Gao Furong accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter.

Gao Furong has many identities, two of which occupy most of his energy. One is the professor of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the other is the director of the Polymer Forming Process and System Center of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Fok Ying Tung Institute.

As a world leader in polymer forming and control, he is very low-key and rarely appears in newspapers.

He travels back and forth between Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong and Nansha, Guangzhou all year round. As an engineer, he hopes to be closer to the actual engineering, find out the needs, and continuously develop, test and improve in combination with academic research. He calls it "standing tall and standing on the ground" - with the stars above his head and his feet on the ground.

What drives him is a wish that has been buried in his heart for many years: to change the situation of China's plastics industry being big but not strong, and to solve the problems in polymer processing with information, automation and intelligent means.

Quotes from Gao Furong

"If you make a product for 1 million times without any mistakes, do you think it is the best? It may be the best, or it may be too conservative."

"Now the manufacturing industry has entered the era of micro-profits, and we must seize every profit point through intelligent platforms."

"We want to truly build an intelligent factory. A person's ability, energy and resources are very limited. I call for joint cooperation to build an intelligent factory for polymer processing."

Current situation: China's plastic processing industry is developing rapidly but still not strong

"The paper in your hand and the chair you sit on are all polymer materials." As soon as he sat down, Gao Furong began to popularize science to reporters. As a material based on polymer compounds, polymer materials are everywhere, the most common of which are plastics, coatings, and rubbers, and they all play an important role in the national economy.

According to China Chemical Network, in recent years, China's plastic product output accounts for about 20% of the world's total output. In 2017, the revenue scale of China's plastic products manufacturing market reached 2.44 trillion yuan, which is larger than the GDP of Shenzhen that year. It is expected to exceed 3 trillion yuan in 2023.

"Now our country's plastic processing industry is developing rapidly, with two major bases in South China and East China. Our output is large, but there is no corresponding output value. It is large but not strong. Because our equipment performance is somewhat different from that of foreign countries." Gao Furong analyzed.

Injection molding machines are important tools for polymer processing. According to a relevant report from Zhiyan Consulting, the export value of China's injection molding machines in 2016 was US$1 billion, and the import value was only US$533 million, about half of the export value. However, the average unit price of imported injection molding machines in 2016 reached US$103,900 per unit, while the average unit price of exported injection molding machines in the same period was only US$39,700 per unit, and imported equipment was mainly high-end equipment.

Solution: Building an information-based, automated, and intelligent factory

Gao Furong has been focusing on the field of injection molding machines for about 30 years, and has an internationally leading technical level in the field of intermittent process quality control and optimization represented by the injection molding process.

How to help the injection molding industry increase production capacity under a certain output? One way is to make each mechanical component better to improve the accuracy and life of the machine.

Gao Furong's solution is to replace the "brain" of the injection molding machine, and the machine itself does not need to make major changes. Let the "brain" cooperate more closely with the machine and improve the accuracy of the machine. In short, it is to use information, automation, and intelligent means to improve the performance of the injection molding machine itself.

Later, Gao Furong and his team took another step forward in their work - to make an intelligent system for the production line of the plastic processing industry.

He explained that the production of products needs to rely on a production line that combines several devices. Injection molding machines, molds, and manipulators may all be produced by different manufacturers. If the information cannot be truly interconnected, it will affect the coordination of equipment on the production line and reduce production efficiency.

"Of course, general plastic processing companies have several production lines. Some production lines run very well, while others do not. How production lines learn from each other, improve each other, and compete with each other is more important, so we want to build an intelligent factory for plastic processing."

In his view, each production line has a lot of data. By connecting the production lines in series, the data of the entire factory will be available. This is a big data platform that can be used to evaluate the operating efficiency of each production line and form a mechanism of mutual competition and mutual learning. In this way, using the "brain" with independent intellectual property rights developed by them, the production lines can be made more and better.

Advantages: Seize every profit point in the era of micro-profits

"Intelligence is a big trend. I believe that enterprises that actively follow the trend of intelligence will be ahead in the future. Enterprises without core technology reserves will be eliminated sooner or later."

Talking about the technical advantages of the team, Gao Furong raised a question: "If you make a product for 1 million times without any mistakes, do you think it is the best?"

"It may be the best, or it may be too conservative. It is obvious that a product can be made in 30 seconds, but it takes 31 seconds to be conservative. One more second, the efficiency is much lower." He explained that intelligent technology can automatically evaluate and adjust a certain link in production to improve efficiency.

The second is that precision manufacturing can be made more precise. For example, a company in Dongguan specializes in making industrial switches for a German luxury car manufacturer. Every product must be quality inspected. The original machine will have a scrap rate of 2% to 3%, but after adopting the technology of Gao Furong's team, the scrap rate has dropped to a few tenths of a percent.

"Intelligence means making this place better and that place better, and the overall efficiency is high." He said that the manufacturing industry has entered the era of micro-profits, and every interest point must be seized through the intelligent platform.

"Change the brain": Give others a process of understanding

The ideas and technologies are there, but there are many challenges in how to apply them in industrial production.

"The polymer processing industry is different from other industries. For example, the production of oil and steel is a continuous and highly integrated process. However, a plastic processing factory receives an order to make a mobile phone case today, a cover tomorrow, and an air conditioner shell the day after tomorrow. The products are constantly changing, and the production line must be constantly adjusted, which is very complicated. The manufacturer needs to quickly reassemble the production line, and you are not allowed to spend months or years to thoroughly study the relationship between the equipment before production. Once the combination is completed, it must start working."

Gao Furong admitted that the first step to realize an intelligent factory is to change the "brain", which may be installed on a new machine or the original control system may be replaced. Both have certain challenges.

"The new robot is selling OK. If you ask them to modify it, they will certainly do better. But there are various costs involved, and it depends on whether the company is aggressive. So we have certain challenges in doing industry-university-research cooperation." Gao Furong said with a smile that the difficulty for scholars to promote is that they are thin-skinned and can't talk business.

At the same time, he also believes that any new thing will be challenging at the beginning, and first of all, others must have a process of understanding. At present, some companies are trying out the products of Gao Furong's team. A Fujian company has installed their system on all the existing plastic machinery that can be modified.

Future: Building a comprehensive platform for intelligent development and application

Technically, Gao Furong is very confident, but he admits that he has not done enough in terms of industrial application. How to make leading technology into a leading industry, he believes, is not something that HKUST can do alone, so they also proposed to establish HKUST CPPS injection molding intelligent development and application platform.

The importance of model innovation is self-evident. Gao Furong hopes to learn from Apple's innovation model.

"Apple's ecosystem first made some very good software and hardware. But there are also millions of developers working on different software in it. This is a very good ecosystem. So if we want to truly build a smart factory, one person's ability, energy and resources are very limited. I call for joint collaboration to build a smart factory for polymer processing. Our HKUST platform is open, and everyone can do their own focused work on it, which will also improve our functions and make our ecosystem stronger. So we have gathered a group of Chinese people who are engaged in automation, intelligence, and injection molding machines. Gather the wisdom of the crowd and achieve success." (Zhang Yingzi Xiao Ping)

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