On November 22, 2016, on the crowded scene of Bauma China in Shanghai New International Expo Center, the first industrial cloud platform in China was ceremoniously released. XuZhou Construction Machinery Group (XCMG) joined hands with such Internet and communication industry giants as Huawei, Alibaba and China Telecom to launch the “XCMG Industrial Cloud” platform and to create an entirely new  industrial economic development model of “Internet+cloud technology+manufacturing”, which marks that XCMG has been playing an active role in the trend of the times of “Made in China 2025” and “Industry 4.0” strategies and taken a solid step in creating the first industrial cloud platform in China.

Emerge as the times of “cloud” require

“The Internet is one of the most dynamic field of our times”, President Xi Jinping pointed out in the World Internet Conference on November 18. With the arrival of digital industrial age, the Internet, the “firm and pure innovator”, combined with the tremendous industrial strength, is boosting the totally remodeling of the world’s industrial landscape at a new speed.

The development of informationization has entered into a period of rapid growth since the first electronic computer was born in 1946, especially in the 1980s, the database technology was driven to maturity, and in the late 1990s, the establishment of data center was put on the agenda. At the beginning of the 21st century, big data cloud computing technology was widely used, and till the current times, cloud services have been extending to the corners of the world. In the coming 10 years, data services will spark the craze in informatization development.

As the catalyst for significant global industrial restructuring, Internet+manufacturing industry has made an “anti-trend return” with completely new posture and again become the commanding height of global economic competition. Yang Yong, vice-general manager of XCMG, said on the press conference of “XCMG Industrial Cloud” that our country was in the key historical period of transformation and upgrading from a manufacturing power to a great manufacturing power, and that the combination of “Internet+” and “Made in China 2025” had set off a new industrial revolution and greatly promoted the innovation and change of the traditional manufacturing industry, so the traditional manufacturing industry must embrace the Internet with new entirely new and open posture.

As the core part of industrial Internet, industrial cloud platform has become the investment focus for international giants for the reason that it is able to achieve the deployment and delivery of cross-regional industrial information services in a flexible manner. Such established enterprises as GE and Siemens have extended their businesses to the industrial Internet field in succession. On July 15, the launch of the first “XCMG Industrial Cloud” platform in China created by XCMG hand in hand with Alibaba made it more certain that China’s manufacturing enterprises had the determination and courage to go global.

“Today, XCMG has launched ‘XCMG Industrial Cloud’ jointly with Alibaba, Huawei and China Telecom, which is the very chance to grasp the head start for the development of industrial Internet so as to create the first industrial Internet platform in China.” Wang Min, president of XCMG, said in an interview, “As an established state-owned enterprise, XCMG takes technological innovation as the first strategy for enterprise development. In order to reach the peak of Mount Everest and solve the 10% technical problem, we need top talents from all over the world to make changes and breakthroughs from the research and development mode.”

“Industrial ‘Cloud’ has a larger market in China.” said Xu Dong, vice president of AliCloud, “We have the same goals with XCMG, that is, to create China’s ‘Predix Platform’ and to make China’s industrial data settle on China’s cloud platform.”

When XCMG, together with Alibaba, Huawei and China Telecom, pressed the start button of “XCMG Industrial Cloud”, innovation has transformed from the personal times to the times of Internet innovation with the gradual opening of innovation system, and “self-dependent innovation” as well as “proprietary intellectual property rights” seems to have become the outdated “peasant ideology”. The emergence of industrial “Cloud” has broken the deadlock of innovation of China’s traditional manufacturing industry and achieved the amazing transformation from the traditional simple manufacturing-type operation of “manufacturing+sales” to the complex service-oriented operation of “technology+management+services”.

Knowledge leveraging on the basis of “Cloud”

As a cloud can collect water drops from different places, industrial cloud also has strong inclusiveness for it can achieve instant computing and data storage, and then share them to everyone in need. At the beginning of the planning of “XCMG Cloud Platform”, Wang Min, president of XCMG, clearly pointed out that Internet technology shall be made full use of to achieve overall reengineering of products, procedures and services of the enterprise, and to carry out an initiative exploration for “XCMG Industrial Cloud”!

The “XCMG Cup” Green Innovation Contest initiated in April serves just as the breach of this revolutionary act of “Internet+cloud technology+manufacturing”. “The Contest acts as the entry point of the establishment of XCMG industrial cloud, and project of ‘minimized low-noise high-efficiency draught fan’ launched simultaneously is the first step of the cloud for crowdsourcing and crowd innovation, so to speak, XCMG cloud platform has its first green touch stone!”

The Green Innovation Contest carried with XCMG industrial cloud platform has brought a variety of resources in the platform, thus achieving the sharing of huge amounts of data open to the society through the manufacturing resource cloud platform as well as the trade financing and integration of global intelligence on this platform. “I hope through the ‘XCMG Cup’ Green Innovation Design Contest, elements of the times such as open innovation, collaborative innovation, multiple wisdom innovation and ‘Internet+’ can be integrated to reconstruct a maker space gathering with knowledge, technologies and talents and to set up an integrated innovation platform open to the world, thus attracting more groups of people, especially the young talents to be involved in China's equipment manufacturing, as well as making more makers and outstanding young people play their roles on such a world-class cloud platform and realize their dreams for creation!” said Wang speaking of original intentions of the Contest.

Through the platform of “XCMG Industrial Cloud”, participants from all over the world are able to achieve instant online interactive communication, and a global high-end platform has also been set up for cloud travel and industrial design feast sharing, thus truly realizing global opening and sharing on the basis of “cloud technology” and making the world a huge “laboratory”.

Mapping out strategies on the strength of “Cloud”

In the past, first-class enterprises focused on standards while in the future, they willl set up platforms. In recent years, XCMG has been centering on the market, constantly moving towards the production model of large-scale personalized customization, striding gradually towards the manufacturing system of network-based cooperation and flexible manufacturing, and carrying forward in accordance with the route of intelligent equipment, intelligent workshop as well as intelligent factory.

“Rome is not build in one day”, setting up of the industrial cloud platform shall be based on complete information and data foundation. Since the project of informatization integral elevation was launched in 2009, XCMG has formed a complete whole value chain informatization system of research, manufacturing, supply, marketing and services. Up to now, it has accumulated 150T industrial big data and started to use them for remote fault diagnosis and post-market services; favorable informatization foundation and the utilization of big data will provide effective support for the company to build an open and shared cloud platform. Yang Yong, the vice-general manager of XCMG, explained systematically on the press conference of “XCMG Industrial Cloud” the strategic positioning, user-oriented core application and future planning of “XCMG-Cloud”.

“In the future, you will either own the platform or be owned by the platform,” said Yang, “the emergence of cloud computing and cloud services has yielded incredible innovation in the world of consumption. The launch of ‘XCMG Industrial Cloud’ platform, as it were, has provided a new service level and output for China’s industrial circles.”

“XCMG industrial cloud has taken its industry-leading technical architecture system as the principal line as well as its members with the spirit of craftsmen as the main display carriers. XCMG industrial cloud platform is made up of three layers, namely IaaS platform, PaaS platform and SaaS platform. IaaS platform is the foundation platform of XCMG industrial cloud, PaaS platform is the platform of core competence and SaaS platform is the platform for big data applications.” said Yang on the press conference, “Simply speaking, we have initially established an open, shared and secure ‘XCMG Industrial Cloud’ platform; then on the basis of this platform, we need to extract the digital capability of XCMG and export it to internal and external enterprises; in the meantime, with the transformation of organizational management mode and employment ideality, social resources will be released and absorbed to create platform-type enterprises based on the cloud platform, and with the help of eight key projects of ‘Internet+’, user-oriented key applications will be established to support enterprises to realize customer-focused and service-oriented transformation and upgrading in a rapid manner.”

At present, “XCMG Industrial Cloud Platform” has been officially launched and opened. It has gathered the giants of all industries and joined hands with Alibaba, Huawei and China Telecom to establish the first industrial cloud alliance in China. The first industrial cloud ecological system it has produced in China will bring unprecedented tremendous strength to China’s industry Internet. “In the future, through the industrial cloud platform, XCMG will realize opening and sharing to the world, build a global ecosystem, and join hands to become the global technical leader, standard maker, data owner and ecology builder in the industry.” said Yang.

Yang Yong, vice-general manager of XCMG, launched the industrial cloud platform

On the Scene of the Press Conference

XCMG joined hands with such Internet and communication industry giants as Huawei, Alibaba and China Telecom to launch the “XCMG Industrial Cloud” platform

President Wang Min accepted media interview after the press conference