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 2035 Vision Goals Outline, the state proposed to deeply implement smart manufacturing and green manufacturing projects, and develop a new model of service-oriented manufacturing. Digital transformation of enterprises has become imperative. Smart manufacturing originates from the study of digital transformation. Therefore, 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 network scheduling, and low efficiency in unified data entry. So, how to solve these pain points and achieve lean production is an urgent matter for SMEs. Adhering to empowering manufacturing enterprises with digital improvement to achieve efficient and high-value production, Alps System Integration (Dalian) Co., Ltd. (referred to as "ALSI"), with over 30 years of rich experience in manufacturing development, has developed a solution that can improve enterprise lean production, accelerate digital transformation, and promote intelligent transformation—the "Optimizer"—ALSI Equipment Status Monitoring System.

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

After implementing the lean production plan well, it is necessary to achieve informatization and automation through top-level design, and connect all manufacturing process equipment, thereby breaking the information silos in production and achieving interconnection, so as to finally realize information automation, making the entire production process more transparent, and making lean production and information automation a platform that integrates, opens, and shares resources. Lean production has become a necessary path for digital transformation. ALSI will continue to deepen and promote special work to enhance the competitiveness and technological innovation of the manufacturing production field, guide SMEs to develop leading applicable technologies, strengthen equipment improvement, and 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 pioneer of smart manufacturing in the digital era.