This mindset is limited. A smart factory is not equivalent to smart manufacturing. A smart factory is a systematic solution; to achieve the best results, enterprises should consider partners and customers across the supply chain from the very beginning, realizing end-to-end smartization. Smart manufacturing is merely a step in the journey toward a smart factory, leveraging visualization technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT) to facilitate online production for workers, improving capacity utilization and reducing material consumption. Smart manufacturing is an essential path for the smart factory: unmanned production lines, precise positioning and management of personnel and equipment, networking and communication between devices and between devices and humans, big data analysis of production processes to understand every production step, paperless production, low-carbon energy, etc., are all crucial steps for traditional manufacturing enterprises in the smart manufacturing phase. Enterprises can adopt strategies to promote the smart factory, achieving objectives step by step from various local components, thereby driving the enterprise to fully realize refinement, precision, and automation.

Click to view: Is it reasonable to blindly pursue the so-called Industry 4.0 smart factory transformation?