Since 2010, China has become the world's largest manufacturing country. For twelve consecutive years, the important position of "Made in China" in the global industrial chain and supply chain system has been continuously strengthened. In the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, the state proposed to deeply implement smart manufacturing and green manufacturing projects and develop new models of service-oriented manufacturing. Digital transformation of enterprises has become imperative. Smart manufacturing originates from the study of digital transformation, so lean production is not only the foundation of smart manufacturing but also a major reform of enterprise management thinking.

After analyzing and comparing various cases, it was found that many small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises still face problems such as high energy consumption in production basics, difficulty in networked production scheduling, and low efficiency in unified data entry. Therefore, how to solve these pain points and achieve lean production is an urgent task for SMEs. Committed to empowering the digital upgrade of manufacturing enterprises and achieving efficient, high-value production, Alps System Integration (Dalian) Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as "ALSI"), with over 30 years of rich experience in manufacturing development, has developed a solution—the "Optimizer"—the ALSI Equipment Status Monitoring System, which can improve enterprise lean production, accelerate digital transformation, and promote intelligent transformation.

Based on the numerous problems existing in lean production cases, ALSI has broken through technical barriers. Through its self-developed equipment data collector TS-10, it achieves low-cost lean management of equipment operation status. With over 90% strong equipment compatibility, the ALSI Equipment Status Monitoring System helps enterprises conduct real-time dynamic monitoring of production lines and efficiently transmit operation information, enabling enterprises to have complete visibility of equipment operation status. Moreover, ALSI's low-cost Andon system automatic data entry production mode achieves unified management of equipment, comprehensively promoting lean production in enterprises. Based on actual application cases, a certain electronic component manufacturer and an automotive electronics manufacturer in Ningbo, after introducing the ALSI Equipment Status Monitoring System, solved various difficulties such as the inability to connect old equipment to the network, lack of understanding of equipment operation status, inability to unify status management schemes, and low efficiency and high dissatisfaction with manual entry of installation information, achieving effective compatibility between the ALSI Equipment Status Monitoring System and the MES system, thereby providing a large amount of real, real-time data to MES. Managers can arrange and adjust production plans at any time to meet actual production needs. In summary, the ALSI Equipment Status Monitoring System has filled the first link in the digital transformation of the enterprise and "activated" the MES system.

After implementing the lean production plan, it is necessary to achieve informatization and automation through top-level design command, and connect all manufacturing process equipment, thereby breaking the information silos of production, achieving interconnection and interoperability, and ultimately achieving information automation, making the entire production process more transparent, and making lean production and information automation a platform for integration, openness, and resource sharing. Lean production is already an inevitable path for digital transformation. ALSI will continue to deepen and promote the work of enhancing the competitiveness of the manufacturing production field and technological innovation, guiding small and medium-sized enterprises to develop leading applicable technologies, strengthen the improvement of technical equipment, and the large-scale application of new products, thereby promoting lean production of manufacturing products. If the ultimate goal of smart manufacturing is to efficiently produce products, then lean production is the forerunner of smart manufacturing in the digital era. Lean production: the forerunner of smart manufacturing in the digital era.