Nantong Coship: From Manufacturing to "Intelligent Manufacturing"

Founded in 1994, Shenzhen Tongzhou Electronics Co. , Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise focusing on providing leading smart home products and services for global users. The company continues to actively expand the layout around the strategic development idea of ​​"smart continent, connect the future", continuously enhance the company's core competitiveness, and further expand multi-functional smart set-top boxes, smart routing, smart gateways, smart speakers, network broadband products, digital front-end Equipment, as well as the research and development and promotion of the new generation of DVB+IP+OTTbusiness integration platform, to consolidate the innovation and market advantages of the business integration platform and smart home business. On this basis, the company actively deploys emerging fields and markets such as smart homes, smart communities, smart buildings, smart parks and the Internet of Things, and expands new growth space through resource integration and model innovation. Comprehensively assist operators to upgrade to "smart" and "Internet of Things", and promote the development of the global digital video and Internet of Things industries. At the same time, the company is also actively evaluating and exploring new applications of artificial intelligence, 8K, 5G and other new technologies in the video field.

 

Since the advent of artificial intelligence technology in the 1950s, artificial intelligence technology has gradually penetrated into all walks of life, but how does artificial intelligence improve the efficiency and competitiveness of enterprises? How to use artificial intelligence technology to create efficient business value and economic value? Returning to the reality of Tongzhou, how does artificial intelligence technology interact with the manufacturing industry? Nantong Tongzhou moves from manufacturing to "intelligent manufacturing", where does it start and which direction does it go?

 

One: Starting from the core pain points, with the phased goal of building "intelligent manufacturing capabilities"

With the in-depth layout of Tongzhou's global digital video end-to-end business, Nantong Tongzhou's video terminal manufacturing business has grown rapidly for three consecutive years. Up to now, the production volume has increased by nearly 50% compared with the same period last year .

 

The rapid growth of the business is also accompanied by the continuous increase of labor and material costs, the increase of production costs, the increase of discrete orders and the increase of personalized customized production requirements and other practical problems. In the face of changes in the business model of current products and changes in the economic environment of the new market, on the basis of carefully evaluating its core competitiveness and core pain points, and doing preparatory work such as process sorting, process specifications, and reasonable planning, Nantong Tongzhou will build " Intelligent manufacturing capability" is the phased goal, build the most suitable quantitative direction system such as production process optimization, quality improvement, cost reduction, profit improvement, etc., and gradually move towards a perfect intelligent manufacturing system.

 

2. Self-created "intelligent manufacturing capabilities" to improve and speed up production rhythm, increase output and efficiency

Since the establishment of the "Intelligent Collaborative Robot Automated Production Test Development" project team in October 2018, Nantong Tongzhou has successively carried out the selection and verification of applicable robots; in order to adapt to the operation mode of the factory's inherent belt production line, it has focused on the development and verification of intelligent robots. "Indeterminate speed" visual effective recognition system; in order to adapt to the complexity of the test interface of the set-top box and to realize the effective grasping, plugging and unplugging of the set-top box by the robot, a special robot "gripper" and special tooling fixtures are carried out. It is ahead of other supporting hardware design solutions in the collaborative robot industry, and has created two compatible intelligent robot operating hardware platforms, "tiling method" and "stacking method", to effectively improve operation efficiency and stability; In order to realize the transformation of the set-top box test from the artificial sensory and visual judgment test method to the intelligent automatic test method, the project team completed the development and verification and realized the interaction between the intelligent robot software system and the set-top box test software system; in order to effectively realize the intelligent test of the intelligent collaborative robot Operation, the project team develops and implements a user interface operating system based on android pad for robot management and configuration to meet the needs of intelligent and simple operation and diversified product testing.

 

To sum up, under the circumstance of effectively completing the software and hardware development work of the four aspects of automatic test production of intelligent collaborative robots, it can be seen that through self-made "intelligent manufacturing capabilities" , Nantong Tongzhou can carry out the corresponding processing equipment and auxiliary equipment. Integrated and integrated aggregation, and become an "intelligent manufacturing unit" in manufacturing, which is used to improve equipment start-up rate, speed up production rhythm, and "simple and rude" to increase efficiency by increasing output, in order to achieve the sustainable development of Tongzhou Electronics work towards strategic goals.

 

3. The production process is fully digitized, realizing the interconnection of people, machines and materials, reducing costs and increasing efficiency

The ultimate goal of intelligent manufacturing is to seamlessly integrate equipment, personnel and materials in different production links into a collaborative work collaboration in the entire production process, to achieve interconnection, and then to achieve dynamic optimal allocation of resources and product improvement in the entire production process. Quality control.

 

Nantong Tongzhou Electronics plans to introduce intelligent collaborative robots for production operations as follows:

n " Phase I" will introduce "complete machine testing robots" for three production lines, reduce the 48 test manpower produced by the original manual operation to 12, and directly replace 36 test manpower with intelligent collaborative robots, and the annual labor cost will be saved by about 2 million; the efficiency of production testing will be increased to 120%, and the leakage rate of manual testing can be effectively avoided in terms of test quality, which can effectively strengthen the reliability of testing. Improve shipment quality and enhance customer satisfaction.

n " Phase II" will develop and introduce intelligent collaborative robots to automate production operations in the assembly and packaging of set-top boxes, reducing the 87 groups and manpower produced by original manual operations to 27 groups and manpower, and directly using intelligent collaborative robots instead With 60 teams and manpower, the annual labor cost will be saved by about 3.3 million. By integrating the whole machine testing manpower replaced by intelligent robots, the three lines of the set-top box machine production workshop will save about 5.3 million labor costs per year. It is expected to save 30 million labor costs for the company in the next five years.

n " Phase III" will develop and introduce alternative production operations of intelligent robots for the whole process.

 

At present, Nantong Tongzhou factory has 9 SMT production lines, 3 DIP production lines, 2 OEM production lines, and 5 set-top box product complete unit, testing, and packaging production lines. The "software/hardware" supporting production facilities are complete, and the monthly production capacity of set-top box products can be Meet the delivery volume of 500,000 units. At present, the set-top box business mainly includes S4110 series, S4100 series, S4020 series, N9300 series, etc. of domestic customers in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Guangdong, Guizhou and other regions; the international set-top box business mainly includes Sri Lanka, Colombia, the United States, India, Russia, Brazil, N8784B, N8783C, N8786C, CCM8200, N8774U, N8784H, etc. from customers in Malaysia, Nepal and other countries; OEM production capacity is about 200,000 units per month; the production line is busy, and employees work overtime to complete production Task. In the future, after the full introduction of intelligent collaborative robots in Nantong Tongzhou factory to realize intelligent manufacturing and production operations, the monthly production capacity of set-top boxes will exceed 600,000 units, while the monthly production capacity of OEM products will exceed 300,000 units. 600 people are reduced to 150 people, which will greatly improve production efficiency and reduce labor costs.

 

4. Seize the future development opportunities with intelligent manufacturing

The advent of Internet of Things technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, cloud technology, and big data has brought about a big change in the manufacturing situation. Intelligent manufacturing is born for the current predicament of the manufacturing industry!

 

Under the current trend of "life and death transformation" in the manufacturing industry, Nantong Tongzhou will not forget its original intention and forge ahead. The development and realization of intelligent manufacturing by Nantong Tongzhou is of "epoch-making" significance, which not only lays the foundation for the company's transformation from labor-intensive manufacturing to automated intelligent manufacturing, but will also become a new benchmark in the set-top box manufacturing industry.