Flexible production has always been one of the important contents of intelligent manufacturing, and its core value is that it can rely on automation to ensure production efficiency, but also make the production line flexible/elastic, and can flexibly and timely adjust the product according to market changes and customer needs. The follow-up can also be extended and upgraded according to the development and change of production!

“Our observation is that the opportunities and challenges in the new era of ‘Industry 4.0’ are providing a strong driving force for new developments in global flexible manufacturing.” Mr. Kalle Peltonen said at the press conference, “The first is the trend of ‘multi-variety, small-batch’ in many industries; Second, the global manufacturing industry is facing an aging population and a shortage of young skilled workers. There are high-end horizontal, five-axis and composite processing equipment, the proportion of continuous increase, and the industry’s requirements for product quality and production automation are increasingly high; All are calling for the popularity of flexible intelligent manufacturing. China, which accounts for nearly 40% of the world’s machine tool consumption, is naturally the most promising market for flexible manufacturing, and it is also a strategic place where Fastems will focus and continue to pour resources.”

Founded in 1901 and with more than 100 years of history, Fastems, a Finnish family-owned company, has been an industry expert and global leader in flexible manufacturing systems and solutions. Since its entry into China in 2012, Fastems has always been based on its own technical advantages and constantly promoted the level of flexible automation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises, and the landing achievements of 70 sets of flexible line solutions fully confirmed the strong strength and program advantages of its products.

“Fastems’ position is clear: it is focused on providing factory machine plus automation systems that enable customers to achieve full utilization of 8,760 hours (365 days X 24 hours) of machine tools per year. We have a full range of solutions to meet the

140AVI03000

needs of our customers’ production lines – maximum efficiency, optimal throughput, flexible production, fast and higher ROI.” Mr. Ding Yongping added, “From the crisis of the epidemic to the recovery of the economy, we have once again witnessed the strong vitality and explosive power of the Chinese market. The positive signals from the two sessions have made Fastems’ determination to take root in the local area stronger than ever. We firmly believe that high-quality development is the absolute truth, even in the past three years of the epidemic, Fastems is very honored to participate in and witness many domestic enterprises to successfully push their factory intelligence level to a new height. For flexible manufacturing, many manufacturing entrepreneurs have passed the stage of vague concept cognition, and can effectively choose products and optimize programs according to their own needs, and truly let automation serve production. Fastems China has also built a complete sales and service team, and is fully prepared to enable more local users to grow and change!”

“Eat soft meals” and fight hard

A flexible production line can produce quickly and run smoothly, and control software is the key of the key. Especially in the context of accelerating the digital transformation of China’s manufacturing industry, flexible system software needs to have strong interoperability, achieve seamless cross-platform flow, and provide accurate and reliable data support for intelligent production management at the top of the factory. Fastems is an automation solution supplier with strong software strength. Its self-developed MMS is a leading production planning, simulation, execution and monitoring management software in the current industrial field. In addition, Fastems also has a software research and development team of more than 150 people in the group headquarters, based on market development trends and user needs, and continue to optimize and upgrade the flexible software. At the media conference, Mr. Ding also interestingly called Fastems a technology pioneer who “eats soft rice” and fights hard.

MMS software can easily manage all production elements in a flexible production line, such as numerical control programs, automatically download to the corresponding machine tools when there is a processing need, detect tools, and achieve unmanned, automated production. At the same time, MMS can also realize automatic scheduling – the operator only needs to input what products need to be processed, how many pieces, when to produce, when to end and other information on the control panel, the system will automatically arrange all orders, and pre-calculate the required materials and the number of materials, the number of tools and tools, the required time node; And automatic dynamic adjustment – when the production order changes, there is an urgent order or a equipment failure, the software will quickly generate a new production plan and operation list based on the changes, coupled with a real-time, detailed order process monitoring system, so as to achieve uninterrupted production, to minimize the impact of external uncertainties on production.

The “soft” strength of Fastems was also recognized by its user representative, Mr. Chen Hui from Xipai Group, a leading enterprise in fluid control solutions in China. The flexible production line established by Fastems in cooperation with Xipai integrates 6 high-end processing centers, 159 machine pallets and 118 material pallets, and the length of the entire production line reaches 97 meters, which is the longest high-end intelligent production line in the domestic industrial field. “By effectively connecting MMS software to the company’s order system, material system and ERP system, our flexible production line has now realized automatic navigation production mode from ERP automatic ordering, production scheduling, production resource planning automation, etc., the effect is amazing!” Mr. Chen Hui continued, “In addition, the digital twin function of MMS software is also one of the modules that bring us many benefits in actual production. Through the digital twin, our technicians can monitor the operation of the production line at any time on their mobile phones or computers, including the machining status of the machine tool, tool usage, part processing efficiency and so on. On the interface of our software, you can also see a message that says’ the machine will be shut down for XX reasons in XX hours’, which is also the ‘fine scheduling function’ provided by the MMS digital twin, which can predict the future production situation in real time, helping us to respond and prepare in time.”