Blockchain (or block chain) is a concatenated text record that connects and protects content by cryptography. Each block contains the encrypted hash of the previous block, the corresponding timestamp, and transaction data. This design makes the content of the block difficult to tamper with characteristic.
Blockchain and Industrial Internet Cooperation
As a trust machine, the block chain brings opportunities for efficient collaboration between institutions, institutions, people, and equipment. The collaboration between block chain and industrial Internet is imperative.
The global epidemic has not yet been effectively controlled. In response to the risks, the country has also proposed a "new infrastructure" to boost economic growth and mitigate the downside risks of the global economy. Xinhuanet also published an article saying that "new infrastructure" has become a development consensus, which not only represents the future direction of high-quality economic development, but also becomes a new engine for the development of the digital economy, and will become a basic production tool for the society like water and air. Among them, as many export-oriented industrial enterprises directly facing the downturn of the global economy, whether they can withstand this risk, and building the digital capabilities of enterprises under the opportunity of the new infrastructure will become the key to rapid economic recovery after the epidemic. As a trust machine, the block chain provides a safe, efficient, and credible technical method, which brings opportunities for solving the problem of efficient collaboration between institutions, institutions, people, and equipment. Therefore, the chain (block chain) network (industrial Internet) collaboration is imperative.
The "Three Mountains" of Manufacturing
Manufacturing has a decisive position for a big country, which is also an important reason why President Trump has proposed to return manufacturing to the United States in recent years. China is a major manufacturing country, and the level of development of the manufacturing industry is related to the development of the country and the living standards of the people. However, in recent years, China's manufacturing enterprises have encountered some difficulties and problems in their business development. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the "three big mountains", "the iceberg of the market, the high mountain of financing, and the volcano of transformation", are most prominent. These "three mountains" hit the pain points of manufacturing enterprises. For example, there are many restrictions on market access, and various "rolling door", "glass door" and "revolving door" are urgently needed to be broken; changes in the external environment, especially the spread of the epidemic this year, have been adopted in many countries Including the means of blocking the source of infection, global consumption has been suppressed by the pneumonia epidemic. This situation puts tremendous pressure on the export of enterprises. Due to partial disconnection from consumer demand or insufficient ability to resist risks, the products cannot be sold; financing has encountered obstacles, which has led to tight capital chains for enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Enterprise reinvestment and development capabilities; product quality, technical standards, and brand recognition are not high, and fierce market competition has led to difficulties in enterprise transformation. These problems have become "barriers" to the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, and are also the key issues that must be solved for China's economy to move toward high-quality development. Only by removing the "three mountains" mentioned by the general secretary can we create a better environment for the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.
For example, in the field of electronic information, SMT (Surface Mount Technology) as a new generation of electronic assembly technology is an important basic industry with a wide range of applications. Since the reform and opening-up, China's electronic information industry has made tremendous achievements, and the SMT industry has contributed greatly. My country's SMT industry is developing rapidly, and it has become the world's largest and most important electronic manufacturing service market. The number of SMT production lines in the country exceeds 80,000, of which China Electronic Information Industry Group has more than 400 production lines. But for some time, market, financing, transformation, and other issues have restricted the high-quality development of the industry. From a market perspective, with the acceleration of the development of the electronic information industry, users' needs for high-end equipment, substitute production, quality control, and timeliness of delivery are becoming more and more strong, and the product quality and technical standards of traditional SMT production enterprises are difficult to meet the demand. At the same time, SMT's multi-variety and small-batch characteristics lead to high procurement costs and difficulty in developing substitute materials business, which poses great challenges to SMT companies. The development of the market has seriously affected financing, and the gross profit of the SMT industry has gradually decreased. Small and micro-enterprises among them have begun to face difficulties in financing and expensive financing. From the perspective of transformation, on the one hand, fierce competition forces enterprises to transform. On the other hand, enterprises lack low-cost funding sources, resulting in insufficient investment in high-end equipment, product quality, technical standards, and brand recognition. Development, in the "transitional crater", enterprises are advancing and retreating.
As another example, in the field of consumption (retail), as the new generation of "post-00" has gradually become the main force of social production and consumption, their living taste and cognitive level are significantly different from their parents, and consumption upgrades have already occurred. E-commerce platforms featuring the Internet, smart vending equipment, O2O, and other models are increasingly becoming a form of consumption accepted by society. Under this background, advanced technologies such as the Internet, block chain, big data, and artificial intelligence will play a very important role in promoting the development of small and medium-sized enterprises and are an effective means to solve the pain points of enterprise development. However, due to the application of new e-commerce platforms and other technologies, and the exploration of new business models, they often have high costs and high risks. Under the pressure of survival, most small and medium-sized enterprises have no ability and willingness to adopt new technologies and explore new models, resulting in ineffective Good, can not adapt to new market needs.
Faced with these challenges, how should China companies breakthrough?
In 2012, General Electric Company of America first proposed the concept of "industrial Internet". According to the statement at the time, "Industrial Internet is the connection of people, data and machines." In recent years, due to the rapid rise in labor costs, companies urgently need to use the Internet of Things to reduce their dependence on labor and improve productivity and quality. Specifically, the enterprise closely connects equipment, production lines, employees, factories, warehouses, suppliers, products and customers through an open and global communication network platform, sharing various elements and resources of the entire process of industrial production, so that Its digitization, networking, automation, and intelligence enable it to increase efficiency and reduce costs. At present, many giants have launched their own platforms, and there are international high-quality solution providers such as Siemens, ABB, and GE. The Chinese market also has participants such as Haier, China Aerospace Science and Technology, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. It seems that the traditional manufacturing industry has high hopes for the industrial Internet.
The more participants, the bigger the problem with the Industrial Internet?
In 2020, the Industrial Internet is included in China's new infrastructure. According to the plan currently seen, the new infrastructure will consist of 22,000 projects, continue to invest for many years, and a large plan with a total investment value of 49.6 trillion yuan will be implemented in 2020. 7.6 trillion yuan. As an integral part of the new infrastructure, there is no doubt that the Industrial Internet will develop rapidly in the coming years.
Despite the large number of participants, all of which are the world's top technology companies, the technology sounds very advantageous, and the country also pays attention to it, but the Industrial Internet also has its defects and problems that are difficult to solve.
Poor network connectivity
Unlike the consumer Internet with a unified and open network, the Industrial Internet currently does not have a unified communication protocol. Different industrial devices have different data interface access interfaces, leading to difficulties in data acquisition and circulation. To put it simply, the Industrial Internet itself wants to connect factories, suppliers and enterprise customers, but because everyone uses different equipment or different levels, even the communication protocol may be different, which leads to The industrial network is fragmented, the information transmission between enterprises is difficult, and real-time interconnection is not possible.
Network and data security is difficult to guarantee
Each industry has its own personalized network security needs. A common network security solution cannot fully meet the deep-seated needs of all industries. It is difficult to form a general network security solution. Since the industrial Internet connects reality and the network, in addition to the theft and tampering of data files, security problems may also affect actual production and directly affect the safety of industrial operations.
Block chain opportunities
In response to the new needs and challenges facing the current Industrial Internet, block chain technology provides a "supply-side reform" solution for efficient collaboration and innovative management in the industrial field. Block chain technology is called "the machine of trust" and it is a disruptive technology that is leading a new round of technological and industrial changes in the world. It is expected to become a "source of origin" for global technological innovation and model innovation, and promote the "information Internet". "Value Internet" changes. At present, China's block chain industry is gradually taking shape, and it has begun to be rapidly applied in the fields of supply chain finance, credit reporting, product traceability, copyright protection, digital identity, government data transfer, and epidemic prevention. Accelerating the in-depth integration of block chain and industrial Internet is conducive to the “reduction of costs” and “improvement of efficiency” of the real economy, the establishment of an “integrity industrial environment”, and the promotion of technological, organizational and efficiency changes in China ’s economic system. For enterprises, the core value of the block chain is to comprehensively record the data of the company's daily production and operation activities through technical means, and provide true and credible, unalterable trust support for quality supervision, product sales, and financing activities. The specific ideas are as follows:
- With the help of four major technological changes: machine consensus, shared ledger, smart contract, and privacy protection, it provides industrial Internet with data mutual trust, interconnection and sharing based on industry norms and standards and in compliance with inter-enterprise agreements;
- Its "physical distribution, logical multi-center, and strong supervision center" multi-level architecture design provides a "loose coupling" connection method between government regulatory departments and industrial enterprises (government and enterprise, enterprise, and enterprise). The possibility of providing "flexible" compliance supervision under the maximum premise that affects the normal production and business activities of the enterprise;
- Its distributed deployment method can provide a path of rational construction and development by industry, region, stage, step, step by step according to the different conditions of the actual industry.
On November 9, 2019, at the "Industrial Internet + Block chain" seminar organized by the China Industrial Internet Research Institute, Chen Chun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, attended the symposium. Technological advantages can be deeply integrated with the Industrial Internet, especially in the fields of industrial Internet data validation, accountability, and transactions. It has broad application prospects and provides a solid technical foundation for building a national industrial Internet data resource management and service system.
"Carrying out the research on" In-depth application and innovative development of industrial Internet + block chain "is very important to promote the digital, networked, and intelligent transformation of China's industrial production and promote the high-quality development of the real economy." Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications believes that in the future, block chain and industrial Internet will achieve integrated development in multiple fields such as logo analysis, collaborative manufacturing, supply chain finance, edge cloud collaboration, and industry innovation applications. The deputy chief engineer of the China Industrial Internet Research Institute said that the essence and core of the Industrial Internet are too tightly connect and integrate equipment, production lines, factories, suppliers, products, and customers to form cross-device, cross-system, cross-plant, cross-region Interconnection. Block chain technology is a brand-new infrastructure and distributed computing paradigm with multi-center, non-tamper able data, traceability, and other characteristics, so it has broad prospects for innovative applications in the field of the industrial Internet.
According to the opinions of industry experts, to further strengthen the improvement of block chain on the competitiveness of enterprises and the external environment, it is necessary to seize the "two ends" of enterprise production and operation activities: the manufacturing end and the consumer end. Only by realizing the authenticity of the data at these two ends can we achieve the full integration of the company's entire production and operation activities, comprehensively improve the company's production capacity and sales capacity, and enhance the trust of the government, partners, financial institutions and consumers in the enterprise. Solve the "iceberg of the market" by satisfying consumer needs and enhancing consumer confidence; provide real proof of the authenticity of trade and repayment ability of banks and other financial institutions through real and effective production and sales data, and cross the "mountain of financing"; In the end, with the improvement of competitiveness and the improvement of the external environment, it helps companies successfully cross the "transition volcano".
"Power points" of the chain network collaboration
The main points discussed above are ideas. On top of the block chain technology, a collaboration platform can be created for multiple participants in the industrial ecosystem. Everyone can retain their privacy and unwilling to share knowledge while sharing processes, rules, and Data under privacy protection. How to organically coordinate the industrial Internet and block chain technology in actual operation?
- Encourage enterprises to connect the monitoring and management of production and manufacturing, as well as the necessary procurement and sales data through block chain technology throughout the process. This involves deploying a large number of sensors, collecting first-hand information, and truly achieving data credibility. There are a large number of devices in the industrial field, and a large number of people and things interact in it. Therefore, block chain technology is needed to solve the trusted identity of industrial devices, device registration management, device access control, and device status monitoring. When a participant (device or person) says "I am me", they can quickly verify their identity and confirm that they are trusted and safe. Industrial applications are different from other applications. The process is very complicated and there are many industries. In addition to people and institutions, the special parties also include the diversity of industrial equipment. Block chain enables related parties to share data, processes, and rules in a more secure, credible, and accessible manner.
The data of the production link is used as an effective proof to ensure the accuracy of the purchase and sales data and to provide government, regulatory agencies, banks, and other financial institutions with a higher-than-usual contract and order-based trade authenticity certificate. Make full use of the characteristics of block chain technology to spread trusted data to the outside, provide an effective basis for financing in the short term, and form a partial or even nationally integrated corporate credit environment data support in the long term.
- Industrial production has increasingly evolved to "cloud" production, or networked production, which is a continuation of the social division of labor. More and more products are not processed on the same assembly line, but the original process is divided into small units, and each unit is handed over to independent companies and professional companies. The new industrial process system is actually completed by many companies. By introducing the trusted and safe technology of block chain distributed system, it can help the production efficiency of the industrial manufacturing supply chain system and improve the efficiency of collaboration. , Making the division of labor with higher granularity possible. Throughout the industry, a block chain identity is assigned to industrial equipment. When devices, people, and institutions have identities, industrial production organizations can adopt consensus smart contracts (smart contracts represent centralized and coordinated production Organizational logic is implemented through distributed consensus) to organize the corresponding production in a multi-centric way, making its process more transparent.
- The government-level strongly supports the whole society in the construction of relevant block chain platforms and promotes the acceptance of data on the chain by market players such as large enterprises and banks. Support industry associations as the lead to build industrial block chains. Whether the builder of the platform is a government, core enterprise, or financial institution such as a bank, as long as the role of the platform is neutral, the data is open, and the participants recognize the validity of the data, they should be encouraged and supported to improve the block chain platform ’s Construction speed. It is recommended that the government give necessary support in terms of policies and funds, encourage banks and other financial institutions to provide financial services based on on-chain data, and truly establish a long-term mechanism of "dare to lend, willing to lend, and be able to lend" so those small and medium-sized enterprises can cross the High mountain ".
- Connect retail smart terminal equipment with the "Industrial Internet + Block chain" platform. This can directly realize the ability of commodity verification and traceability in digital retail terminals, enhance consumer confidence, promote the survival of the fittest, and resolve the "market iceberg." With the personalized improvement of demand, production is also moving towards individualization, that is, upgrading to service-oriented manufacturing, which is essentially a customized production method. In this regard, the distance between the supply and demand sides is shortened, all the necessary data is uploaded to the chain, the authenticity and quality assurance of the goods are provided to the consumers at the sales terminal, the contract signing process is provided for the partners within the platform, and the trading truth is provided for financial institutions Proof of sex and repayment guarantee based on smart contract splitting model. On the other hand, the changed traditional production-before-sale model and the realization of the "custom-made" scheme of sales-before-production greatly reduced the raw material pressure of the enterprise. With the evolution of new business models, in the future, manufacturing companies will not only sell hardware products when manufacturing and selling but will increasingly provide similar supply chain finance, financial leasing, second-hand transactions, industrial product recycling, etc. Services, thereby achieving upgrades to service-oriented manufacturing. The sales situation is shared with banks to achieve capital management and revenue sharing based on block chain data to ensure the repayment ability of enterprises, thereby helping enterprises to effectively finance, expand production and sales scale, and smoothly enter new retail and other fields. Through "transforming volcano".
Early exploration of chain network collaboration
Block chain can bring considerable value in all aspects of manufacturing, especially data production and transmission related to industrial data, larger-scale data collaboration, effective supervision, and privacy protection. As a pioneer in the industry, Shanghai Shading Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shanghai Shading Information Technology) has been committed to promoting block chain to empower the traditional economy and has also done a lot of exploratory work in the manufacturing industry.
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Data generation: Data is considered to be a new means of production and a core resource in the Industrial Internet. In existing blockchain systems, the production and use of data are often closed-loop, and the data generation process is known and trusted. One of the difficulties in applying the block chain to the industrial Internet is how can a large amount of off-chain data be trusted to be on-chain? This involves using a large number of trusted sensors to collect data and can be cross-validated. In the process of data collection, transmission, and on-chain, human participation should be avoided as much as possible. Based on the above "Block chain +" idea, we will help a certain electrical group continue to innovate in the field of electrical automation. The key is to manufacture block chain smart meters. These meters (also have independent IDs on the block chain) have independent data transmission components that regularly send power transmission data to unattended nodes and complete the data uplink process at this node. These power data can follow the power data of the superior transmission hub After the comparison test, it becomes reliable data. Based on these credible data, the preliminary construction of the industrial Internet logo resolution system mentioned in the Industrial Internet Development Action Plan will be derived.
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Data transmission: After the data production process ensures the credibility of the data, the value of the data is greatly improved, and it is becoming more and more useful in all walks of life. This involves the transmission and transaction of data, among which the compliance and circulation of data are of great concern. Regarding this issue, we have carried out the preliminary practice of compliance data transfer with a subsidiary of a large group. The project will be based on data from the government departments of the industry and commerce, taxation, etc., as well as data submitted by the enterprise to the government early (such as data submitted to the science and technology statistics department), after the enterprise authorizes the data requesting agency (such as a bank or other credit bureau), The agency can access the authorized data about the enterprise stored on the government alliance chain at a specified time. Credit reporting agencies can judge whether to grant a loan to an enterprise based on these credible data, and strict credit control and recording various access traces on the blockchain chain make data related parties not to worry about the data being stolen or misused. In the future, if the enterprise's production data (such as collected using trusted hardware) is uploaded to the chain, if the enterprise can authorize the bank to access the data, the bank can further reduce the risk, and the enterprise can obtain maximum support. The latest asymmetric encryption technology and zero-knowledge proof technology based on the block chain can also protect business secrets and key customer information communicated between enterprises and customers so that multiple companies with competitive relationships can form business alliances and will not disclose their business secrets.
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Storage and sharing of large-scale trusted data: Currently, the cameras used in public security and public security are deployed in many cities in the country. Originally, these cameras were in the hands of public security and traffic police agencies to monitor city security. By removing the private information and sharing it on the block chain, it can be used as a data source for accurate maps, thereby greatly accelerating the development process of China's autonomous driving technology.
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Industrial supervision: Combined with the automation and trust lessness of the data production process, the company's emission data will become reliable. Environmental protection agencies can adopt the emission data collected by automatic detection devices, without having to worry about companies falsifying the data to avoid penalties. The environmental protection data supervision block chain scheme of Shanghai Shading Information Technology has been reported to the relevant departments.
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Asset securitization and innovative finance based on block chain: Shanghai Shading Information Technology deployed the block chain in the traditional natural resource mining approval and mining process supervision, which not only made the traditional approval and supervision transparent, but also made the original non-financial assets through unified supervision to make it into a trusted asset can be connected to banks, exchanges, and downstream enterprises, and the process of securitization of means of production has been completed. This allows related production companies to obtain more financing tools, better cope with production risks, and expand their scale. The combination of blockchain makes the ownership of traditional production materials clearer, the circulation process is more credible, and it is easier to supervise and trade. Therefore, some production materials that are difficult to be securitized in traditional industries can be securitized, resulting in additional flow Sex.
In short, the Industrial Internet will become one of the main battlefields for new infrastructure in the future, and the collaboration between the block chain and the Industrial Internet will make the Industrial Internet more credible and its information will have greater value. In order to do a good job in the integration of the chain network, the many advantages of the block chain and the industrial Internet are organically combined. In particular, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on specific (industrial) industries. value. For example, to play the characteristics of block chain distrust to reduce the trust cost of enterprises; to play the distributed characteristics of block chain so that different parties can better collaborate; to play the tamper-proof characteristics of block chain to improve administrative and regulatory enforcement effectiveness. We believe that the integration of the chain network is promising and will greatly promote the rapid development of the manufacturing industry.
