, the synthetic fibre industry’s unified
standards system developed as far as it could
go. Looking to the future, requirements will only
become more segmented and complex. How do
we face these changes? Personalised and small-
batch production runs coupled with digitalisation
and intelligence are ways of increasing flexibility,
so that different situations can be categorised and
production plans formulated.
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