Platform service companies have weak capabilities and industry leaders have low willingness to build platforms.
Industrial internet platforms are the core of empowering industrial development; where the platform is, there are data resources, and where the initiative for future development lies. However, judging from the current development situation, most platforms have limited coverage and weak driving force.
The construction of industrial internet platforms relies heavily on IT professionals with expertise in industry knowledge graphs, industrial mechanism models, and enterprise production processes, and these professionals are primarily concentrated in leading industrial enterprises. Therefore, accelerating platform construction must be spearheaded by these leading enterprises. However, currently, leading industrial enterprises lack a strong willingness to build platforms, and most platforms have yet to explore feasible market-based profit models.
It is understood that platform construction requires significant investment in human resources and capital, and some industries also need to suspend production for transformation. Currently, most industrial enterprises have a profit margin of 5%-10%, and the financial pressure is generally high, resulting in leading enterprises not being very enthusiastic about building platforms, and the problem of "unwillingness to build" is quite prominent.
From the perspective of platform service providers, the industry is still in a period of high R&D investment and long-term returns; from the perspective of B-end users, each enterprise is unique, and customized solutions require very high costs and funds, and the risk of trial and error exceeds the ability of many enterprises to bear.
Industry insiders say that high levels of personalization requirements from enterprises limit the platform's reach in niche markets. For service providers engaged in digital transformation and smart factory construction, undertaking enterprise digital transformation projects involves not only different transformation paths across industries, but also the inability to fully replicate transformation plans from different companies within the same industry. "Personalized customization" is increasingly necessary, making it difficult for service providers to meet actual transformation needs.
Software and hardware suffer from technical shortcomings and a lack of standards, making interoperability difficult.
my country's industrial internet infrastructure technologies are dependent on foreign technology. For enterprises to build an industrial internet, the first step is to achieve interconnectivity between production equipment. However, industrial equipment communication protocols and vendor software systems are complex and numerous. In particular, the protocol ports and software systems of foreign equipment are generally not open to Chinese enterprises. Currently, there is no standard product that can solve the problems of protocol interoperability and software integration.
Foreign companies have a de facto technological monopoly on advanced manufacturing equipment such as automated machine tools and industrial robots. Furthermore, equipment produced by different companies generally suffers from interoperability issues and system incompatibility, resulting in high costs and difficulties in the network transformation of industrial equipment.
Not only are there shortcomings in hardware, but industrial software also urgently needs a breakthrough. While industrial internet platforms have basic common technologies, addressing the unique technologies specific to each industry requires significant investment in collaboration with enterprises and industry experts. At the same time, industrial software is hampered by a lack of self-developed, competitive, universally applicable, and lightweight SaaS products, as well as data value mining applications.
From the perspective of data collection and application, cloud-edge collaboration technology is still immature. The large amount of data generated leads to problems such as low query performance and high storage costs. Understanding the special meaning behind the data and building mechanism models are common challenges faced by industrial enterprises and industrial internet platforms.
Furthermore, the development of the Industrial Internet has not solved the problem of standardization. Platforms are incompatible and difficult to coordinate with each other, resulting in relative isolation of all parties, inability to integrate data, and failure to form a complete system.
Multi-dimensional efforts to overcome obstacles in the development of the industrial internet
In response to issues such as low willingness of enterprises to "go to the cloud", weak platform service capabilities, and barriers to key technologies, enterprises, platforms, and functional departments have proposed solutions from multiple dimensions.
First, we need to cultivate exemplary models to guide more enterprises to participate. There is a significant gap in the development stages of industrial enterprises, ranging from "Industry 1.0" to "Industry 4.0." Enterprises at stages prior to "Industry 2.0" generally have low awareness, acceptance, and demand for the Industrial Internet. The government needs to create an environment and provide categorized guidance, using targeted policies to guide enterprises to proactively implement digital transformation and provide the necessary industrial foundation support for the construction of the Industrial Internet.
Government departments can strengthen publicity and guidance, actively cultivate demonstration benchmarks, drive more enterprises to carry out industrial networking transformation, summarize a number of mature transformation models and paths, release transformation guidelines by industry and field, create application models, and guide enterprises to upgrade to a higher level.
To address funding issues, in sectors with low industry concentration, leading platform companies are encouraged and supported to build public service platforms based on their successful industry practices, integrating general capabilities to provide batch digital transformation services for SMEs. Service fees (including transformation services, applications, SaaS, etc.) can be procured centrally by the government through centralized bidding, with certain preferential policies and subsidies provided to enterprises, such as a 2-3 year introductory period during which they are free of charge.
Second, accelerate platform construction and strengthen the platform system. Platform construction is of paramount importance in the development of the industrial internet. Local industrial and information technology departments believe that the government should continue to increase policy support for platform development, focusing on expanding platform access and applications, strengthening technical talent support, and encouraging and supporting cross-industry and cross-sectoral platforms to grow stronger as soon as possible, thereby accelerating the construction of a platform system led by cross-industry and cross-sectoral platforms, supported by industry platforms, and underpinned by specialized platforms.
Third, improve top-level design and promote standardization. Some platforms believe that it is necessary to coordinate and promote the establishment of industrial internet standards. First, promote the elevation of existing Chinese industrial internet standards to international standards; second, promote the compatibility and mutual recognition of standards between China and the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) of the United States, the Industrial Value Chain Promotion Association (IVI) of Japan, and the German Industry 4.0 standards organization; and third, implement "unified interface standard" certification for Chinese industrial internet platforms to ensure data interconnection and interoperability between platforms and that industrial apps can be accessed and subscribed to across platforms.
Fourth, we must coordinate resources and collaborate to overcome key core technologies. Local industrial and information technology departments stated that the current development of the industrial internet faces many bottlenecks and technical challenges that are difficult for enterprises to solve on their own. Government leadership is essential to coordinate national resources and conduct collaborative research. We will increase support for the innovative development of the industrial internet in major science and technology innovation projects, focusing on key industry platform applications, industrial mechanism models, industry application public services, and digital transformation of equipment. We will organize capable enterprises and research institutions to "take on challenges" and conduct technical research, striving to overcome a number of technical application difficulties.
