When will I have a long tassel?

The concept of systematic design of machine tools was not pioneered by Chinese scholars. Its ideas can be traced back to the origin of machine tools. At that time, the Chinese had not even come into contact with machine tools in the modern sense.

What is systematic design and how to do systematic design have been discussed a lot in the past 200 years, but the real progress has been made in the past ten years. Among them, those who have made the greatest contribution are engineers and scholars from China.

Since 2000, China has become the world's largest machine tool consumer and subsequently the world's largest machine tool producer. The progress of production technology has always been closely related to application. Rich application practices have provided engineers and scholars with massive research data, which has contributed to China's rapid progress in the field of machine tool system design.

Xiao Wenjun began to enter this field more than ten years ago. With her talent and the practical opportunities provided by Linji Group and Canglong Research Institute, she quickly became a leader in this field. Up to now, on a global scale, if Xiao Wenjun modestly says that his level can only be ranked second, no one dares to say that he is first.

The machine tool systematization issue studied by Xiao Wenjun involves three levels.

The first level is the optimal design of a single machine tool. A large part of the reason why she has achieved success in this area is because of the situation. Compared with Western machine tools, there is a big gap in the accuracy of parts between Chinese machine tools. It is basically impossible to catch up in a short time. In this case, how to make up for the accuracy difference of individual parts through the cooperation of parts has become a very valuable and challenging topic.

With the support of Tang Zifeng, Xiao Wenjun and Yu Xiaohui teamed up, one to do theoretical research and the other to do practical verification. They did not know how much research funding Linji Group spent, and finally developed a set of calculation models and successfully applied them to Production Practice.

With this set of models, Linji Group has made up for the shortcomings of insufficient precision of parts and components, and is able to manufacture high-end machine tools with precision and quality that are no less than those of its Western counterparts, and participate in market competition. Due to the lowered requirements on the precision of parts, Linji Group's machine tools also have a price advantage, thereby gaining stronger competitiveness and rewriting the competition rules in the machine tool market.

When Yu Xiaohui talked to Chu Zhanlong and others about the difference between the spirit of craftsmanship and the spirit of engineers, it was actually not an arrogant statement, but had a certain basis.

There is a limit to the improvement of parts accuracy. After the accuracy reaches a certain level, the cost will increase exponentially with every improvement. Behind the so-called craftsmanship spirit is actually the infinite accumulation of costs, and these costs must be borne by users.

With the help of system optimization technology, Linji Group can use less precise parts to assemble high-precision machine tools, which greatly saves costs. As a result, the competition among machine tool companies has shifted from constantly pursuing high precision of parts to seeking optimization of machine tool design, with the latter focusing on theoretical level and data support.

In terms of theory, both China and foreign countries have their own strengths, and it is impossible to say who is stronger. But in terms of data support, Chinese machine tool companies have advantages that their Western counterparts do not have, and they cannot surpass them.

The data comes from production practice. There are millions of machine tools in China, operating day after day, generating data calculated in TB every moment. These data are the basis for the optimal design of machine tools. No matter how many theoretical models Western machine tool companies have, they are in vain without data support.

The second level of machine tool systematic design is factory-level machine tool combination optimization. Producing a product requires many processes, and each process requires the use of different machine tools, so there are many types of machine tools in a factory.

In a traditional factory, machine tools come from different suppliers, and workers are also divided into different types of work. Lathes are used to turn lathes, and millers are used to operate milling machines. Each of them does their own work. If there is a problem in any process, the subsequent process will only I can watch, but I can't do anything.

The development of information technology has given rise to the concept of intelligent manufacturing. The number of front-line operators continues to decrease, and some companies even have so-called "lightless workshops". All equipment on the entire production line are connected together through automation devices, and one production instruction can complete all process operations. To achieve this, the machine tools on the production line must comply with unified standards.

Factory-level machine tool portfolio optimization includes standardization of machine tool design and coordination between front and rear process machine tools. In addition, fault tolerance and redundancy factors must also be considered. In a production line, if one machine tool breaks down, subsequent processes cannot be carried out. Fault-tolerant design is to intelligently bypass the fault point to avoid production interruption when the machine tool fails.

To achieve fault tolerance, a certain amount of redundancy is required on the production line. One of the methods is to make machine tools versatile. If one machine tool breaks down, another machine tool can immediately change its function and replace the role of this machine tool. Modern CNC machining centers are originally able to complete a variety of processing operations at the same time, and there is a certain degree of redundancy in functionality. However, how much redundancy should be retained involves very complex calculations and cannot be designed casually.

The first two levels of systematic design are also done by foreign machine tool colleagues, but there are some differences in their levels. The third level of systematic design carried out by Xiao Wenjun is a level with distinctive Chinese characteristics, which is cross-regional and cross-industry machine tool combination optimization, involving the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of machine tools.

Within a factory, no matter how the production is organized, idle equipment is inevitable, especially high-end and professional processing equipment.

For example, some factories involve the cutting of ultra-heavy parts in production, and for this purpose they need to purchase ultra-heavy machine tools. However, the processing of such super-heavy parts does not happen every day, maybe only a few times a year. As a result, the super-heavy machine tools owned by the company are idle most of the time.

This type of high-end professional machine tools are often very expensive. Once idle, the waste of funds is extremely considerable.

Xiao Wenjun's cross-regional and cross-industry machine tool portfolio optimization is to use network technology to connect the professional equipment owned by various companies. When the machine tools of a certain company are idle, they can undertake similar processing tasks from other companies. In this way, another company does not need to purchase such special machine tools, thereby saving a large amount of equipment investment. The company that owns machine tools can earn income by OEM for other companies, shortening the payback period of equipment investment.

In addition to such high-end professional machine tools, there is actually the possibility and necessity of borrowing general machine tools across enterprises. The production of many enterprises is not continuous. There are often several months of peak season and several months of off-season. When entering the peak season, enterprises will feel that the equipment is not enough, and when entering the off-season, a large number of enterprises' equipment will be idle. If a cross-enterprise equipment usage platform can be established, different enterprises can adjust the remaining production capacity with other enterprises during peak and off-season, which is undoubtedly very valuable.

To realize equipment sharing between enterprises, there are also issues of equipment standardization and generalization. The more professional the equipment, the less likely it is to be shared with other companies. However, if we blindly emphasize the versatility of equipment, it will inevitably affect the efficiency of professional production. How to strike a balance between professionalism and versatility is also a profound knowledge.

This level is said to have Chinese characteristics because in Western countries, sharing equipment across enterprises involves too many interests, and this is not a problem that engineers can solve. In China, at least within the scope of state-owned enterprises, there is a certain basis for implementing this system.

Xiao Wenjun didn't expect this to be possible at first. She just mentioned this idea to Tang Zifeng during a casual chat. Unexpectedly, Tang Zifeng took it seriously. While telling her and Yu Xiaohui to come up with a feasible plan as soon as possible, he used his industry influence to start promotion.

Tang Zifeng still serves as the secretary-general of Machine 20, a conglomerate of the most influential machine tool companies in the country. Most of the machine tools used by domestic manufacturing companies are domestically produced, and most of the domestic machine tools come from machine 20 companies. Therefore, when machine tool companies jointly promoted this machine tool sharing system, many companies responded.

Some companies themselves are not very interested in machine tool sharing, but due to the reputation of Machine Tool, they agreed to participate first and give it a try. There are also some companies, definitely for Tang Zifeng's sake, who are not willing to offend the future leaders of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission for such a trivial matter.

In order to best match the production requirements and idle equipment of different companies, Tang Zifeng pushed the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission to take the lead in establishing an equipment cloud platform, on which the real-time operation status of each equipment of each company, including wear and tear, can be checked at any time. , maintenance records, etc. The complexity of this project is beyond description.

At the beginning of the system promotion, many things went wrong. For a while, Xiao Wenjun and Yu Xiaohui were running around, busy dealing with various mistakes, and they were very exhausted. But every mistake provides researchers with new material and inspiration. After several years of running-in, this system has gradually matured, and the companies participating in the system have gradually tasted the benefits. There are fewer and fewer complaints and more and more praises.

Some companies that originally had a wait-and-see attitude have begun to actively apply to join. The coverage of the system has gradually expanded from mainly state-owned enterprises to include a large number of private enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises.