The world today is undergoing a reconstruction around the theme of digitalization and intelligence. Against the backdrop of the rapid development of the digital economy, the "digital transformation and intelligent upgrading" of China's manufacturing industry is no longer a "multiple choice question", but a "must-answer question" related to survival and long-term development. The just-concluded 2021 Central Economic Work Conference proposed to accelerate digital transformation and promote the upgrading of traditional industries, which has brought the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry to a very urgent and critical stage.

As a technology manufacturing company that has been deeply rooted in China for nearly 37 years, Lenovo held a "New Lenovo New Intelligent Manufacturing" themed salon on December 17. The relevant persons in charge of Lenovo's digital transformation, artificial intelligence, new IT infrastructure, environmental engineering and other intelligent manufacturing businesses discussed the latest progress and future trends in the field of intelligent manufacturing with the audience from all perspectives, and also shared Lenovo's technical reserves and high-quality endogenous and externalized capabilities in leading China's intelligent manufacturing field.

Practice internal skills with senior endogenous and technical practices to achieve intelligent upgrading

Intelligent transformation is not achieved overnight. Enterprises that have completed intelligent transformation must not only have a deep accumulation in the manufacturing field, but also have sufficient practice in the process of intelligence. Lenovo's smart manufacturing has achieved remarkable results, which is inseparable from the smart supply chain it has built.

"Digital and intelligent transformation requires hard work and a return to fundamentals." As the opening guest, Cai Hong, head of Lenovo's LME Digital Transformation Office, shared Lenovo's transformation practices and thoughts on the smart supply chain. He said that digital and intelligent transformation requires hard work and a return to fundamentals. Lenovo's smart supply chain insists on the "three highs and one excellence" of high flexibility, high agility, high efficiency and low cost as the value guide, and uses eighteen martial arts to build capacity. Today, Lenovo's smart supply chain has achieved excellent results in the Gartner Global Top 25 Supply Chain Ranking, ranking second in the Asia-Pacific region and fifth in the global ranking of high-tech companies.

It is reported that the Hefei Lianbao Factory is a model of smart manufacturing carriers and endogenous practices represented by Lenovo's smart supply chain. As the largest exporter in Anhui Province, Lianbao Factory, which produces 30 million Lenovo computers annually, has two intelligent production lines, the Nezha Line and the Mercury Line, which can process 5,000 orders a day, and more than 80% of them are personalized customization of less than 5 units. With the support of Lenovo's intelligent supply chain advanced planning and scheduling system, the scheduling time has been greatly shortened from 6 hours to 1.5 minutes, the production efficiency has been improved by 16%, and the order fulfillment rate is 15% faster than the industry standard on average.

Lenovo is currently in a critical period of intelligent transformation. Its 3S strategy is making itself a leader and enabler of intelligence, and Lenovo AI is the real giver of 3S vitality. At the event, Dr. Fan Jianping, Vice President of Lenovo Group and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Lenovo Research Institute, delivered a keynote speech on "Lenovo Brain Empowers New Lenovo & New Manufacturing". He believes that business scenarios are the protagonists and artificial intelligence is the supporting role, and the protagonists and supporting roles can play on the same stage. Lenovo's AI technology layout includes a platform, namely the "Lenovo Brain Artificial Intelligence Platform" and six core technologies, which can be said to be the soul of Lenovo's 3S transformation. Lenovo Brain can activate Lenovo's infrastructure and make it more vital. It can empower smart solutions upward and support smart IoT devices downward. At present, Lenovo Brain has won the TOPAI application case of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Cyberspace Administration and the TOP10 artificial intelligence solution of the 2021 Quantum Bit China Annual Artificial Intelligence Selection. The advanced planning and scheduling system supported by Lenovo Brain helped Lenovo obtain important honors such as the leading artificial intelligence enterprise and the final of the Franz Edelman Award, the highest award in international operations research, while the solution engine for intelligent production decision-making won the 2021 China Computer Society Science and Technology Award and the Science and Technology Progress Excellence Award.

Case landing releases its own digital capabilities to enable industry win-win

As an enabler of intelligent manufacturing, Lenovo has internalized and externalized the technical capabilities, solutions and industry know-how in the manufacturing field based on the Qitian engine, forming a replicable and modular application scenario to escort thousands of industries to achieve intelligent manufacturing.

"Future manufacturing is the fusion and iteration of new technology and the enterprise value chain." At the event, Song Tao, director of the large manufacturing industry of Lenovo Intelligent Architecture Solutions Group, took "Sharing the Practice of New IT Intelligent Computing" as the theme of his speech, and focused on Lenovo's externalized achievements in the field of intelligent manufacturing from the perspective of "computing". He said that AI can empower many scenarios in the entire intelligent manufacturing. Compared with traditional manufacturing, the main difference between intelligent manufacturing in the digital era and traditional manufacturing is the addition of model algorithms. Many intelligent manufacturing in the digital era is calculated.

Among the many cases shared by Song Tao, the China Iron and Steel Research Group Intelligent Computing Platform is a representative case of Lenovo's cooperation with the manufacturing industry R&D department in the intelligent R&D of new materials. China Iron and Steel Research is a think tank in the industry in the R&D and simulation of steel materials, and has an urgent need for a unified computing power pool that mixes multiple architectures such as high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and big data. The digital scientific research public service platform for materials, processes, and testing R&D created by Lenovo for China Iron and Steel Research Technology Group Co., Ltd. can simultaneously meet the hardware, network and storage requirements required for more than 10 multi-node large-scale computing tasks.

In addition, the cooperation between Lenovo and Tongkun Group is also a typical case that Lenovo has to mention among many externalization cases in the field of intelligent manufacturing. The person who shared this case is Zhou Ying, chief architect of intelligent manufacturing of Lenovo Data Intelligence Business Group, one of the heavyweight guests of this event. He believes that the essence of digital transformation is to achieve digital business operations. Digital business operations are not just data analysis. Enterprises need comprehensive data to realize the overall digital operation management of the business. Therefore, Lenovo proposed to build a "Data Intelligence Operation Center" to help enterprises achieve the goal of digital business operations.

Take the digital transformation of Tongkun Group, a process chemical enterprise, as an example. After years of development, the customer's business has developed rapidly, and various data of the enterprise have produced explosive growth, which has made the complexity of the management process change exponentially, and digital control is urgently needed. Lenovo's "Data Intelligence Operation Center" helps Tongkun Group to access, integrate and intelligently analyze all static and dynamic data; combined with the understanding of the company's production, operation and business, it fully realizes the digital management and intelligent decision-making of the enterprise. It can be seen that Lenovo's rich experience in digital transformation is also a reference for other companies, which is also one of Lenovo's empowerment directions of "endogenous externalization".

"Five Dimensions and One Platform" + Full Life Cycle Ecological Design to Become a "Carbon Pathfinder" in the Practice of Low-Carbon Transformation

As one of the eight key tasks for 2021 determined by the Central Economic Work Conference, carbon peak and carbon neutrality have always been the focus of social attention. As the most important component for achieving the dual carbon goals, the importance of green manufacturing can be seen.

"ESG is an important consideration for redefining a good company." Liu Wei, Director of Quality Standards and Environmental Affairs of Lenovo Group, said that Lenovo has been paying attention to the topic of sustainable development since 2006. At present, Lenovo has gradually established a complete green management framework covering five dimensions of "green production + supplier management + green logistics + green recycling + green packaging" and a "green information disclosure platform", and has built a top-level system for green manufacturing from the entire life cycle of product design, process, recycling, etc., and has achieved certain results.

Liu Wei also mentioned that in terms of green products, Lenovo has implemented the concept of "full life cycle ecological design" from the conceptual stage at the beginning of the product life cycle. Lenovo is not only considering "from cradle to grave", but also recycling and reusing products to return them to the cradle again, forming a "from cradle to cradle" full process management.

It is reported that in terms of green production, Lenovo's self-developed "low temperature solder paste" green manufacturing process in 2017 reduces the temperature by 70 degrees during welding, which not only speeds up welding speed and increases production capacity, but also improves computer reliability and reduces electricity costs. Practice has proved that the low temperature solder paste process can reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions of the printed circuit board assembly process by 35%, achieving an annual carbon emission saving of 1,087 tons. Last year alone, Lenovo shipped 22.7 million laptops produced using the low temperature solder paste process, reducing a total of 4,740 tons of carbon emissions. At the same time, Lenovo's Advanced Production Scheduling System (LAPS) saves more than 2,696 megawatt-hours of electricity each year by improving production efficiency and reducing idle production lines, which can reduce more than 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to planting 110,000 trees each year.

At the end of the product life cycle, Lenovo also provides smart recycling services for products, packaging and batteries for consumers and business customers around the world, giving products the opportunity to return to product design at the end of their life cycle. These customer-oriented projects enabled Lenovo to collect more than 31,795 metric tons of products for recycling and reuse in 2020.

Not only that, Lenovo continues to promote green packaging. Since 2008, Lenovo has reduced the use of packaging materials by 3,240 tons through technological innovations such as biodegradable bamboo and sugarcane fiber packaging. In the 2020/21 fiscal year alone, packaging material consumption was reduced by 140 tons. At the same time, replacing plastic tape sealing with self-locking bottom structure packaging can reduce the use of plastic tape by about 200,000 kilometers per year, equivalent to five laps around the earth. Since 2007, Lenovo has also begun to apply waste plastic recycling technology to Lenovo desktops, notebooks, monitors, servers and other products, reducing carbon emissions by a total of about 60,000 tons, equivalent to planting more than 3 million trees.

Speaking of the future development trend of the manufacturing industry, Song Tao, director of the large manufacturing industry of Lenovo Intelligent Architecture Solutions Group, believes that based on the complex attributes of the manufacturing industry itself, future manufacturing data will be externalized through the overflow of endogenous capabilities to empower more companies, rather than being given to traditional giant manufacturing companies. In the 37-year development process, Lenovo's own growth experience has become a valuable asset for the digital transformation of China's manufacturing industry. In the future, Lenovo will continue to fulfill its mission of intelligent manufacturing and empower the manufacturing industry based on the "end-edge cloud network intelligence" technology architecture to achieve comprehensive intelligent transformation and green sustainable development. The required technology, services and solutions.

Plastic Industry Video