Ali Research Institute: What enlightenment does Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing bring to the digital transformation of the industry?

Looking back at the development of science and technology in the past two or three hundred years, it can be roughly divided into two stages: the first stage, called the horsepower economy, includes the first and second industrial revolutions, and mainly solves the problems of power and energy; The second stage is the computing power economy. The invention of the computer brings about a computing power revolution and solves the problems of information calculation, storage, query and transmission. Under the computing power economy, economic growth can no longer rely on traditional resources, but can be driven by computing power. In the past few years, the GDP growth rate of the United States has been very fast, but the increase in energy consumption has not been very large, which is a good example.

With the industrial revolution from horsepower to computing power, cloud platforms have technologies such as big data, mobile Internet, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. At the same time, with the transition from IT to DT, with more and more data, we have entered the digital age.

In this era, whether it is mobile internet or the metaverse, all aspects of society are being digitized. We can complete many operations and interactions in the physical world in a completely virtual society.

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Manufacturers interact directly with consumers: business changes brought about by digitalization

What new business challenges has digitization brought to retail and commerce?

First, individual needs. Because of digitalization, we can be more precise to the different needs of individuals and even different stages. What have you bought? What are your hobbies? What are friends and social class? Through parametric analysis, you can clearly know what the user needs.

Second, large-scale production. It can standardize the entire production process, improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Third, social delivery. Many services in life have been standardized, and products no longer need to be sent to all levels of markets through distributors, only logistics companies need to send products directly to customers.

Digitization has changed business, turning traditional To B to To C. In the past, the production of consumer goods was centered on products; today, due to the existence of individual needs, to be customer-centered, products need to be differentiated, in addition to functional requirements, there are other requirements such as experience. Taking clothing as an example, color, style, material, usage scene, cultural identity, etc., all fully reflect the individualization of demand.

In the digital environment, the communication between people has become very convenient, so from R&D, brand owners, raw materials, production, services to sales, we can provide better services around consumers. The traditional chain value creation has become a consumer-centric competition and collaboration network.

In the past, clothing manufacturers did not have the ability to care about the personal needs of consumers, and could only obtain information indirectly through intermediate channels; now, brand owners can directly get feedback from consumers to design products and marketing strategies. At the same time, it is also possible to build a direct sales channel on Tmall to have more direct interaction with consumers through consultation and comments. Some manufacturers even select some very representative users to seek feedback on the product and design when designing a new product.

The biggest core point of digital transformation of business is to open up intermediate links. Using network efficiency, brand owners can interact with wholesalers and retailers; at the same time, manufacturers can also directly face hundreds of millions of consumers.

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Industrial Internet in the apparel industry: What can Rhino Smart Manufacturing do?

Rhino Smart Manufacturing is the latest practice emerging in the apparel industry in the digital age, creating a new path for how to use digital tools to help traditional industries. Clothing is a very traditional industry, but also a very fashionable industry. The goal of the apparel industry is to provide better personalized apparel, and at the same time, reduce the cost of the entire production, the cycle of inventory, and improve the efficiency of the supply chain.

According to the financial reports of leading international clothing companies, the inventory turnover days of the clothing industry are very low, about 100 days. However, domestic brand clothing has a long turnover period and a long sales cycle. Once it is out of season, it must be discounted, otherwise it will not be able to sell until the fashion trend changes next year. Inventory turnover days reflect the attractiveness and competitiveness of products. At present, the inventory turnover days of domestic brands are about two to three times that of international excellent brands.

From the perspective of operational efficiency and effectiveness, the proportion of finished products in stock for international brands is only 25%, while that of domestic brands reaches 95%; the proportion of products sold at regular prices by international brands can reach 90%, while domestic wholesale platforms can only achieve 30% at regular prices. , the inventory backlog is serious. Data show that my country’s annual clothing inventory backlog reaches 800 to 900 billion yuan.

How to shorten the inventory cycle? How to better produce according to user needs? How to increase the proportion of regular-price sales and improve the competitiveness and profitability of clothing products or brands? It is necessary to have accurate and efficient product planning capabilities to predict demand, reach consumers, and realize the transformation from experience-driven to data + algorithm-driven; and according to individual needs, realize order-driven flexible production and flexible supply chain capabilities, with “small”. “Single quick reverse” to dynamically match production, supply and sales.

Some leading companies in the apparel industry have made many beneficial attempts, such as pre-sale and trial sales, that is, small batches of first-time production, similar to movie screenings.

However, in order to achieve “quick response for small orders” in clothing production, it faces fixed production line production, insufficient manpower for large orders, over-matching of small orders, ranking layout based on experience, high cost of pre-production preparation management, manual debugging of process changes, Problems such as long replacement and production shutdown period. At the same time, production equipment is suitable for large-scale production, flexible robotic arms cannot replace labor on a large scale in a short period of time due to difficult control, industrial workers have poor consistency in ability, and skills follow people, etc., which also make flexible manufacturing difficult.

How to optimize each link of the production process through digital means, so that the production efficiency can be optimized? This is also the part that the apparel industry has in common with other industries when it implements the Industrial Internet. In addition, the apparel industry also has insight into fashion and customer demand to achieve better product design; by optimizing the entire supply chain, optimizing the ability to deliver, to reduce inventory and other issues. These are the current shortcomings of the clothing industry, and they are also the main reasons why rhinos are made intelligently.

What Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing solves is how to create new problems at high frequency from the demand side to the supply side.

By linking the sales data on the Tmall Taobao platform, Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing provides insight into trends and hot spots, predicts what products are likely to sell well, and provides new suggestions for merchants, pre-sale or test sales channels, and feedback.

In the implementation process, Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing has applied some AI technologies, such as the artificial intelligence multi-modal model M6, to automatically learn the pictures and descriptions of a certain product. , you enter the text description of the product into the system, such as fashionable men’s slippers that can be worn on the beach, and many pictures can be automatically generated to help improve the product design cycle. The system can be iterated continuously, and the design pictures are theoretically infinite, which can better help designers make customization attempts.

There are a lot of optimization techniques in smart pattern making. For example, how to make the board so that the fabric can be used most economically and the leftover material can be reduced. How to design one piece of clothing, and how to use fabric for ten pieces of clothing. There are also many modular designs, such as cuff style, collar design, which can be turned into optional modules and built together through different layouts. This technology, which is well known in the software industry, is now also transplanted into the clothing industry.

Rhino Smart Manufacturing can also match the crafts through the craft map in the cloud. Different factories are good at different types of production, different fabrics in stock, and different production line efficiencies. Under many optional conditions, the matching of process and equipment is completed, which also involves the ability of production scheduling.

In addition, Rhino Smart Manufacturing also optimizes the supply chain through the whole link. For example, the basic components of clothes are produced by intermediate manufacturers, and the embroidery of necklines and cuffs customized by small downstream factories. The downstream production is better to be closer to the user, which is more convenient for logistics. Of course, there are also supply chain finance issues. Many manufacturers may not have enough liquidity to buy raw materials, design and production, and need to do it through supply chain finance.

In this way, based on sales and production, flexible and fast response, and the digitalization of the whole link, Rhino Smart Manufacturing promotes the traditional clothing industry to reach a new height.

The clothing industry is still very traditional and still needs people, sewing machines, and all kinds of clothing production equipment. However, through the digitization of production lines, the digitization of worker skills, the digitization of the entire demand forecast, and the digitization of the entire supply chain and production scheduling, this very traditional industry can use big data analysis and decision-making to achieve a better degree. The digital capabilities represented by Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing hope that in the case of “quick response for small orders”, it can still achieve the same quality as the standardized production of big brands, and at the same time respond to the individual needs of customers.

Every link in the whole link must pass through data. Understand needs and customers through data; through
Through data, we can understand production equipment and control systems; through data, we can connect manufacturers together; through data, self-learning design can provide matching process services; through intelligent production scheduling, we can optimize global real-time scheduling and optimize production efficiency, etc. Wait. With the support of technology, traditional industries are also modern industries.

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A calm view of China’s digital opportunities in the post-pandemic era

The new crown epidemic is reconstructing the global supply chain system, and the inward-looking tendency of various countries is intensifying, and the layout of the industrial chain supply chain tends to be regionalized, localized, and short-chained.

For example, whether it is the United States, Europe or China, they are building a complete independent semiconductor industry chain. This trend has led to many fundamental changes. One of the most important is that the goal of industrial optimization is no longer zero inventory. Now, automakers are facing production and pricing challenges due to insufficient semiconductor stock and soaring prices. Similar changes are likely to occur in supply chain systems across all industries.

However, while seeing the problems, we should also see that there are many good opportunities in the next decade.

First of all, China’s per capita GDP exceeds 10,000 US dollars, bringing about a transformation of the entire society from production to consumption. Second, China’s demographic structure is also changing, and aging will bring about different production and consumption. Third, technological innovation will bring new opportunities. China’s entire digital infrastructure may be the best developed in the world. More than half of the world’s 5G base stations are located in China, and the digitization of traditional infrastructure will also bring new driving forces. In addition, there are further openings of consumption policies and consumer culture.

China is already the world’s largest consumer Internet power. We have a huge population base, and the penetration rate of mobile Internet is the same as that of the United States. China has also solved the problem of the last mile of logistics, and many takeaways can provide delivery services conveniently and quickly. These services are not so convenient in Western Europe, North America and other regions. China’s mobile payment is also at the forefront of the world. In addition, China is the world’s largest retail country, with a sales volume of nearly 4 trillion yuan. In this environment, there is no small market for any small demand. China is also the world’s largest digital consumer. The most important point is that China is the world’s largest manufacturing power, equivalent to the sum of Germany and Japan, which is very remarkable.

The superposition of the above four advantages has laid a solid foundation for the local leadership of Chinese enterprises in digitalization.

The industrial Internet, the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry, or the digital transformation of a specific field, have great opportunities in China now, and are at the forefront of the world. We make good use of these market, policy, technology and other advantages, plus the young and energetic next-generation digital natives, I believe that all practitioners can run higher and farther in this track.