As we all know, China is a big manufacturing country. Among the companies that want to go to the cloud and are going to the cloud, traditional manufacturing companies also account for a considerable proportion.
So how should such enterprises proceed when implementing digital transformation? Let's take a look at the experience of a traditional manufacturing company.
Guomao’s demands for digital transformation
As a long-term manufacturing enterprise focusing on the field of industrial transmission, Jiangsu Guomao Reducer Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Guomao"), established in 1993, is a benchmark enterprise in China's general machinery industry reduction and transmission industry. The deceleration and transmission products produced by it are known as "the food of industry", ranging from small table turntables and elevators to large ports, mines and factory production lines, and are widely used in many industries.
In the past 30 years, through continuous efforts and accumulation, Guomao has now become the leading enterprise in China and the third in the world in the reducer industry. It has benchmark customers in every application field and is committed to becoming "World-class transmission expert". At present, there are about 8 million Guomao reducers in operation in the world. If they are connected end to end, their length is equivalent to 1.13 times the radius of the earth.
Kong Donghua, assistant to the president and CIO of Jiangsu Guomao Reducer Co., Ltd., introduced to Fun Technology that Guomao’s production and industrial reducers include more than a dozen series of transmission machinery, with a total of 1.3 billion sample products, which are frequently ordered by customers. There are 300,000 pieces, and it has the business characteristics of "one product, one order" such as multiple varieties, small batches, and high customization. The development of the reducer industry has four stages: one is single-piece customization; the other is series design on demand; the third is multi-series parts highly standardized and modularized, which is also the current stage of the entire industry; the fourth stage is the future Mass personalization. There is a natural business gap between the third and fourth stages, which is called "mass customization", which means that almost every product in the future will be different. Whoever can cross this gap will be able to lead the world.
In view of this, Guomao decided to go to the cloud in an all-round way, so as not to need to manage the underlying data center infrastructure, reduce the instability of the IT system, and reduce the cost of long-term IT optimization iterations, and put forward a clear demand for digital transformation - in At the level of business objectives, it is necessary to achieve mass customization while providing excellent customer experience and large-scale cost advantages; at the level of digital supply capabilities, it is necessary to reconstruct the existing traditional enterprise management software architecture, optimize the relationship between each terminal application and the background, and realize Long-termism in digital systems.
"When mentioning traditional enterprises, many people will think of a picture like this: an old man is walking alone on the road at sunset... But in fact, this portrait of traditional enterprises is a false proposition, and traditional enterprises are the stock that most urgently needs digital transformation and upgrading. Enterprises. With the help of cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, as long as the transformation is done properly, traditional enterprises can also become vigorous." Kong Donghua said.
【President Assistant and CIO Kong Donghua of Jiangsu Guomao Reducer Co., Ltd.】
Choose a cloud service provider carefully like getting married
After deciding to implement digital transformation, Guomao put forward very strict conditions when selecting cloud service partners, and rigorously evaluated almost all cloud vendors. "We made a list at the time, detailing each of our needs and the services that the other party can provide. We regard choosing a partner as like getting married, and we are very cautious in choosing." Kong Donghua revealed.
Among many cloud service providers, Guomao put Amazon cloud technology first, which is mainly due to the following reasons:
1. Leading technology, safe and reliable, business overseas: As the pioneer and leader of global cloud computing technology, Amazon Cloud Technology's technology platform is very trustworthy, especially the security and support for overseas business are also particularly valued by Guomao . Although Guomao's current overseas market is not large enough, considering that once a company decides on its IT infrastructure, the risk of changing it in the future is extremely high, so choosing Amazon Cloud Technology is also to prepare in advance for the future expansion of the international market.
2. Professional services, architecture optimization, and smooth transition: Innovating on the cloud, many enterprises' applications are actually very superficial, but what Guomao shares wants is professional services. The professional services provided by Amazon Cloud Technology can teach manufacturing companies how to transform the system step by step, and can help companies smoothly pass the transition period of structure optimization. This is also a factor that Guomao shares attaches great importance to when choosing a cloud service provider.
3. Innovation culture, customer first, long-termism: As a technology company that writes innovation into its corporate DNA, Amazon's innovation culture is well-known among customers around the world. Including the customer first, reverse working method, long-termism, etc. that Amazon has always admired, are also recognized by Guomao.
【Park of Jiangsu Guomao Reducer Co., Ltd.】
The core business system is fully migrated to the cloud
Guomao believes that to achieve business goals, it is necessary to formulate a digital strategy that can be implemented, and the key lies in seven capabilities including personalized customization, agile planning, precise logistics, transparent production, flexible manufacturing, full traceability, and intensive energy consumption. To achieve these seven capabilities, the digital strategy needs to be promoted in three steps: first, transform and optimize business structures such as organizations, processes, and budgets to match business development; The traditional architecture; the third is to reconstruct the IT system on the cloud to achieve the advantages of elasticity, flexibility, high security and controllability.
With the help of Amazon Cloud Technology, Guomao Co., Ltd. has formulated an overall plan for the implementation of digital strategy:
1. The new business is deployed on Amazon Cloud Technology using the new architecture;
2. The stock system was gradually transformed and moved to Amazon Cloud Technology;
3. Focus on the interface standards and associations of various heterogeneous systems;
4. First decouple the major systems, and then gradually decouple the functional areas to achieve fragmentation and high reusability;
5. The ultimate goal: to iterate and innovate in all fields, get rid of the dependence on the architecture, and achieve luxuriant growth on a unified enterprise-level innovation platform.
Thanks to the technical support of Amazon Cloud Technology, Guomao Co., Ltd. has completed the development and launch of the quotation system and the logistics management system of the factory area, integrating ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System), APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling System), MES (Production Information Management System) and WMS (Warehouse Management System) and other core business systems have been fully migrated to Amazon Cloud Technology (in mainland China, NWCD operates in Ningxia region, and Sinnet operates in Beijing region). At the same time, Guomao also uses Amazon Cloud Technology's computing, container, storage, data analysis and other services to build a cloud quotation system and a precise logistics system.
[Jiangsu Guomao Reducer Co., Ltd. Factory Area]
Guomao’s Digital Transformation Achievements
After migrating to the cloud, the results of Guomao's digital transformation can be said to be immediate.
Taking the quotation system on the cloud as an example, the quotation system on the cloud built by Guomao Co., Ltd. based on the microservices and professional services of Amazon Cloud Technology also realizes the deployment of quotation applications on the webpage and mobile APP, completely saying goodbye to time-consuming and inefficient , The error-prone traditional manual quotation method has realized large-scale personalized customization of customer orders through the automation of the price calculation process, and achieved "flexible manufacturing". At the same time, Guomao can also quickly adjust quotations or formulate automated regular price protection strategies according to changes in raw materials, so as to better manage product pricing and ensure global product price consistency. Compared with the manual quotation in the past, the product price update release frequency of the cloud quotation system has been increased from once a quarter to once a week, and each salesperson can save 16 hours per month.
Let’s look at the LEAN precision logistics system again. The factory workshop of Guomao Co., Ltd. has to move about 100,000 tons of materials every year, but the production, logistics, manufacturing and financial systems are not connected with each other, which not only wastes production materials and factory space, but also leads to financial systems. Real-time monitoring of material handling. Through self-developed and built cloud-native precision logistics system, Guomao has realized the end-to-end full traceability of production materials, shortened the production planning and production capacity cycle from 7 days to 3 days, and also significantly saved the factory land and reduced the production cost. financial system burden.
"In the future, we hope to continue to transform old applications to meet the needs of new business innovation platforms. This includes continuing to apply the extensive, rich, and verified services in Amazon Cloud Technology, and to iterate, optimize, and integrate functions and services in various fields. Kong Donghua said, "Guomao believes that after a company develops to a certain scale, only with its own system can it have independent innovation, and should not rely too much on commercial suites. We hope that with the help of Amazon cloud technology, we can continue to consolidate Competitive advantages, and set a model for the majority of 'existing enterprises' in the digital transformation."
Digital innovation helps companies cope with uncertainty
The "black swan" incidents that have emerged in recent years have made many companies feel powerless in the face of increasingly complex external environments and uncertainties. So in the face of such an era full of uncertainties, how should enterprises achieve survival and development?
For this question, the answer given by Amazon Cloud Technology is-digital innovation.
【Amazon Cloud Technology Chief Cloud Computing Enterprise Strategic Advisor Dr. Zhang Xia】
Dr. Zhang Xia, Chief Cloud Computing Enterprise Strategy Consultant of Amazon Cloud Technology, pointed out that modern digital enterprises often have the following characteristics: provide superior customer experience, have a very flexible business model, be able to deliver good business results, and have an agile IT structure in the background and master the key Use new technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data, and have a steady stream of technical talents, while meeting compliance requirements. Digital innovation, on the other hand, can create business value for enterprises, improve customer experience, accelerate business and strategic decision-making, quickly grasp new technologies to achieve technological innovation, and ultimately create competitive advantages and promote business growth.
"Enterprises need to develop mentality, skills, and tools to carry out digital transformation. In terms of mentality, they must be oriented towards customer success and business results, improve the team's autonomy and business focus, and at the same time encourage innovation and be able to tolerate failure. This enables continuous trial and error to achieve rapid innovation; in terms of skills, being an agile leader can fully authorize and empower, and formulate clear and measurable success criteria; in terms of tools, practice the cloud-first strategy, build data-driven capabilities, At the same time embrace cutting-edge technology.”
Dr. Zhang Xia said that in the process of digital transformation of traditional manufacturing companies, we can see that successful cases all have the same elements. Excellent companies will seize every time and opportunity to practice basic digital skills and use technological means to achieve comprehensive digital transformation , Realize business agility and rapid innovation, and strive to do a good job in the next step, so that you can stand out when opportunities come.
"Guomao's digital transformation practice has set a model for the digital transformation of China's manufacturing industry. Amazon cloud technology relies on cloud services and solutions specially built for the manufacturing industry, an extensive partner network and rich global best practices of Industry 4.0 , Empower manufacturing customers to innovate rapidly, and help China's manufacturing industry to develop towards high-end, intelligent and green." said Li Xiaomang, General Manager of Commercial Market and Public Sector of Amazon Cloud Technology China.
