The most important aspect of industrial manufacturing is the process and workmanship, and the key to improving the process and reducing the workforce is the machine tool. Industry 2.0 is based on people, people operating machine tools, look at the drawings, using calipers to detect processing components. If something goes wrong, people will go back and modify it. Industrial 3.0 uses CNC machine tools, people do not have to do during the manufacturing process, controlled by the NC program. However, it is also necessary to operate the three-dimensional monitor when detecting and manually adjust the processing data after finding the error. Therefore, Industry 3.0 has to use people.
The
Industry 4.0's breakthrough lies in the use of CNC machine tools, plus fully automated production lines, detection robots, scanning of the workpiece through a laser scanning system, real-time communication real-time adjustment. The adjusted information will be transmitted to the machine tool, and the machine tool will be continuously recycled and tested again. According to this method, real-time adjustment of processing data, in theory, the difference in work can be done very small. We all know that Mercedes-Benz BMW is very good, precisely because of their poor control, which is generally within a millimeter. The differential control of domestic cars is not so precise, and may be two or three millimeters or even six or seven millimeters.

China's machine tool industry has been lagging behind since the 2.0 era. After joining the WTO in 2001, China earned a few trillion U.S. dollars in clothing, socks, and textiles around the world. It stands to reason that there is enough money to do a full digital upgrade. However, between 2001 and 2009, the Chinese machine tool industry did not pay attention to R&D, and it was still buying various Western control systems. At that time, some local governments and state-owned enterprises did not attach importance to it and considered that low labor cost was our advantage. Therefore, we only paid attention to attracting investment and not upgrading technology. Until 2009, under the promotion of the country, the machine tool industry began to pay attention to this matter, at this time China's industrial level has lagged behind.
The
Despite such a large gap, CNC machine tools are still the hard bones of China's manufacturing industry. At present, the focus of our R&D should be placed on the core control system PLC of CNC machine tools. The Europeans of this system studied for 60 years: from the beginning of the development of CNC machine tools, from the machine tool control system to the numerical control production, to the CNC factory and the CNC industrial chain. China only studied five or six years of CNC machine tools, but it could not wait, because the market recognition and improvement will take time. At present, the most crucial thing is to quickly understand the existing technological achievements of the West and complete the development of five-axis CNC machine tools with completely independent intellectual property rights.
The
More importantly, we urgently need to recognize that Industry 4.0 is an extension of digital manufacturing technology, an extension of Industry 3.0. The 4.0 era is the age of digital economy. Digital factories, digital industries, and digital technologies have covered the entire industry chain. Past digital technologies only control machine tools, and now they control the entire industrial chain, including orders and even the entire market, and cover almost all social activities. (The author is chief representative of the European H2020 Development Plan - OASC project in China. This article is organized by the author's speech at the "China Manufacturing Professional Upgrade Seminar" at Xinhua Business School)