Doctor of Mechanical Engineering, Intelligent Maintenance System Center, University of Cincinnati, USA. He used to be the solution leader of Beijing Tianze Zhiyun Technology Co., Ltd., responsible for strategic customers.
In 2020, he joined Foxconn as the chief digital officer and director of the Industrial Internet Office of Foxconn Technology Group, and set up the Industrial Internet Office, which was responsible for the group's digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing strategic planning, and promoted the landing of lighthouse factories, digital platforms and industrial Internet.
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1978, the year after the resumption of the college entrance examination, Shi Zhe's father was admitted to the most important radio major of Xijun Electric Power, the predecessor of Xidian, and was assigned to a wireless power plant after graduation.
Shi Zhe has been familiar with technical terms related to communication and navigation since he can remember. Fill in the volunteers in the college entrance examination in 2008. Although I am very greedy for the fiery finance major, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics only recruited four people in Shaanxi. "Then learn engineering. Tsinghua is a bit difficult, so I chose Beihang. "
This is of course a self-deprecating joke. Facts have proved that Shi Zhe's vision and luck in choosing the direction of life are excellent: undergraduate study of reliability and system engineering is not only the first choice for the overall unit in the system, but also the key position for large enterprises such as Huawei, ZTE, COMAC and CRRC. The only fly in the ointment is that there are few opportunities to go abroad (it was not popular to go abroad at that time, and everyone chose to study or enter the system); But in the year when Shi Zhe graduated, he caught up with the change of GRE from paper to pen. Shi Zhe, who has a short English, won a full scholarship and has since embarked on the road of intelligent manufacturing with a high starting point and great strides.
Cincinnati, the birthplace of the automobile production line slaughtering industry, was inspired by the German production line of "pigs go in, sausages come out", and developed the automobile manufacturing assembly line of "parts go in, whole cars come out".
At the University of Cincinnati, Shi Zhe spent his entire master's and doctor's career. He studied under Professor Li Jie, a world-famous expert in industrial big data and industrial intelligence. Professor Li Jie's teacher is the founder of the world-famous "2 mm project": Professor Wu Xianming of the University of Michigan.
Tips 2 mm project
The recognized automobile body quality control mode in the global automobile manufacturing industry involves technologies such as sheet metal stamping, auto production line, welding and inspection. , including "all-round inspection", "data analysis", "real-time improvement" and other subsystems. Whether to apply "2mm project" is considered as a standard to measure whether the body size control of automobile enterprises has reached the international advanced level.
The unique tradition of the University of Cincinnati: the Co-op paid internship program gives Shi Zhe the opportunity to practice in the industrial projects of top enterprises during his doctoral studies. The first summer, he was sent to the National Instrument (NI) headquarters in Austin to undertake an important foreign project at that time. The following year, he got a valuable opportunity to practice in Eaton Electric and Alstom. "The most interesting thing is to cooperate with Alstom. At the beginning of the project, I helped Alstom's high-speed rail to do the detection system. During the cooperation period, something happened in the American trap (Alstom was forcibly acquired by American companies), and by the time of final integration, the partner had become GE. " Shizhe, who is in it, didn't feel any big twists and turns. "It's just that the recipient's mailbox has changed."
In 20 16, industrial internet-or cyber-physical systems, industrial big data-became more and more popular in China. Shi Zhe felt a historic opportunity in front of him and decided to return to China for development before graduating from his doctorate.
Shi Zheben did not intend to start a business, but returned to China to participate in relevant domestic scientific research projects. However, after compiling the White Paper of cyber-physical systems in cooperation with Neusoft, it is concluded that the framework of school-enterprise cooperation cannot really solve the pain points of Party A's enterprises. Since the framework of cyber-physical systems has been determined, we might as well make our own applications and services. In 20 16, tianze zhiyun, which serves central enterprises and large equipment manufacturing enterprises, was formally established, providing a set of industrial intelligence solutions and services. The team lineup is luxurious, the enterprise service team from IBM is responsible for the architecture, and the testing team born out of American National Instruments is responsible for the edge computing hardware. Since its establishment, Tianze Zhiyun has always been the darling of investors, regardless of whether the capital market is warming up or cooling down, with the help of "elite soldiers+main track+head customer resources".
But even with natural resources, the pit of entrepreneurship should be visited again.
Technology Maker: During the years when Party B's team was in charge of BD and key customers, what profound experiences of To B services were summarized?
Shi Zhe: Everyone knows that To B should never talk to yourself behind closed doors, but even if the other party recognizes your value, you should grasp the rhythm of the other party's promotion. There are too many scenes that reject you while recognizing you:
First of all, "you are very capable, but what you have to do is not our most urgent task." For super-large enterprises, digital transformation is first a social problem, then an organizational problem, and finally a technical problem.
Secondly, "you are very capable, but the problem you can solve is not what we want to solve most." You tell the other party that we can detect all the faults of the bearing, but he only cares about how to solve the problem of stealing oil quickly.
Third, "What you did is very valuable, but I may not be here when it happened", so I won't go into details.
Fourth, "you can do 9999 things, but which ones are related to me and I won't pay for the others." This is the particularity of To B procurement. How many functions does a mobile phone have that we don't need? But everyone is used to the purchase price including the cost of these sleep functions. But in the field of To B, only the services that customers can use are valuable, and customers are only willing to pay for this part of the value.
Kechuang people: What can To B enterprises do to promote the progress of things in the face of customers who have needs but don't start at the first time?
Shi Zhe: There may be one thing that China To B enterprises must do: keep preaching and preaching the value. Many China To B teams are from Party A or large Party B teams, so there is no problem in grasping the demand points. However, in the field of enterprise services, there is really no such word as "taken for granted". You should help customers understand the importance, feasibility, risks and costs of things, help them save enough resources and dispel internal resistance.
Some people don't sleep well, one of the reasons is that their physical rhythm is inconsistent with their social rhythm. The solution is to adjust their work and rest to adapt to social interaction. To B is such a truth. Adapt to Party A and push Party A closer to you. Both sides need you to find a way.
Technology Maker: Who is the most critical role in the procurement decision-making chain of To B, the project leader or the person who has the purchasing decision-making power?
Shi Zhe: I think it is the person in charge of the project, or more accurately, the person who bears the greatest burden of the existing problems. Of course, there is a constraint here. Customers of Tianzezhi Cloud Service have no worries about digital transformation. They will definitely do it, just choose who to do it, so the advice of the person in charge is the most important. This is especially true when it comes to execution. He and you have the same goal and can devote themselves to solving problems.
It is believed that as the value of enterprise services is recognized by more and more enterprises, not only the market scale will become larger, but also the cost of practitioners will be reduced, and the efficiency and service quality will be rapidly improved. For example, in the early days of our business, we couldn't even find a professional IoTDB, so we could only do it with MongoDB. There are many products to choose from now.
Digital transformation
"Industrial intelligence is a process of removing complex processes, directly solving final problems and bringing value, and its goal is achieved on the basis of data and models", while industrial intelligence is still in the exploration stage on a global scale. "Europe and America are still not very mature. Experience can only cross the river by feeling the stones according to our model. "
As a well-deserved leading enterprise in the field of industrial manufacturing, Foxconn naturally has this distress. Since 20 18, the world's largest precision manufacturing company has paid more and more attention to intelligent upgrading, and established a company focusing on industrial internet-Industrial Fulian (Fii), and reached a series of cooperation with Tianze Zhiyun on industrial internet and other related technologies. Therefore, Shi Zhe started the resident mode in Shenzhen, represented the company at Foxconn, and planned the development of industrial Internet with it.
In 2020, Liu Yangwei, Chairman of Foxconn Group, formulated the digital transformation strategy of F2.0, and set up the post of Chief Digitizer for the first time, and established the Industrial Internet Office, which was responsible for the strategic planning of digital transformation and intelligent manufacturing of the Group, and promoted the landing of lighthouse factories, digital platforms and industrial Internet.
This year, Shi Zhe officially joined Foxconn as its chief digital officer and director of the Industrial Internet Office.
Technology Maker: What kind of experience is it to join Party B's entrepreneurial team from a high starting point and work in Party A's enterprise at the absolute giant level?
Shi Zhe: You can fully feel what the friend sitting opposite you thinks (laughs). Seriously, it's not easy to compare. Foxconn is so special. A 40-year-old enterprise, with a peak of more than 6.5438+0.2 million employees. What it needs to do now is to lay the foundation for the development in the next five years to 654.38+00 years, accounting for 365.438+0.5% of the global precision manufacturing industry (according to IDC statistics), as well as the Internet of Things, capacity sharing, intelligent collaboration and so on. What you want to achieve here is something you have never touched before: improving the efficiency of the whole industrial chain. In order to achieve this goal, 10 thousand things may be done, and only three things can be solved every day. Everything must be done right and coordinated with more departments. ...
The responsibility here is enormous, but this greatness is a kind of meaning in itself. At the beginning of the cooperation with Foxconn, Guo Taiming, who had not yet stepped down as chairman, once asked me what was the most important thing about the industrial Internet. I said that data foundation and talent foundation are the most important. He immediately began to recruit talents on a large scale and began to prepare for the industrial big data analysis competition within the group. This efficiency and determination make all participants confident in achieving their goals.
Kechuang people: How to understand that the digital upgrade of an enterprise can bring about the efficiency improvement of the entire industrial chain?
Shi Zhe: The so-called leading enterprise is actually the main body that aggregates resources to the greatest extent in an industrial chain, so its every move will bring about changes in the industrial chain.
For example, Apple's drive to the supply chain has made every enterprise in the supply chain have today's brilliant achievements and even become an industry leader. At that time, only the back cover of mobile phone changed from plastic to metal and glass, which saved a large number of machine tool factories in China, because the back cover of metal or glass had to be cut by machine tools, and the demand went up at once. Before that, many domestic machine tool factories had a hard time. This does not mean how well these machine tool factories are doing. What is important is that the product evolution of the industry leader has driven the competitiveness of the industrial chain.
The national level is also aware of the importance of industrial chain competition. In 2022, the Government Work Report clearly pointed out that leading enterprises should implement chain-keeping and chain-stabilizing projects to maintain the stability of the supply chain industry chain. In particular, we should attach importance to leading enterprises as "chain length", drive small and medium-sized enterprises in the upstream and downstream chains through leading enterprises, stabilize the supply chain through the industrial chain, and finally realize the intensive and high-quality development of the value chain.
Kechuangren: As a leading enterprise in the process of CDO digitalization, what do you think is the key factor of digital transformation?
Shi Zhe: Determine the KPI, that is, the goal. If it is set low, it will be worthless. If it is set high, it will be "aiming high". Therefore, an appropriate goal is the most important consideration for the person in charge of digital transformation. In addition, there are two key factors. First of all, the formulation of this goal must be the result of multi-party participation and consultation. Secondly, this goal cannot be the goal of system construction, but must be the goal of organizational development.
In addition, the definition of intermediate output is very difficult, there is no template and standardization. Here we share a technical model, with science at the bottom, technology at the middle and engineering methods at the top. Most enterprises have no scientific layer, but some technical layers. However, what they want to invest in the end is mostly at the level of engineering methods, how to better integrate IT technology and organization and form core competitiveness. Therefore, the middle process may be efficiency improvement, personnel streamlining and cost reduction. Most enterprises will be OK if they achieve this level, but for leading enterprises, it is best to bring value growth and efficiency improvement, rather than simply cost reduction.
Moreover, leading enterprises should create social value, not just enterprise value. For example, the biggest topic in the world now is ESG (environment, social responsibility, corporate governance). If digitalization brings enterprise growth, but it does not contribute to carbon reduction and environmental protection, it is worthless. We have also set a new sustainable development goal, and think that sustainable development =EPS (earnings per share) *ESG.
Technology Maker: In the face of massive resources and huge responsibilities, each of your roles is of great significance. How can we establish a mechanism to feedback the progress of decision-making and avoid too much loss?
Shi Zhe: I don't think there is a universal scheme at present. If we want to develop innovation, we must constantly adjust the organizational structure, use the system platform to solve problems, and at the same time, we must take the pulse like old Chinese medicine practitioners. It takes a long time to form an organization. Every logic, every system and everything has the necessity of "it becomes like this", so you should carefully select the formula from the limited medicinal materials and formulate the dosage. These prescriptions are all digital, and the core of digitalization is to respect the original mechanism of the body and improve the ability of pulse-taking.
Technology Maker: There is no panacea. Can it be understood that there is no universal standard to measure the right or wrong of digitalization?
Shi Zhe: I think so, because digitalization didn't happen today. It has been born for a long time and has influenced many things. We can't infer whether it is better to take another road, but we can only make sure that the road we choose can get out of the effect.
For example, the layout of the mobile phone camera, if Jobs had not died, would Apple's back cover be today's design? I don't think so, but wouldn't it be nice to reduce the design of the camera? That's not necessarily true. In reality, users need more cameras. You can't blindly define today's iPhone as a detour or a mistake.
Of course, the advantage of digitalization is high-frequency iterative optimization. In many systems we use today, the interface has been fixed for a long time and rarely changed, but the system behind it is still being upgraded and strengthened. From this point of view, there seems to be a vulgar but well-described old saying: there is no best, only better.