Process improvement is the most important course in intelligent manufacturing.

In the whole production process of the factory, the process work is in the basic and leading position. If equipment is the muscle of the factory, sensors and networks are the nerves of the factory, then technology is the soul of the factory. Therefore, it is imperative to improve the process.

First of all, the improvement of process work should start from lean optimization of existing process, implement process standardization, promote process lean, and study process robustness. Both the traditional production mode and the intelligent factory in industry 4.0 environment need lean and stable manufacturing process, which is also the fundamental way to solve our current efficiency and quality problems.

The so-called “intelligence” of intelligent factory is formed by technicians refining a series of judgment factors and thinking logic according to specific business processes, which can not be compared with human intelligence. Therefore, the requirement of manufacturing process is much higher than the traditional production mode. Under the current situation, imperfect process will only lead to low production efficiency and unstable product quality. However, in the environment of industry 4.0, unstable process will lead to prediction error, which will cause the intelligent factory to stop operation and cause great losses.

As like as two peas, second, to make the process lean and robust, we can no longer rely on actual production to verify the method. We must introduce an important concept of industrial 4, digital twins, which simulates the real environment and status in the virtual digital space, creating a virtual digital factory exactly like the real factory, virtual reality environment, technology, process and regulation. Plan to verify, feedback and improve. Whether it is the details of the processing process or the operation of the macro process layout planning, it can be verified and tested in the virtual digital factory, which will greatly improve the maturity of the work and save a lot of time and resources.

We have begun to use simulation in the process, such as casting, welding, sheet metal, machining and other professional, but the current scope of use is small, and the standardization is not enough. After that, we should make a detailed plan, establish a good simulation environment, expand the field of simulation, so that the simulation can play an effective role, and gradually realize the real-time simulation of the whole environment.

Third, we should change the idea of technology. In the future, the main work of the technologists will be to refine the process thinking logic, constantly supplement, improve and optimize the huge process database, and maintain the process knowledge data. The actual process design work may be completed by the computer.

Process planning will no longer be a single process, but a multi process discrete process. Under the condition of ensuring product quality, the process route will be as flexible as possible, so as to provide as many choices as possible for the decision-making system of the intelligent factory, and arrange the optimal route through overall analysis of various influencing factors.

The most typical is the marking habit of clamping alignment and in body tolerance.

In the current production process, the clamping and alignment on the machine tool wastes a lot of machine working time and seriously affects the production efficiency. Due to the continuous improvement of machining accuracy and the increase of machine tool function, the problem of clamping and alignment can be realized through the precision positioning fixture and the self-aligning function of machine tool.

The marking habit of in body tolerance is because in the past, it was mainly processed by ordinary machine tools. In order to reduce the out of tolerance probability of manual processing and improve the qualified rate of products, the actual processing size of products deviated from the normal distribution, which was not conducive to ensuring the quality stability of batch products.

At present, the NC machining equipment has been widely used, and the machining accuracy is greatly improved than before, so it is no longer necessary to require the process size to be marked with in body tolerance.

Fourth, research the application of robot and quick change fixture. The intellectualization of industry 4.0 is not to replace human beings. Intelligent factory is not an unmanned factory, but to make human and machine cooperate better and achieve higher labor productivity.

Therefore, in the intelligent factory, we should strive to eliminate the unstable factors of human beings. According to the current situation of the manufacturing industry, it is neither realistic nor economical to achieve a high degree of unmanned automatic production. The introduction of robots in suitable links is the best choice to improve the stability and efficiency. The combination of robot and quick change fixture can adapt to the production of many varieties and small batch, and improve the production efficiency and stability under the condition of ensuring flexibility.

Fifth, the existing process information systems are integrated to achieve a single data source and ensure interoperability. It is one of the important goals of industry 4.0 to realize the operation of all businesses under a unified platform. Previously, we invested a lot of resources in information construction, especially process informatization. In all businesses, the level of process informatization is relatively high, but the existing information construction lacks overall planning, and each information system is relatively independent, without sharing information resources It has become an information island, which has caused great obstacles to improve the overall business efficiency. Therefore, now we need to stand on the overall level of the company to integrate the process information system with a unified platform, so as to give full play to the role of the information system.

We still have a long way to go and a lot of lessons to make up on the road to realize industry 4.0, but these are not problems. As long as we seize the opportunity, make a practical plan and move forward step by step, we can improve ourselves in this process, so that industry 4.0 will be closer to us.

The article comes from the Internet

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