---XCMG Xrea: Industrial Internet Platform

In relation to the well-developed consumption internet, which has already delivered a fruitful revolution, industrial internet is nothing but an upheaval still in the infancy, which is set to become a powerful driving force behind an upcoming transformation and upgrading of China's traditional manufacturing industry.

The 75 year industry experience and long-term technological accumulation have helped XCMG develop a unique style of production and management, which means the untiring pursuit of reliability and perfection in terms of products. At the Bauma China 2018, both spectators and honored guests have gotten a full taste of the “way more” powerful intelligence with XCMG Xrea: Industrial Internet Platform.

1. Industry Devices Turn Into Talkative Gadgets, Ceasing to be Muted

Industrial equipment is the catchall for a wide variety of highly diverse and complicated devices, which, at least for now, have not unified data interfaces, and implement thousands of different types of communication protocols, leaving them to be “dumb” and “muted” to each other while working together. You can’t be able to collect data from these muted devices, and even if you can do so, more often than not, the data from these muted devices can’t be able to fully meet the needs and requirements of your intelligent management. Besides, for the sake of this or that consideration, for example, information security, most customers are reluctant to put their data under a third party’s management and analysis. Due to these barriers, industrial equipment has remained stuck in the state of “biting their tongue”.

Yangtze River basin has long been bedeviled by some troublesome issues: to know in real time the status of its production equipment, to track in real-time its order fulfillment process, and to implement the whole-process quality traceability, and thus has failed to gain a more rapid development.

Just a few months ago, XCMG Info Division crafted a cloud-based solution specially for its equipment through Xrea, not only enabling the maker to monitor in real-time its equipment operation, tract in real-time its order fulfillment, and better harmonize its production processes, but also to make a statistical analysis of its equipment efficiency, give feedbacks to corporate decision makers, and enhance the transparency of its production, leading to a varying increase in its equipment utilization rate, target achievement rate and finished product rate respectively by 3.6%, 8.3% and 2.1%. With the solution, the maker’s industrial equipment can “speak” and becomes more smart, as a result, the maker has managed to give full play to its valuable creativity.

2. Shifting Away from Physical Facilities to Cloud Cyberspace Makes Production Control More Intelligent

Lines of various structures are orderly paraded on the neatly-zoned clean epoxy floor, with anything, even a tiny piece like a nut, having their own "fixed" locations. Welding robots are waving slowly but steadily their strong arms, NC machining tools are busy with moving items: grabbing, lifting, flitting and offloading in a series of standardized actions, AGV trolleys are shuttling about nimbly on the floor, and workers sitting at the "Intelligent Center" systems, a little far away from the working site, are monitoring and controlling in real-time what is going on to ensure every communication, every direction and every movement is conducted smoothly and orderly on the entire work floor. These scenarios take place daily at a heavy-duty machinery workshop in XCMG.

So, which system on earth at the "intelligence center" is at work? When it comes to intelligent production, one thing cannot be absent: MES, which is very important and serves as the production brain”. Through vertical integration and horizontal consolidation respectively along 2 dimensions: industries and regions, XCMG Info Division succeeded in developing the intelligent cloud-based MES for managing and monitoring each link and each aspect of the whole industry chain from production plan control, to intelligent logistics, and then, to the whole-process quality traceability to enhance the transparency of all production procedures and integration of related control processes.

Having 8 core algorithm applications (including task interface scheduling, fast BOM material comparison, and smallest unit component matching) and 10 SCADA-related core systems (including ERP, SRM, CRM and 3D release), and working with powerful data mining & analysis functions on the industrial big data Xrea platform, the cloud-based MES can be able to make accurate analysis of the current status and developments of business operation for corporate decision makers, as a result, helping an enterprise enhance its competition capabilities on markets. 

With various features, including transparency and traceability, and in the light of lean production management ideas, the cloud-based MES developed by XCMG Info Division functions as the total quality tracking system at Heavy-duty Machinery Department to achieve accurate logistics and distribution. It can make big data analysis and provide decision-making support by working with a kanban & reporting system, which monitors all the production processes in a workshop, and get a real-time handle on the status of operation and production in a workshop by connecting these devices and using data analysis, and then further, improve efficiency and management. For example, it can increase the target achievement rate by 5%, reduce equipment downtime by 7%, increase OEE by 4%, and slash waste and reworking by 4%.

3. Big Data and Petty Intelligence Streamlined Shifting from Products to Services

With an increasing role of services in the entire value chain in manufacturing sector, shifting towards service-oriented operation is of rising significance to healthy development of a manufacturer, and industrial internet platforms are just a right and big helper in the process of such shifting.

With a plethora of industrial mechanism models and algorithms, XCMG Xrea: Industrial Internet Platform can collect, mine, analyze and use data and/or more valuable “big data” (through data integration) to drive transformation of production patterns, innovations of business models, and building of industrial ecosystems. For example, with the help of industry internet, you can raise your operational efficiency, reduce your resource consumptions, and enhance your product quality. With the help of the industry internet, you can provide your users with data analysis-based intelligent remote services, intelligent remote maintenances, and so on. Maybe just a little bit smarter (than traditional), these petty intelligent tricks streamline the shifting of a manufacturer away from being product-focused to being service-focused, and away from being stuck at low-ends in the ladder of value chains to rising to high-ends, leading eventually to in-depth transformation and upgrading of its business operation and high quality development.

For now, XCMG Xrea: Industrial Internet Platform can serve nearly all the mainstream models in XCMG’s 14 product categories. Through on-board intelligent multimedia terminals and diagnosis units developed independently by XCMG Info Division, it collects, analyzes, processes and uses each day up to 500 million pieces of data about the operating conditions and working status of all kinds of running equipment to prevent against product failures, enhance user experience, conduct remote monitoring, implement predictive maintenances, optimize customer's production performances, give feedback on used products, and achieve (by working with a customer service platform) the highest industrial standard of services: Response Within 10 Minutes, Presence Within 2 Hours, Troubleshooting Within 24 Hours and Follow-up Review Within 48 Hours, and thus is widely acclaimed as the industry leader in terms of various measures, such as asset preservation, intelligent assignment, fault diagnosis and preventive maintenance. Besides, due to its exclusive focus on construction machinery industry, it can provide big data of more relevance to the industry, as a result, being more valuable information source for forecasts for enterprises, the industry and the national economy.

XCMG’s self-developed on-board intelligent multimedia terminals have been well validated in its lightweight mixer trucks freshly unveiled at the Bauma China 2018. With them, not only can users monitor in real-time the operation status of their equipment and collect related data, but also enhance their safety performance of their equipment due to additional functions: reversing video monitoring, right blind-spot monitoring, tank positive/negative rotation sensor monitoring, radar warning, etc.

Drawing on XCMG’s strong manufacturing background, XCMG Xrea: Industrial Internet Platform has offered a wide variety of market-oriented solutions to help enterprises shoot their specific troubles in daily business operation, achieve independence in developing new technologies and breaking down “industry-cornering” technologies, deliver more practical benefits to enterprises through value-oriented promotional campaigns, scale up intensively focused main lines of business, and diversify into multi-disciplinary fields. From the industry, for the industry and through long immersion in the industry, we are more valuable to you.