CRI听力:Employ big data in manufacturing industry: Sany

Sany is a heavy industry leader focusing on huge construction machinery such as pump trucks, excavators, and cranes.

It started researching and developing smart terminal devices in 2008. Installed on products, the devices can collect the machinery's real-time conditions and transfer the data to the company's headquarter computer, which thus forms a big data platform based on the so-called "Internet of Things".

The technology enables the company to quickly respond when informed of any malfunction occuring in the machines it has produced.

Currently, over 210,000 pieces of Sany engineering equipment around the world have been connected to the platform that instantly collects 6,000 kinds of information relating to those machines, including their whereabouts and the temperature, air pressure, and working conditions around them.

Since launched into use, the system has recorded more than 100 billion pieces of information, making it the most valuable big data platform in China.

He Dongdong, senior deputy vice president of Sany, said whether the excavators are working or not, reflects a region's need for construction, which indirectly suggests the area's economic vitality, so business insiders call it the "Excavator Index" for the Chinese economy.

He said Sany is planning to share the platform with other companies.

"Sany could make its data base a public one, allowing the platform to serve China's small and mid-sized enterprises, with our experience help to improve their ability for smart manufacturing. We have created a "cloud platform" to share. We have already singed contracts with some enterprises from other industries, providing big data service and Internet of Things for them."

Eight years ago, big data was little known in China, and Sany started this project mainly for better post-sales service. But now the platform has become a role model for the country's "Made in China 2025" initiative that calls for digitalization,automation, and intelligence in the manufacturing industry.

Xiang Wenbo, president of Sany, admitted that China has a long way to go, to achieve intelligent manufacturing.

"One bottleneck for China's manufacturing is the lack of innovation ability. To some degree, the style of our innovation over the years has been learning and imitating others. The method cannot meet need once development reaches a certain level. Second, we lack accumulation. We have only spent decades in industrialization."

Countries like Germany have had generations of accumulation in manufacturing, but He Dongdong said big data offers an opportunity for China to overtake competitors on a bend.

"China has a chance to corner overtaking in intelligent manufacturing. Big data has become a resource, an asset like oil. Germany, Japan, and the US are able to produce machinery, but most data on the use of the machinery is in China, where the number of plants and products tops the world. Germany doesn't have data, because its products have been sold to China and other countries. It hasn't collected big data on how consumers use the equipment and real-time conditions of the equipment. China has the largest quantity of industrial big data."

He said with smart analyses and decisions offered by the big data, Chinese enterprises will be guided in how to improve product quality and operation capacity, which is a chance to accelerate development and surpass the great powers of manufacturing.

For CRI, this is Liu Mohan.