Yu Haibin, central control technology: Industrial software is the soul of the industrial manufacturing process

Under the wave of intelligent manufacturing, manufacturing enterprises, including petroleum and chemical industries, have continuously improved the digitalization, networking and intelligence of production and manufacturing on the basis of building industrial automation, which has become an important path
to achieve green and low-carbon transformation.
The deep integration of a new generation of information and communication technology and advanced manufacturing technology accelerates the process of digital transformation, which can provide a strong impetus
for the high-quality development of the industrial economy.
At present, the extensive market demand for intelligent transformation has spawned a large number of intelligent transformation engineering service companies and system integration solution providers, which play a vital role
in the promotion of intelligent manufacturing in China.

Taking Zhejiang Zhongkong Technology Co.
, Ltd.
, a leading enterprise in the field of chemical digitalization, as an example, the company's 2022 interim report data shows that in the first half of the year, the company focused on the digital and intelligent development needs of manufacturing enterprise customers, achieving operating income of 2.
667 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 45.
50%, and the half-year report performance exceeded market expectations
.

Recently, Yu Haibin, senior vice president of SUPCON Technology, was interviewed by reporters and answered reporters' questions
from the perspective of industry digital intelligence upgrade, industry trends, the company's future development, and new opportunities for intelligent manufacturing.

Reporter: In the entire process industry industry, in the process of promoting localization, what kind of pain points or difficulties do you think exist in the industry?

Yu Haibin: Now the pressure on enterprises is very great
.
The difficulties are as follows:

The first is safety, and security is the red line
.
At present, the number of safety accidents is still very large, because the speed of China's development is very fast, and in the process of project construction, we have a lot of work that is actually operating
in parallel.
Some confidential enterprises have particularly strict requirements for safety, due to various reasons, their schedule will be very tight, so many times equipment, instruments, control systems, and the entire work are carried out in parallel, in this case to ensure safe production is more important
.
This is also the reason why more companies are now promoting less manpower and unmanned, and the more this machine can replace human work, the safer
the enterprise.

The second is environmental protection
.
Now the "3060" goal for environmental protection requirements actually give customers a lot of constraints, and at the same time, enterprises themselves also need to save energy and improve economic benefits
.
At present, SUPCON Technology has set up an industrial energy-saving department, and continuously expanded the team, and empowered resources, capabilities and technologies to this team to help users better achieve the goal of
energy conservation and emission reduction.

Of course, there are also the well-known goals
of improving quality, reducing costs, improving efficiency and efficiency, etc.
to enhance the core competitiveness of sustainable enterprises.

Reporter: China's industrial software has long relied on imports, and the field of industrial software is called "more difficult to break through than chips"
.
As a senior practitioner in the industrial control industry, what do you think the government or the enterprise itself can do to jointly promote the development of the industry in the process of promoting independent and controllable development? What is the planning and investment of SUPCON itself in industrial software?

Yu Haibin: As Mr.
Chu, the founder of SUPCON, said, Industry 4.
0 is a revolution driven by industrial software, which is not only an IT product, not a simple software, but the soul
of the industrial manufacturing process.
China's industrial software market is leading the world in growth and has great
potential.
However, at present, the scale of China's industrial software industry accounts for only 6% of the global industrial software market, and it is still in the stage of
rapid increase in penetration.
On the other hand, the autonomy and reliability of industrial software is also crucial
to ensure national security.

From the government's point of view, the development of the industry is inseparable from the support of the government, which is multifaceted
.
If possible, it is hoped that central enterprises, state-owned enterprises, etc.
can take the lead in using domestic industrial software
.
Because the software is actually used as much as possible, why is foreign software easy to use, because they have accumulated for decades or even hundreds of years, and have added a lot of experience
in the process of continuous iteration.

From the perspective of enterprises, it is very difficult to do industrial software well, and it is even more difficult to promote it well, and industrial enterprises in the process industry face extremely dangerous environments, so unlike consumer software, the reliability of industrial software is particularly important
.
Industrial software software is the soul, but first of all, it is still industry, so we must really reflect the knowledge of industry into the
software.
SUPCON Technology especially hopes to communicate with more partners, develop products one by one, and transform industrial knowledge into software
in a more convenient and low-threshold way.
The solution of "factory operating system + industrial APP" launched by SUPCON Technology also wants to solve the problems of traditional industrial software such as huge system, high price, long development cycle, large secondary development workload, difficult update and maintenance, and can only be deployed locally, and develop ecological partners by providing an open platform to create an industrial APP library
for the whole industry chain 。 The APP developed by partners and the APP developed by users on the industrial Internet platform can be interconnected to solve the comprehensive problems of production control, production management and enterprise operation with integrated, digital and intelligent means, so that enterprises can always firmly grasp the initiative in their own development of industrial big data and artificial intelligence
.

In the future, SUPCON Technology will further increase the innovation and research and development of industrial software, and will build an open and cooperative ecological cooperative relationship, always be a reliable partner for the digital transformation of enterprises, and help the digital transformation and high-quality development
of industrial enterprises.
We also hope that from the user side to the government side, everyone can work together to promote the self-reliance of our country's industrial software
.

Reporter: In recent years, SUPCON Technology has put forward the demand for "Industry 3.
0+4.
0" for the process industry, and is committed to becoming a supplier of overall solutions for
intelligent manufacturing in the process industry.
What do you think is the starting point for SUPCON Technology to put forward this positioning? In establishing a new company positioning, where does the confidence of central control technology come from?

Yu Haibin: It has been more than 20 years since the development of central control technology, but many people in this industry still think that central control technology is only a manufacturer
that provides DCS control systems.
In the past two years, we have carried out all-round business upgrading and strategic transformation based
on market development and customer needs.
Since 2021, SUPCON Technology has carried out the second entrepreneurial transformation and upgrading, condensing the new core values - "customer success, striving for innovation, dedication and integrity, and the pursuit of excellence"
.
Now, the central control technology provides a package of hardware and software solutions, and the products are more diversified
.

For enterprises, with the changes in the domestic and foreign economic situation and market competition pattern, process industry enterprises are facing increasing cost and operating pressure
.
I once talked to the general manager of a large oil refining and petrochemical company, and he wanted us to provide them with a solution
that would ensure production safety and economic efficiency at low and medium loads.
From the perspective of the design process, it must be the best safety and stability when running at full load, and the economic indicators are also optimal, but now our raw material prices, finished product prices, and competitive patterns have changed too much, and sometimes the more we drive, the more
we lose.
So we need to make more adjustments
now.
Supply-side reform, "dual carbon" and other policies are forcing industrial enterprises to digitally transform, promote lean production and intelligent manufacturing, and achieve the effect of
reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

For central control technology, we only needed to provide a control system to ensure the safe and stable operation of basic automation, but now it is not
.
At the level of basic automation, we also need to optimize the device through a lot of industrial software, and let the machine operate as much as possible to the original human-operated part, in addition to normal operation, complex circuits such as lifting and lowering loads, opening and stopping can also allow the machine to be automatically controlled
.
This is also proposed by Professor Chu Jian, the founder of SUPCON, which requires SUPCON technology to transform from a "Industry 3.
0" product supplier with hardware as the core to a "process industry intelligent manufacturing overall solution provider" covering "Industry 3.
0+4.
0"
.
Through the power of software, the automation of the entire industry reaches a higher level, helping customers achieve safety, environmental protection, quality improvement, cost reduction, efficiency and other goals
.

"Where does the confidence of the central control technology come from?" is a good question
.
In fact, the DNA of the growth of central control technology determines that we have the basis for
such development.
In the development of nearly 20 years, we have been focusing on the process industry, although many experts and customers think that the market of discrete industries is larger, but Mr.
Chu and our management team have always believed that we must make the process industry deep and thorough, so for so many years the central control technology has been deeply cultivated in the petroleum, chemical and other process industries
.
After more than 20 years of entrepreneurial history, SUPCON Technology has grown from an entrepreneurial team of only a few people to a scale of more than 5,000 people, serving more than 26,000 process industry enterprise customers, and undertaking a series of influential and landmark major projects
at home and abroad.
Among them, there are a large number of excellent domestic enterprises including Sinopec, PetroChina, Sinochem, Huayi, Wanhua, Zhejiang Petrochemical, Tongkun, Hengli, Liqin, Sanning, and many large international enterprises
such as Saudi Aramco, BASF, Covestro, Shell, Petronas, and PetroThailand.
These large-scale projects have made us a lot of improvements
in product development and project management.

Secondly, we have also established a sound marketing and service system
.
SUPCON Technology launched the PLANTMATE® service brand for the full life cycle management of industrial solutions, created a "5S store + S2B platform" service model, has built more than 150 5S stores across the country, in the next two years, we will open 300 5S stores, to achieve full coverage
of chemical parks.
This way, similar to the car 4S shop, deploys our technical service personnel to the side of downstream customers, coupled with the combination of S2B online and offline Internet mode, so that we can respond faster to customer spare parts, value-added services and other needs
.
From passively meeting customer needs in the past to now actively predicting customer needs, finding customer problems, providing customers with highly targeted solutions, and then configuring our hardware and software products and cooperative ecological partners' products to form an overall solution
.
In the end, we will form a service network with cross-coverage of industries, regions and products, and provide customers with 24-hour service
.

Third, we have a strong product line
.
Central Control Technology deeply cultivates automatic control systems such as distributed control systems, safety instrumented systems, and networked hybrid control systems, and on this basis, vigorously lays out and develops industrial software, industry solutions, instrumentation and other products, forming a relatively complete "Industry 3.
0+4.
0" product and solution architecture
。 In July this year, SUPCON Technology launched a new generation of intelligent operation management and control (i-OMC) system, which is a system from 0 to 1, based on the traditional distributed control system function, deeply integrates the technical advantages of factory operating system, industrial AIoT, advanced industrial network, intelligent optimization, model prediction and so on, and is committed to realizing major innovation and upgrading
of the process industry from automation to intelligent autonomous operation.
Therefore, i-OMC has also been welcomed by many customers, and has also become a powerful booster for central control technology from following to
leading.

In addition, the development of central control technology is inseparable from the long-term support and trust
of customers.
In some core products, central control technology maintains a high market share
.
According to statistics, in 2021, the company's core product distributed control system (DCS) reached 33.
8% of the domestic market share, ranking first in the domestic market share for eleven consecutive years
.
Among them, in 2021, the company's market share in the fields of chemical, petrochemical and building materials ranked first
.
The core industrial software, Advanced Control Software (APC), achieved a domestic market share of 28.
6% in 2021, ranking first
in the domestic market share for three consecutive years.
At the end of the day, it's because of the great support we have from our customers, which is very important
.
In fact, for our downstream customers, they are facing high temperature and high pressure, flammable and explosive, toxic and harmful, etc.
, and their installations are capital-intensive and technology-intensive complex large-scale installations
.
Especially when our products are just launched on the market, these companies can trust us and use our products, which is a great encouragement
for us.

Reporter: In which industries are the core products of SUPCON technology used? At present, the process industry is experiencing the general trend and great change
of digitalization and intelligent upgrading.
How does central control technology empower the transformation and upgrading of process industry enterprises?

Yu Haibin: In recent years, SUPCON Technology adheres to independent innovation, its core products mainly focus on the pain points and hot spots of the process industry, and its products and solutions are widely used in oil and gas, petrochemical, chemical, electric power, pharmaceutical, metallurgy, building materials, papermaking, new materials, new energy, food and other industries, covering more than 50 countries and regions
around the world.

At present, SUPCON Technology uses "5T technology" (AT+IT+PT+OT+ET), "factory operating system + industrial APP" and "5S store + S2B platform" to help the digital intelligent construction of
the process industry.

First, "5T technology"
.
5T is AT (automation technology), IT (information technology), PT (process technology), OT (operational technology) and ET (equipment technology).

The Internet industry often emphasizes IT + OT, but this is not enough to fully reflect the characteristics of the process industry, we believe that only by realizing the combination of these 5 "T" can we provide corresponding solutions
for the changing scenario-based needs of process industry enterprises.

Second, "factory operating system + industrial APP"
.
In the process of promoting and expanding industrial software, we will also encounter a lot of difficulties or growing pains, in order to meet the personalized needs, the past model is often a customized solution
that requires heavy human input.
So how do you move forward with the new model? Continuous scenario-based and role-based requirements are the characteristics of industrial software or solutions proposed by customers, and the technology of "factory operating system + industrial APP" can well build personalized solutions
for different scenarios with this standardized platform, standardized modules or standardized components.

Third, "5S store + S2B platform"
.
This business model can better approach downstream customers and work with them to identify and solve problems
.

In addition to these three core strategies, we also actively promote the application research and engineering exploration of new technologies such as industrial 5G, industrial Internet, blockchain, edge computing, artificial intelligence, and big data technology in the industrial field.
Actively explore data-driven industrial typical devices, equipment low-carbon energy-saving technologies and related applications; Improve the intelligence of industrial equipment and industrial production safety, and further build an overall solution of
advanced automated factories, digital twin factories, unmanned factories with less manpower, and high-quality operation factories.

i-OMC system is an important product of the continuous exploration of central control technology, and its technological breakthrough has helped customers achieve a reduction in operation frequency of more than 90%, a stable production rate of more than 99%, and an automatic control rate of 100% for most devices during the demonstration stage of a chemical enterprise; And help an enterprise to achieve fully automatic and black screen operation, one-key start and stop caustic soda device, etc.
, reduce the capacity from 120 to less than 40 people, and better realize the needs
of less manpower, unmanned, automation and intelligence.

Reporter: In the past four years, SUPCON Technology has invested more than 10% of its total revenue in research and development, and its R&D investment in 2021 will reach 497 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.
19%, accounting for 10.
99%
of revenue.
What is the main use of such a high proportion of R&D investment? What is the company's next strategic plan? 

Yu Haibin: SUPCON Technology has always insisted on breaking technical barriers and building core capabilities
through independent innovation.
We not only innovate for core products but also innovate for individual solutions, and we are also building our ecosystem through an open platform for joint innovation
.
In the past four years, our investment in research and development has accounted for 10%-11% of our revenue, Mr.
Chu and our senior management team are very consistent, we believe that as a technology company, technology is the most critical
.

At present, the main R&D investment of central control technology is used in the construction of
R&D platforms.
Central Control Technology has established three major technology platforms of control system, industrial software and instrumentation, as well as eight categories of core technologies such as high-reliability design technology of thermal redundancy of control system, and has a national enterprise technology center and national and local joint engineering laboratories
.

In terms of R&D talents, the company has a high-quality R&D talent team, forming a talent echelon
of market research, demand analysis, technical research, product development, manufacturing, product testing and system integration.
As of the end of December 2021, the company's R&D personnel accounted for 34.
21% of the total number of employees, of which the core technical personnel have served in the company for more than 15 years
.

In terms of R&D investment, the company's R&D investment in 2021 was nearly 500 million yuan, an increase of 37.
19% over 2020, accounting for 10.
99% of the operating income in 2021, and continuous R&D investment provided strong support
for the company's R&D and innovation activities.

In terms of R&D sites, the company has more than 5,000 square meters of scientific research sites, established mature software sub-centers, hardware sub-centers, reliability testing departments and other R&D and testing departments, equipped with a large number of advanced testing equipment at home and abroad; It has a series of professional laboratories such as reliability life laboratory, industrial communication and network laboratory, information integration and factory modeling laboratory, industrial control safety laboratory, etc.
, and has built and completed an intelligent manufacturing laboratory to realize the simulation and verification
of the process manufacturing environment.

In the future, SUPCON Technology will adhere to the two-wheel drive to promote paradigm migration, deeply cultivate the process industry, combine technological innovation and customer needs, continue to make efforts and promote overall planning, and finally realize the paradigm migration
of the company's strategic development.

Reporter: How can SUPCON continue to maintain its leading position in the fiercely competitive DCS and SIS markets, and at the same time successfully create its own new growth curve and build a future "growth pole"?

Yu Haibin: The most important thing is that the central control technology is always closely focused on the needs of customers
.

From the perspective of development curve, the first stage, the central control technology is based on the domestic market, to create industrial automation related products, with the control system as the core, plus some instrumentation, several software, point to meet part of the needs
of customers.

In the second stage, which is the current stage, we have established the "3+1" platform
.
That is, i-OMC intelligent operation management and control system, factory operating system + industrial APP and a technology platform that has not yet been publicly released, as well as the "5S store + S2B" business model platform
.
All-round and multi-dimensional help process enterprises evolve from process automation to business automation
.

The third stage is "5T technology"
.
"5T technology" is very simple to understand, but the practical level is very
demanding for us.
"5" is both a real number and an imaginary number, and we hope to solve the problems
that industrial enterprises in the process industry want to solve for a long time through 5 or even more technologies, but cannot be solved by one or two technologies alone.
This requires more professional and technical personnel and experts to join, so we also hope to establish our technology platform and product platform through open innovation and platform innovation, and establish an ecology through these platforms to better serve customers
.

In order to achieve more business growth, SUPCON Technology accelerates the internationalization process
.
We will focus on process industry users in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and make every effort to expand the international market and provide strong support
for the company's business growth.

Biography

Yu Haibin, Ph.
D.
in Control Theory and Control Engineering, Zhejiang University, is a member
of the Communist Party of China.
He is currently the senior vice president of Zhejiang Zhongkong Technology Co.
, Ltd
.
, and concurrently serves as the director of Zhejiang Turing Internet Research Institute, the editorial board of "Automation Instrument" magazine, and the chairman of the Chemical Automation Professional Committee of Zhejiang Chemical Industry Society.

Dr.
Yu Haibin has long been committed to the research and development and promotion and application of domestic control systems and intelligent manufacturing, participated in the implementation of a number of major intelligent factory projects, and undertook 2 key scientific research projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission as the project leader, obtained 1 provincial and ministerial appraisal, published more than 10 high-quality papers in national core journals, and has rich experience
in digital intelligence improvement in the process industry.