On October 21, 2023, the 2023 International Forum on Intelligent Manufacturing Innovation was successfully concluded in Wuhan Optics Valley in China.
 
As one of the series of the first "Donghu Forum", this forum is focusing on the international intelligent manufacturing technology frontiers, application prospects of artificial intelligence, digital twin and other emerging technologies in manufacturing industry, innovation and development of industrial software, application and roadmap of intelligent equipment and intelligent factory. The forum attracted more than 1,000 guests from all over the world including industry and academy experts, manufacturing technical directors and representatives of intelligent manufacturing solution suppliers.
   
Professor Ji Zhou, Honorary President and Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Mr. Xinyu Shao, CPC Hubei Committee Member, Executive Vice Governor, Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor Peigen Li, Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor Huayong Yang, Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chairman of the ICIM, Mr. Feng Yanfei, Director of the Hubei Provincial Department of Science and Technology, Professor Andrew Kusiak of the University of Iowa, Dr. Frank Chongwoo Park, Professor of Seoul National University, Dr. Chunsheng Yang, Principal Scientist of the National Research Council Canada, Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering, Professor Weiming Shen，Professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering, Yubo Lian, Chief Scientist of BYD, Professor Liang Gao, Vice President of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Professor Zhouping Yin, Dean of Mechanical Engineering School of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Professor Bin Li, President of Hubei Intelligent Equipment Industrial Research Institute and other leaders and experts attended the meeting. Professor Ji Zhou and Professor Peigen Li, hosted the forum. Mr. Xinyu Shao delivered an opening speech.    
Big names gathered to discuss intelligent manufacturing innovation
Many well-known experts in the field of intelligent manufacturing gathered at the Forum to discuss the development of intelligent manufacturing and innovation driven by intelligent manufacturing.
 
Professor Andrew Kusiak from the University of Iowa delivered a wonderful speech on the theme of "From Digitization to Hyper-automation of Manufacturing Industry". He pointed out that hyper-automation aims at automation of business and information processes in an enterprise and it involves machine learning, task and process automation, decision-making automation, business process management, and it may involve integration platform as a service (iPaaS). Hyper-automation complements automation with decision-making technology and AI drives the progress in hyper-automation. He believes that hyper-automation focuses on business and information aspects of manufacturing and has tremendous application potential, and the return on investment is key to industry-wide progress.  
Professor Frank Chongwoo Park, Seoul National University spoke on "Industrial Automation in the Age of AI." He said that AI and Robotics together are transforming manufacturing and industrial automation and will be ubiquitous in the Factory of the Future. He also analyzed the current applications and challenges of AI in the manufacturing industry, focusing on the application of AI in industrial robot systems. He believes that many of the problems in industrial AI are small data problems, and industrial AI requires small, light and fast models, which mostly are large resource-intensive foundation models, such as large language models. He stressed that domain expertise is essential for the application of industrial AI. The use of robots in semi-structured and unstructured environments is a challenge and leveraging AI methods, such as learning from demonstration, is a promising path forward.  
Professor Huayong Yang gave a wonderful speech on the topic of "A New Paradigm of AI-enabled Scientific Research—Exploration and Practice on "Data + Mechanism"-driven Integration Platform". He explained the evolution of the four paradigms of scientific research in detail, analyzed the localization needs of the intelligent integration platform, and explained the development and difficulties of it. He said that it is difficult for empirical data to guide the future development of science and technology, coupled with realistic risks, a large number of industrial simulation software has the bottleneck problem, and the bottleneck problem exists in the approximation algorithm and engineering ability. Therefore, AI model reduction algorithm has great potential in the application of industrial simulation software.  
Mr. Yubo Lian, Chief Scientist of BYD, made a wonderful speech on the topic of " Collaborative Innovation——High-quality Development of New-energy Automobile Industry Driven by Intelligent Manufacturing". Mr. Lian introduced BYD's R&D and innovation achievements in the entire industrial chain from materials, components and vehicles, and demonstrated the green, advanced smart auto factory that BYD has built with the help of intelligent manufacturing technology. BYD has realized the production and management collaboration of distributed factories in various regions and improved the production efficiency. He stressed that China's manufacturing industry should put innovation first, adhere to independent research and development, and improve coordination across upstream and downstream industrial chain to achieve the goal of high-quality development.  
Dr. Chunsheng Yang shared the AI-enabled PHM Solution for Complex Systems. Yang said the developed AI-enabled PHM technology has been proved as a useful and efficient solution for smart maintenance of the complex systems and energy management systems. In the past two decades, they have developed an AI-based solution for PHM solution, and he also introduced the developed core technologies and some applications in production. He pointed out that so far, AI-based PHM technology is still a component-oriented and a data-dependent solution, the PHM model must be able to adapt to operational environment changes in production.  
Professor Weiming Shen shared Potential Applications of Industrial Foundation Models in Intelligent Manufacturing. Industrial Foundation Models (IFMs) are foundation models trained with industrial datasets and domain expert knowledge bases, and can be applied to solve industrial problems. Professor Shen explained the key characteristics of foundation models, key technologies behind FMs/IFMs, as well as the potential applications of IFMs in intelligent manufacturing and industry. He pointed out that at present, the exploration of foundation models in the field of industrial knowledge Q&A is in the initial stage; the overall level of the domestic large model is nearly the same as GPT3.5, and in some industries is even higher. He believes IFMs have great potential in artificial intelligence applications.  
Professor Liang Gao shared the top 10 development trends of industrial software. According to Professor Gao, the integration of design and analysis and integration of material and structure will be a trend. The future of design will be shifted from CAD to HAD (Human-Aided design) and to HD (CAD + HAD = Hybrid Design). Complex design spaces will need conformal geometry, smart factories will need CAE technology, and industrial software will need more support from national technology innovation centers.  
Professor Zhouping Yin gave a wonderful speech on the theme of "Making Manufacturing Equipment Smarter". He shared three development trends of intelligent manufacturing equipment, including special intelligence, flexible intelligence and general intelligence, and explained in detail the application and practice of intelligent perception in intelligent manufacturing. He said that intelligent perception technology is the core of manufacturing intelligence, is an important bridge between artificial intelligence services and industrial society. It can perceive, identify and understand the information of the environment and objects, which will help artificial intelligence to identify, diagnose, predict and make decisions on information, thus to achieve efficient information perception.  
Professor Bin Li delivered a wonderful speech on the topic of "Intelligent Production Data Governance and Practice". He explained the concept and significance of data governance in detail, analyzed the characteristics of production data and the key points of governance programs, and shared the application cases of intelligent production data governance. He said that data is the foundation of the information system of manufacturing enterprises, and data governance can help manufacturing enterprises standardize the data process and improve the quality of enterprise data, which is the key for manufacturing enterprises to successfully achieve digital transformation.  
 
The practical experience of intelligent manufacturing of leading manufacturing enterprises has important value in demonstrating and guiding other manufacturing enterprises to promote digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing. The conference invited a number of well-known manufacturing enterprises including Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group, FiberHome Telecommunication, and Mengshi Automobile to share their digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing practical experience.
At this forum, representatives of a number of mainstream domestic and international intelligent manufacturing solution suppliers demonstrated their technologies, solutions and applications, including ZWSOFT, Advanced Dynamics, Kmsoft, Shenzhen ELS Technology, Lyric Robot Research Institute, Foxconn Industrial Internet, Dassault Systemes, and IPS.   
In order to allow the participants to understand the solutions of various manufacturers more intuitively, the conference also set up a manufacturer's booth outside the venue, setting up a bridge for communication between enterprises and manufacturers. Participants can learn about cutting-edge product technology, industry-leading solutions and application practices through face-to-face communication and interaction with manufacturers, and provide reference and reference for the future digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises.
 
Insights reveal cutting-edge trends in smart manufacturing
The conference also revealed the five trends of digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing:
 
Artificial intelligence has become one of the key technologies of digital transformation in manufacturing. The rapid development of the digital economy has created favorable conditions and technical environment for the development of the artificial intelligence industry. As a key emerging technological capability, artificial intelligence has made great progress in natural language processing, machine vision, decision optimization and other fields, and has become a hub for the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry, accelerating the deep integration with the manufacturing industry, and bringing great improvements in production efficiency and management. In the future, artificial intelligence will be ubiquitous in manufacturing factories.
 
Digital twin technology has a broad application prospect in manufacturing. With the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies sweeping the world, digital twins have been more and more widely used, especially in the field of intelligent manufacturing, digital twins are considered to be an effective means to achieve the interactive integration of the manufacturing information world and the physical world. Through the use of digital twin technology, it deepens the design, production, logistics, service and other links, penetrates through the whole life cycle of products, penetrates into equipment, workshops, enterprises and industrial chains, and helps manufacturing enterprises upgrade and achieve high-quality development.
 
To promote digital transformation, data governance will be an important fundamental and key factor. Data is the foundation of digital transformation. Only by doing a good job of data governance and fully exploiting the value of data can manufacturers promote digital transformation faster and better. Clean data is an important reason for Fiberhome to achieve customer-centric digital transformation. Based on enterprise architecture, Fiberhome carries out global data governance, including the construction of data management system & data base, and projects with typical needs to promote data governance work to build results, such as business transparency and visibility, promote decision making, and ultimately achieve the consumption value of data business. Double the total factor productivity of data innovation.
 
Green manufacturing will become one of the key concerns for enterprises. Towards high-quality development, the full implementation of green manufacturing is not only an inevitable choice to promote new industrialization, but also a key link to achieve high-quality development of manufacturing. In the process of development, manufacturing enterprises should take into account industrial structure, energy and resources, ecological environment, health and safety, climate change and other factors, integrate the concept of green development and management requirements into the whole life cycle of product design, manufacturing, logistics, use, recycling and other aspects, promote the green transformation and upgrading of traditional industries with profound changes in manufacturing mode, and lead the green development of emerging industries from a high starting point. They should work together to reduce carbon, reduce pollution, promote green development and promote growth.
 
Manufacturers will need to strengthen talent training. Talent is the key to digital transformation and smart manufacturing. Manufacturing enterprises need to strengthen digital and intelligent manufacturing related technical training, improve employees' intelligent manufacturing literacy, so that different job functions have intelligent manufacturing knowledge and practical ability in different fields. Intelligent manufacturing involves a wide range of knowledge, and enterprises need to formulate a thorough intelligent manufacturing talent training program to constantly enrich the resources of talent training.
 
The forum concluded successfully. By gathering a group of well-known academic experts in the field of intelligent manufacturing, representatives of benchmarking intelligent manufacturing enterprises and excellent representatives of intelligent manufacturing solution suppliers, the forum comprehensively presented the current new technologies, new ideas and application cases in the field of intelligent manufacturing, and provided great help for manufacturing enterprises to promote digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing.