"Industry 4.0" concept machine tools were born in Shanghai

Recently, a well-known Japanese company will reduce the price of two products - machine tool CNC system and drilling and tapping center in the Chinese market, the drop is more than 20%. The important reason is that the CNC drilling and tapping center produced by Shenyang Machine Tool Group has entered the Pearl River Delta in a large way for the manufacturing of electronic product parts such as mobile phone casings. Previously, the market was almost monopolized by Japanese companies. The reason for breaking the monopoly is that Shenji Shanghai Research Institute independently developed the "i5" numerical control system in 5 years, and innovatively implanted the Internet gene, so that Siemens met to discuss: why the machine tool reflecting the concept of "Industry 4.0" was first born in China?
The question can be further focused on: Why was the i5 intelligent system born in Shanghai? What inspiration does this bring to Shanghai's technological innovation, especially the technological innovation of state-owned enterprises?
State-owned enterprises should have a long-term vision in their R&D decisions
The middle and high-end CNC machine tools used by Chinese enterprises have long been monopolized by foreign companies such as Siemens and Fanuc. In July 2006, under the direction of the central leadership, Shenji Group began to develop CNC systems. The Group has cooperated with Yaskawa Electric Co., LTD., Japan, an Italian CNC machine tool company, and Shenyang Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Group general manager Guan Xiyou also found university brother Zhu Zhihao, hoping that he can lead the research and development team of Shenyang aircraft, and cooperate with Japanese and Italian enterprises.
At that time, Zhu Zhihao, who was a teacher at Tongji University, was not a professor or an academician, but he had long studied CNC machine tools. When he learned that Shenji Group and the local government would jointly invest 100 million yuan a year in research and development funds, Zhu Zhihao was persuaded and decided to "go out of the mountain" to assist his brother, but he made two requirements: the research and development team must work in Shanghai; The management should ensure the autonomy of the R&D team and not interfere too much in the decision of the technical route.
"Shanghai is the highland of domestic scientific research talents, and the team can recruit more excellent employees by staying in Shanghai." Zhu Zhihao explained, "The second requirement is put forward because the administrative intervention of state-owned enterprises is often more, and the research and development team is vulnerable to influence in the choice of technical routes." Fortunately, the management of Shenyang provided a very relaxed environment, and the distance between Shanghai and Shenyang also made us in a 'free-range' state."
Zhu Zhihao formed the founding team of 10 people, most of them are "post-80" master, from Tongji, Shanghai Jiaotong University and other universities, education is not high, and have not studied CNC machine tools before, only related professional master. In November 2007, Shen Ji (Group) Design and Research Institute Shanghai branch was established, Zhu Zhihao led these young people on the road of "learning while doing".
At the beginning of the establishment of the branch, Japan Yaskawa wanted the Shanghai team to adopt their digital bus technology standards, Zhu Zhihao did not agree. It is true that after the adoption of this enterprise protocol, the research and development process can be greatly accelerated, and it is estimated that a numerical control system can be made in a year or two, but the scalability of the product will be limited. Shenji management had a "tangle" at that time: is it to introduce foreign technical standards and make products as soon as possible, or independent research and development to increase time and uncertainty? In the end, they chose the latter.
In this regard, Zhu Zhihao deeply felt: "The leaders of state-owned enterprises have a term of office, if two or three years of investment can not do something, the pressure can be imagined." "But for the sake of long-term development, soes' leaders should try to avoid being influenced by short-term interests when making decisions." The management of Shenji Group has waited patiently for five years and invested hundreds of millions of yuan continuously, in exchange for the breakthrough achievements of the Shanghai team.
Mastering core technologies should be "bottom-up"
Huang Yunying, master of Tongji University, was a member of the founding team. After the establishment of the Shanghai branch, he and his friends went to Italy for training. The company, which produces highly technical five-axis CNC machines, ushered these young "amateurs" through the door. However, the joint venture process since then has disappointed Huang Yunying and others: the Italian company has given the Chinese personnel a motion control platform in a "black box" state, and all data and codes are not open. All the Chinese people have to do is to sinicize the user interface, without any technical content. "After half a year of cooperation, we found that we couldn't learn the core technology, so we decided to develop it entirely on our own."