Seeing that environmental protection policies are about to change the current oversupply situation of the industry, the landscape of the printing business will also shift accordingly. Therefore, printing companies have begun to rush to establish a more efficient business management system to cope with the new situation, and smart factories may be a goal for printing enterprises.
The Calculations of Printing Enterprises
Nowadays, most of the pressure borne by printing enterprises comes from oversupply, and printing enterprises of different scales feel different levels of pressure. Although the total national printing output value is very high, more than half of the market share is concentrated in the above-scale enterprises, which only account for 3% of the total number of enterprises and have an annual turnover of more than 50 million yuan. As a result, small and medium-sized printing enterprises are trapped in the dilemma that large orders are out of their reach while there are numerous competitors for small orders.
In fact, the pressure of oversupply has existed for a long time. Many peers complain to each other when they meet, and it seems that the shrinking printing market has become a good excuse for the poor performance of enterprises. However, according to statistical data, the total domestic printing output value has not shrunk, and some printing enterprises are still expanding their equipment. If you ask printing machine suppliers such as Heidelberg and Komori, are most of the printing machines they have sold recently fully automatic "smart" new models? If you ask end-to-end ERP suppliers such as Little Antelope, when their customers introduce ERP, do they all install C2M intelligent processes at the same time? The answer is probably yes. This raises a new question: if the printing market is shrinking, what exactly are these printing enterprises investing in new technologies planning for?
Oversupply is a long-standing problem that cannot be solved by individual enterprises in a short time. Peers who pay attention to industry trends all know that what will affect the entire industry next is the industrial earthquake caused by environmental protection policies.
Recently, the government has elevated environmental protection inspections to a certain level and implemented them as a national policy. If a printing enterprise wants to pass the environmental protection inspection, it will inevitably have to invest in environmental protection facilities that have nothing to do with business benefits. This pressure is far greater than that brought by oversupply. Having to spend money when there is no business is inevitably an unbearable heavy burden for many small and medium-sized printing enterprises. Therefore, the author judges that the huge pressure from environmental protection will push a considerable proportion of enterprises off the stage of the printing industry. Then, the orders originally produced by these printing enterprises will be released. If the proportion is large enough, environmental protection policies will become the epicenter of the earthquake in the printing industry, and it is very likely that the long-standing problem of oversupply will be broken up. Once oversupply disappears, the business landscape will definitely be rearranged. If a printing enterprise has to hire more employees to complete the increased orders, can it cope with future changes? This is the plan behind those printing enterprises' investment in "smart" software and hardware at present.
The Definition of Smart Factory
When talking about "artificial intelligence", Jack Ma said he prefers the term "machine intelligence". It is not about turning machines into human-like entities; instead, as long as a machine can do the work more efficiently than humans, that work should be left to the machine. This is indeed true. AlphaGo was not created to defeat human masters, but it is a project by Google to implement and improve machine learning technology. The result proves that as long as there are patterns and rules, a machine can learn 24 hours a day and outperform a Go genius who has studied diligently for ten years. The rules of Go are so complex that the possible changes after each move are uncountable, yet machines can do better than humans. So, how does the complexity of printing technology or production procedures compare to that of Go, and what kind of performance will "machine intelligence" have in the printing industry?
Let us imagine: the printing machine automatically mounts and dismounts plates or adds ink; the order management system converts the customer's requirements for printed products into the specifications of the printing process, and then into the price; the ERP management system converts the paper-based production instruction into an imposition instruction for perfect binding or saddle stitching, and commands the computer to make plates according to the instruction... Are these jobs originally done by senior salespeople or workshop masters all follow certain patterns? Will machines do a better job than humans? If the answer is yes, we can define a "smart factory" — let machines handle as much work as they can, and let computers manage more work when computers can handle it.
Since 2000, the digitization of printing technology has mostly used computers to solve repetitive processes. However, judging which digital process can meet customer requirements still has to rely on human decision-making. Once the number of orders increases, the number of employees has to increase accordingly. Now, printing digitization has been developed for 20 years, and the rules for judging "order requirements" and "printing specifications" are not too complex for computers to process. If we can teach computers to judge which process should be used, and let computers issue commands to direct the automatic process to execute, is that not "intelligence"? Today, ERP can already use order information to direct production, achieve "paperless" production instructions, and keep various production processes from being chaotic. Only through this can tens of thousands of orders be processed.
In addition to production, printing enterprises have many departments handling various kinds of work. The daily work list can come from digital changes in the databases of other departments, and smart ERP has made even "payment vouchers" paperless. For example, the work of the warehouse today may come from the printed products that the workshop put into storage yesterday, or from the new consumables purchased by the procurement department yesterday. Without paper payment vouchers for the warehouse manager, relevant staff can still see the work they need to complete from the work list in the ERP. What is important is that paperless vouchers mean that the operation methods of all departments have standards, and employees no longer need long-term experience accumulation, because there is a SOP standard operating procedure.
A smart factory is not an unmanned factory, nor is it robots operating printing presses. Instead, it means that printing enterprises can use "information" to drive the working procedures or production processes of various departments. Many people think that smart printing factories are something of the future, but today many printing enterprises are using such management systems to handle their daily printing business. Does this count as a smart printing factory? The author believes that the difference between a smart factory and a traditional printing plant is that when an order comes in, no one needs to know about it manually, and when the courier takes away the printed products, no one needs to know about it manually either — only the computer needs to know everything.
Seeing that environmental protection policies are about to change the current oversupply situation of the industry, the landscape of the printing business will also shift accordingly. Therefore, printing companies have begun to rush to establish a more efficient business management system to cope with the new situation, and smart factories may be a goal for printing enterprises.
The Calculations of Printing Enterprises
Nowadays, most of the pressure borne by printing enterprises comes from oversupply, and printing enterprises of different scales feel different levels of pressure. Although the total national printing output value is very high, more than half of the market share is concentrated in the above-scale enterprises, which only account for 3% of the total number of enterprises and have an annual turnover of more than 50 million yuan. As a result, small and medium-sized printing enterprises are trapped in the dilemma that large orders are out of their reach while there are numerous competitors for small orders.
In fact, the pressure of oversupply has existed for a long time. Many peers complain to each other when they meet, and it seems that the shrinking printing market has become a good excuse for the poor performance of enterprises. However, according to statistical data, the total domestic printing output value has not shrunk, and some printing enterprises are still expanding their equipment. If you ask printing machine suppliers such as Heidelberg and Komori, are most of the printing machines they have sold recently fully automatic "smart" new models? If you ask end-to-end ERP suppliers such as Little Antelope, when their customers introduce ERP, do they all install C2M intelligent processes at the same time? The answer is probably yes. This raises a new question: if the printing market is shrinking, what exactly are these printing enterprises investing in new technologies planning for?
Oversupply is a long-standing problem that cannot be solved by individual enterprises in a short time. Peers who pay attention to industry trends all know that what will affect the entire industry next is the industrial earthquake caused by environmental protection policies.
Recently, the government has elevated environmental protection inspections to a certain level and implemented them as a national policy. If a printing enterprise wants to pass the environmental protection inspection, it will inevitably have to invest in environmental protection facilities that have nothing to do with business benefits. This pressure is far greater than that brought by oversupply. Having to spend money when there is no business is inevitably an unbearable heavy burden for many small and medium-sized printing enterprises. Therefore, the author judges that the huge pressure from environmental protection will push a considerable proportion of enterprises off the stage of the printing industry. Then, the orders originally produced by these printing enterprises will be released. If the proportion is large enough, environmental protection policies will become the epicenter of the earthquake in the printing industry, and it is very likely that the long-standing problem of oversupply will be broken up. Once oversupply disappears, the business landscape will definitely be rearranged. If a printing enterprise has to hire more employees to complete the increased orders, can it cope with future changes? This is the plan behind those printing enterprises' investment in "smart" software and hardware at present.
The Definition of Smart Factory
When talking about "artificial intelligence", Jack Ma said he prefers the term "machine intelligence". It is not about turning machines into human-like entities; instead, as long as a machine can do the work more efficiently than humans, that work should be left to the machine. This is indeed true. AlphaGo was not created to defeat human masters, but it is a project by Google to implement and improve machine learning technology. The result proves that as long as there are patterns and rules, a machine can learn 24 hours a day and outperform a Go genius who has studied diligently for ten years. The rules of Go are so complex that the possible changes after each move are uncountable, yet machines can do better than humans. So, how does the complexity of printing technology or production procedures compare to that of Go, and what kind of performance will "machine intelligence" have in the printing industry?
Let us imagine: the printing machine automatically mounts and dismounts plates or adds ink; the order management system converts the customer's requirements for printed products into the specifications of the printing process, and then into the price; the ERP management system converts the paper-based production instruction into an imposition instruction for perfect binding or saddle stitching, and commands the computer to make plates according to the instruction... Are these jobs originally done by senior salespeople or workshop masters all follow certain patterns? Will machines do a better job than humans? If the answer is yes, we can define a "smart factory" — let machines handle as much work as they can, and let computers manage more work when computers can handle it.
Since 2000, the digitization of printing technology has mostly used computers to solve repetitive processes. However, judging which digital process can meet customer requirements still has to rely on human decision-making. Once the number of orders increases, the number of employees has to increase accordingly. Now, printing digitization has been developed for 20 years, and the rules for judging "order requirements" and "printing specifications" are not too complex for computers to process. If we can teach computers to judge which process should be used, and let computers issue commands to direct the automatic process to execute, is that not "intelligence"? Today, ERP can already use order information to direct production, achieve "paperless" production instructions, and keep various production processes from being chaotic. Only through this can tens of thousands of orders be processed.
In addition to production, printing enterprises have many departments handling various kinds of work. The daily work list can come from digital changes in the databases of other departments, and smart ERP has made even "payment vouchers" paperless. For example, the work of the warehouse today may come from the printed products that the workshop put into storage yesterday, or from the new consumables purchased by the procurement department yesterday. Without paper payment vouchers for the warehouse manager, relevant staff can still see the work they need to complete from the work list in the ERP. What is important is that paperless vouchers mean that the operation methods of all departments have standards, and employees no longer need long-term experience accumulation, because there is a SOP standard operating procedure.
A smart factory is not an unmanned factory, nor is it robots operating printing presses. Instead, it means that printing enterprises can use "information" to drive the working procedures or production processes of various departments. Many people think that smart printing factories are something of the future, but today many printing enterprises are using such management systems to handle their daily printing business. Does this count as a smart printing factory? The author believes that the difference between a smart factory and a traditional printing plant is that when an order comes in, no one needs to know about it manually, and when the courier takes away the printed products, no one needs to know about it manually either — only the computer needs to know everything.