Encouraged by Made in China 2025, many domestic enterprises have begun to explore industrial automation and industrial 4.0 technology development and product layout, in order to gain commercial opportunities in the future upgrading and transformation of Made in China towards Industry 4.0.
Recently, videos from companies such as Gree and Sany Heavy Industry about Industry 4.0 demonstration factories have been circulating online, indicating that Industry 4.0 is not far away from us. What developed countries can do is also what Made in China can do. However, for a large number of manufacturing enterprises in China, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, the management status is still at a low level of Industry 1.5 and Industry 2.0, and Industry 4.0 is still a vague and uncertain future.
To move towards Industry 4.0, enterprises need to gradually carry out the construction of four modernizations: lean, automation, intelligence (advanced forms of informatization), and intelligence. Lean is the foundation of the other three modernizations, and it will accompany the entire process of enterprises moving towards Industry 4.0. It can be seen that Industry 4.0 is the goal, and lean is not only a means to move towards Industry 4.0, but also a continuous process. Experts believe that Industry 4.0 itself is not scary, what is truly scary is that our companies have stopped evolving or evolved too slowly, leading to survival problems.
How to achieve rapid evolution so that the speed of evolution can meet the needs of enterprise survival? The answer is to take the path of lean, which means starting to have lean thinking and actively taking lean actions.
What value can lean bring us?
The usual understanding is that lean can help us improve quality, increase efficiency, reduce costs, etc., allowing enterprises to achieve higher profits. Lean can help us gain more, and Industry 4.0 cannot do without lean.
Firstly, lean can lead to a positive transformation for both the site and employees
The vast majority of domestic enterprises operate in a low-level vicious cycle of production and management, but cannot find an outlet to break out of this cycle. Even if some business leaders want to change, they struggle to overcome the obstacles of team inertia. For a period of time, people thought that training could motivate employees to change, but the fact is that employees have a mediocre attitude towards training and the conversion rate is too low.
Our experience is that business leaders should humbly learn lean thinking and use strong leadership as a basis to introduce lean improvement activities, guiding employees to start with small and micro improvements that can be done around them, such as adjusting layout, organizing and cleaning, etc. At the same time, while receiving on-site (positive) changes, employees should experience the benefits of "change" in "change", break through self limitations, and establish interest and confidence in further improvement. It is crucial for enterprises to evolve from Industry 1.0 to Industry 4.0 and break through the inertia in corporate culture.
Secondly, lean can enhance team awareness and capabilities
After employees gain interest and confidence in further improvement, we need to adapt to the situation and timely redirect their attention to multiple aspects such as equipment improvement, quality improvement, efficiency improvement, and cost reduction.
It is said that interest is the best teacher. When employees want to learn, providing targeted training and guidance on lean thinking, lean technology, and problem-solving methods will achieve twice the result with half the effort. Moreover, improving practice itself is the best way to learn and train. Guiding all employees to continuously participate in lean improvement practice can not only yield a lot of improvement results, but more importantly, it can enhance their awareness and ability.
With good awareness and ability, the process towards Industry 4.0 will be more efficient. It has been proven that lean production can stimulate employees' passion for innovation, and significant improvements will lead to process intelligence and local automation, laying a solid foundation for intelligent production and the construction of intelligent factories.
Thirdly, lean can harvest achievements in mechanism and cultural construction, and cultivate genes for enterprise transformation
Cultivating corporate transformation genes is an important guarantee for enterprises to move towards Industry 4.0 and a crucial tool for maintaining a sustainable foundation. By introducing and continuously promoting lean, multiple management mechanisms for employee participation in improvement can be gradually solidified, such as employee improvement proposal management mechanism, team self improvement management mechanism, and focus topic improvement management mechanism.
Continuously operating these management mechanisms can ensure full employee participation and integrate lean improvement into daily work. By creating a strong lean improvement atmosphere, employees can be aroused to participate in improvement, gain a sense of honor and achievement, and grow happily in lean improvement.
Fourthly, lean can increase revenue
Undoubtedly, on the basis of reaping the first three major achievements, lean will definitely achieve a significant amount of quantifiable financial results.
Enterprises moving towards Industry 4.0 require investment in software and hardware, so Industry 4.0 requires lean manufacturing.
In short, lean not only allows enterprises to survive, but also to live elegantly; Lean can also enable enterprises to achieve automation, intelligence, and intelligence more efficiently than their competitors; Lean can also provide funding and cultural support for the construction of the three modernizations. The conclusion is that on the path of enterprises towards Industry 4.0, lean is the foundation, lean is the process, and lean cannot be absent.
