From small bicycles to large airplanes, the software has quietly covered the daily lives of ordinary people.
On the streets of the city, shared bicycles that can be easily unlocked by mobile phones are currently sweeping across China. In fact, these seemingly simple bicycles are actually smart products that integrate multiple software technologies. For example, Mobike has nearly 30 patented technologies such as smart locks. Based on travel big data, ofo is carrying out data-driven operations including travel demand forecasting.
Above the sky, the top manufacturing of airplanes is also due to the deep understanding of software in the industry. Li Yizhang, chairman of the industrial technology software company Beijing Suowei Company, told China Economic Weekly that Boeing completed the design of the 787 with more than 8,000 kinds of software. Only less than 1,000 kinds of software are commercially available, and more than 7,000 others. The software is designed by Boeing itself.
“Actually, the competitiveness of Boeing is the intellectual property accumulated by the long-term industry of more than 7,000 kinds of software, so the softwareization of industrial technology is the only way for China’s manufacturing industry to become a strong country.” Li Yizhang said.
Boeing’s story is only a microcosm. From the perspective of the global industrial system, software technology will be a very core competitiveness in the new round of industrial revolution including the Industrial Internet, Industry 4.0, and China Manufacturing 2025. The hallmark is that many traditional manufacturing companies have declared a transition to software companies.
According to Mei Hong, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice president of Beijing Institute of Technology, Lockheed Martin, the world’s leading aerospace manufacturer, has more software code than Microsoft, and the proportion of industrial software in the automotive industry continues to increase. It has accounted for more than 40% of the total vehicle cost. “How does the manufacturing industry realize a new round of softwareization? It is the software and virtualization of knowledge and process flow to realize the platform of software.”
It is foreseeable that software innovation will play an important role in traditional manufacturing upgrades and industrial application enhancements. In Li Yizhang’s view, in the new round of global industrialization competition, industrial software has been repositioned, and the auxiliary tools developed from the informatization of manufacturing industry have been upgraded to be the tools to promote the transformation and upgrading of industrial intelligence. “Industrial software is no longer a single-function tool software, such as CAD, CAE, PDM, etc., but to make the methods, knowledge, and technology in the human mind explicit, modular, and modeled to form an industrial APP.”
What makes Li Yizhang happy is that the “industrial technology software”, which he has been promoting for the past 10 years, is being affirmed and supported by the competent authorities. With the support of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, an industrial alliance organization on the industrialization of industrial technology will soon be established.
Yang Chunhui, director of the Software Quality Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told the China Economic Weekly reporter, “Look at the full name of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, you know that industrialization and information integration are inevitable choices. Enterprises are the mainstay of economic activities, facing the definition of software. In the era, industrial enterprises must adapt to the development of the era of intelligent manufacturing through software.”
