Introduction: Chinese companies have been suffering from the pain of "short chips and screens" for a long time. This kind of "deficiency" and "deficiency" include both intellectual property and high-end manufacturing capabilities. For example, Huawei has full chip design capabilities, and the performance of the designed Kirin chip is not worse than Qualcomm . However, in terms of precision manufacturing, since the level of local companies is not good, Huawei has always been in accordance with the global industrial chain division of labor, and Samsung , TSMC, etc. have helped to manufacture chips. When the international trade environment changes and the US government "stuck" Huawei, people realize that only technological R&D capabilities but not precision manufacturing capabilities will also be suppressed. ——Excerpt from "All Things: TCL Dares for 40 Years"
( Observer Network News) Since the industrial revolution , globalization has developed rapidly and an increasingly rich industrial ecosystem has gradually formed. With the support of national policies, Chinese enterprises have gradually integrated into the global industrial ecosystem after reform and opening up . A large number of private enterprises such as TCL have emerged one after another, and China's modern manufacturing has also ushered in a rapid rise. But for a long time, China has faced the dilemma of "short chips and screens", which is a big test for local companies by the times and the semiconductor industry.
In recent years, China's independent design capabilities are constantly catching up with the international leading level. At the same time, with intelligent manufacturing as the starting point, Chinese private enterprises are also trying to provide a breaking answer. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of TCL's establishment, the book "Everything Birth - TCL Dares for 40 Years" will be officially released. By recording the entrepreneurial development history of TCL through the entire cycle of China's reform and opening up, the book shows readers the way for Chinese enterprises to leap up, expand outward, and change inward. The content of the article
is excerpted from "All Things Birth: TCL Dares for 40 Years". There are slight deletion and modification of
directly faces the problem of "less screen". TCL entered the semiconductor display industry
The "deficiency of chips and screens" of the semiconductor industry has been a heart disease in China for a long time. Take the chip issue as an example. According to IC Insights statistics, the market size of China's integrated circuit (IC) in 2020 was US$143.4 billion. The market size of IC produced in mainland China is about US$22.7 billion, accounting for only 15.9%, of which the total output value of companies based in mainland China is US$8.3 billion, accounting for only 5.9%.
"Short Screen" dilemma is also tense people's nerves. In 2008, the subprime mortgage crisis broke out, and there was only one major market in the world that demand for LCD panels continued to grow, and that was the Chinese market. In 2008, the shipments of LCD TVs produced by Chinese color TV companies exceeded that of Japan and also exceeded that of CRT TVs. The scale of LCD TVs is so large, but they lack local sources of LCD panel supply. China suffers from frequent shortages, as well as the high procurement costs and the difficulties of others. TCL founder and chairman Li Dongsheng "has always been heartbroken" about this.
In August 2008, Japanese and Korean color TV companies canceled their orders for LCD panel companies in Taiwan, putting them on the verge of despair. On January 16 of the following year, nine mainland TV companies stood up at a critical moment and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Taiwan's LCD panel companies. The purchase volume exceeded 12 million pieces and the order value was as high as US$2.2 billion.
Unexpectedly, in less than a month, Korean color TV companies suddenly changed from canceling orders to purchasing inventory panels in Taiwan, and they were all cash transactions. At this time, , Qimei Electronics, and AUO, which have signed an agreement with mainland companies, not only refused to fulfill the supply contract, but also allowed the Korean companies to buy out the inventory panel. Mainland color TV companies have no power to fight back and can only increase the amount of panel purchases in 2009 to US$4.4 billion, but have no choice but to accept the reality of price increases.
From March to August 2009, imported panels rose by more than 30%. Mainland color TV companies not only had no profit to make, but even had to lose money.
"All Things Birth" New Book Tasting Meeting
" does not master the upstream, you must always rely on others and have the fantasy of not continuing to rely on it." Li Dongsheng said.
On April 15, 2009, the State Council announced the " Electronic Information Industry Adjustment and Revitalization Plan", which clearly positioned the electronic information industry as a strategic, basic and pioneering pillar industry of the national economy, and for the first time included "new display devices" in the scope of national policy support.In January of the following year, TCL officially started construction of Huaxing Optoelectronics . From terminal products to LCD panels, TCL enters semiconductor to display this high-tech industry.
TCL Huaxing Shenzhen t2 R&D Center
"Why did you make this major strategic choice at that time? For me, first, it was inspired by the success of South Korea's Samsung to surpass Japanese companies; second, the bottleneck problem of "chip shortage" and "small screen shortage" in China at that time had become a major problem that restricted the development of the industry. Among the two key points of "chip shortage" and "small screen shortage", TCL's chance of success in choosing to break through the "small screen shortage" problem is higher. If you choose to enter the chip industry, you will not objectively meet the relevant conditions; third, after the international financial crisis, the investment capabilities of enterprises in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other countries and regions were greatly restricted. From 2010 to 2015, Japan This Sharp has only added one LCD display production line, and South Korea's Samsung and LG each have added one LCD display production line, and is located in mainland China. Companies in Taiwan have only invested half of the production line, while BOE , Huaxing Optoelectronics and Tianma have invested a total of 12 panel production lines in mainland China. During this period, the market demand for global display products is still growing rapidly. Entering the semiconductor display industry is not only a demand for the development of the TCL industry, but also in line with the development direction of the strategic transformation and upgrading of Chinese enterprises." Li Dongsheng said in an interview.
After 40 years, TCL, a small factory that used to produce tapes in Huizhou, Guangdong, has grown into a globally competitive technology group with business covering more than 160 countries and regions, spanning three core industries: smart terminals, semiconductor displays, semiconductor photovoltaic and semiconductor materials . TCL's Huaxing Optoelectronics focuses on innovation in the field of semiconductor displays, which has become an important part of its strategic layout.
moves towards intelligence: China's manufacturing industry is ushering in a transformation
TCL Huaxing currently has 8 panel production lines and 4 module factories, with an investment amount of more than 240 billion yuan, and has become one of the world's leading semiconductor displays. Its products cover large, medium and small panels and touch modules, electronic whiteboards, splicing walls, automotive, e-sports and other high-end display applications, and build core competitiveness in the global panel industry. In this process, intelligence is indispensable.
In the research and development and design process of product , the past showed that the product design cycle was long, the new process, the verification process of new materials was long, and the cost was high. Now TCL Huaxing introduces an artificial intelligence engine and uses "
IoT x AI" technology to output all product design data and data for simulation verification, reducing the design process and greatly improving design efficiency. The production process of
semiconductors is very complex. From a piece of glass to a display screen, dozens or even nearly a hundred processes have to go through. The defect problems and backgrounds faced are also very complicated. It is impossible to use traditional optical detection equipment to conduct detailed defect detection and classification. TCL Huaxing has developed an ADC (automatic defect classification) system, using deep learning and artificial intelligence technology, allowing machines to automatically detect, classify, segment and logically judge defective products, and the quality detection efficiency has been greatly improved. In the past, it took 1-2 hours to intercept abnormally, but now it has been shortened to 40%, saving tens of millions of labor costs per plant in TCL Huaxing every year.
In addition, TCL Huaxing has invested tens of millions of yuan to establish a fully covered Internet of Things system, which can detect slight changes in the environment, measure the characteristics of micron-scale circuits, analyze the drift of data through big data, and predict product quality, make early warnings, and detect and deal with them early. Now, no matter whether there are any problems with the product or equipment, the directly responsible employees and supervisors can receive the information immediately and process it in a timely manner.
It can be said that TCL Huaxing’s flexible intelligent manufacturing system has played a key role in business synergy, planning adaptability, cost measurement, process transparency and performance measurement.
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: By 2025, key enterprises in key industries will initially achieve intelligent transformation
TCL Huaxing starts from the first year of intelligent manufacturing: multi-engine driver in progress
intelligence is not the only highlight of TCL Huaxing’s intelligent manufacturing.
In fact, as early as 2016, TCL Huaxing planned the "three transformations and four steps" intelligent manufacturing development route. " Sanhua " means automation, dataization and intelligence. This year also became the first year of the development of intelligent manufacturing of Huaxing .
In terms of automation: TCL Huaxing started with the factory construction blueprint planning, synchronously planned how to realize the automated operation of the factory, data interaction between systems, and control and analysis of the backend production process. Based on actual needs and industry experience, TCL Huaxing cooperates with top global information technology companies to gradually establish a comprehensive computer integrated manufacturing production system, including manufacturing execution system (MES), automation control (BC), automated delivery system (DSP), reporting system (RPT), central monitoring system (CFM) and other systems, and gradually explores an intelligent manufacturing development route with " Internet + " as the core.
TCL Huaxing t1 project is the first high-generation LCD panel production line in my country that relies entirely on independent innovation to build. When the t1 and t2 projects were launched, TCL Huaxing's automation level was at an extremely high level. Since the glass substrate is 2.5 meters long, 2.2 meters wide and only 0.5 mm thick, it needs to be processed and flowed in thousands of precision equipment, which took more than 10 days and took 4 kilometers. It cannot be completed by manual alone. At that time, TCL Huaxing had accumulated more than 2 billion yuan in investment in automation equipment. The automation workshop consists of thousands of sets of robots and hundreds of thousands of sensors, and a huge number of robots and sensors form the foundation of TCL Huaxing Smart Factory. TCL Huaxing has nearly 70 automatic production systems and about 3,000 robots support automated production. Among the 140 processes and testing sites, about 120 are fully automatic, and the other 20 are automated more than 70%. Automated production equipment accounts for more than 95% of the total production equipment of the enterprise.
In recent years, TCL Huaxing has achieved automatic acquisition, automatic reporting and automatic recording of data through Internet of Things technology, reducing the on-site inspection manpower by 80%, greatly improving timeliness; using data analysis tools, reducing the risk of abnormalities causing downtime in manufacturing equipment.
A scene in Huaxing workshop, video screenshot
In terms of dataization, each product of TCL Huaxing needs to control about 25,000 parameters in all processes, and more than 2TB of production data are generated and collected every day. There are nearly 1,000 testing sites in the entire production process, among which the number of pictures that need to be determined by the optical and lighting sites every day exceeds 2 million. These data are of great help to the management of TCL Huaxing. At the same time, TCL Huaxing also realized that the value of data has not been fully utilized and utilized, and some aspects of data still have key shortcomings.
In 2017, TCL Huaxing began to deploy factory AP (access point) construction, and tens of thousands of IoT points solved the communication and coordination of people, machines, materials, methods and rings in real time. The data collected by the Internet of Things is analyzed and modeled through big data platform, providing data support for intelligent AI ( artificial intelligence ) applications such as virtual measurement and device monitoring. TCL Huaxing independently developed and built the internal management system of BI ( Business Intelligence ). As the "central brain", it processes production data at a level of 100 G every day, and summarizes, analyzes and manages the data, and accurately and visually presents information on production, yield, inventory, quality, sales and other aspects on 24 screens in the battle room. "Data collection, knowledge formation, wisdom action" has gradually become an important path for TCL Huaxing's decision-making.
In an interview, Li Dongsheng particularly emphasized the importance of intelligent manufacturing in improving TCL Huaxing's business management capabilities. He believes that automation can improve quality, improve accuracy, and improve efficiency, while intelligent energy can further improve efficiency and quality. TCL Huaxing uses automation and intelligent equipment to replace people with automation and intelligence, with higher production efficiency and better product quality, while reducing labor costs and improving efficiency and benefits.
moves from manufacturing to "intelligent manufacturing" . What is the confidence of Chinese companies?
Chinese companies have the confidence to embrace the broader sea of stars, which is inseparable from industrial capabilities, especially the improvement of manufacturing capabilities.
In the past decade, China's industrial ecosystem has accelerated its transformation and upgrading, and has entered a period of concentrated explosion in breakthroughs in efficiency, product and technological advantages.But all of this cannot be separated from the manufacturing process. Solid products such as panels are made after all. This involves excellent precision manufacturing capabilities and advanced process level. These capabilities are gradually cultivated in the practice of "building self-built teams and building self-built lines" and cannot be simply copied.
TCL Huaxing has established a deep foundation in precision manufacturing and other aspects. Li Dongsheng said: "Although integrated circuit has higher requirements for precision manufacturing capabilities than semiconductor displays. One is to make transistor on silicon wafer , and the other is to make transistors on glass substrates; one is 7 nanometers, and the other is 2,000 nanometers... But the basic principles are the same, including the same professional equipment and professional terms. For example, all use lithography machines and photoresist , and all require exposure etching, but the process accuracy is different and the equipment requirements are different."
is based on TCL Huaxing's high-end manufacturing and precision manufacturing capabilities that Li Dongsheng dared to continue to enter semiconductor photovoltaics, semiconductor materials and integrated circuits from the field of semiconductor display. Because these are all high-tech, heavy asset , and long-term industries, they all require extremely high cost control, efficiency improvement capabilities, and high-tech manufacturing and process levels.
"All Things Birth: TCL Dares for 40 Years" commented: "In the era of becoming a manufacturing power, winning scale is the usual path. In the era of becoming a manufacturing power, ability is the key to breakthrough and innovation in key technologies and materials fields. Systematically improving competitiveness is the key. This is also the key to Huaxing's success."
This article is an exclusive article of Observer.com and may not be reproduced without authorization.
In January of the following year, TCL officially started construction of Huaxing Optoelectronics . From terminal products to LCD panels, TCL enters semiconductor to display this high-tech industry.TCL Huaxing Shenzhen t2 R&D Center
"Why did you make this major strategic choice at that time? For me, first, it was inspired by the success of South Korea's Samsung to surpass Japanese companies; second, the bottleneck problem of "chip shortage" and "small screen shortage" in China at that time had become a major problem that restricted the development of the industry. Among the two key points of "chip shortage" and "small screen shortage", TCL's chance of success in choosing to break through the "small screen shortage" problem is higher. If you choose to enter the chip industry, you will not objectively meet the relevant conditions; third, after the international financial crisis, the investment capabilities of enterprises in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other countries and regions were greatly restricted. From 2010 to 2015, Japan This Sharp has only added one LCD display production line, and South Korea's Samsung and LG each have added one LCD display production line, and is located in mainland China. Companies in Taiwan have only invested half of the production line, while BOE , Huaxing Optoelectronics and Tianma have invested a total of 12 panel production lines in mainland China. During this period, the market demand for global display products is still growing rapidly. Entering the semiconductor display industry is not only a demand for the development of the TCL industry, but also in line with the development direction of the strategic transformation and upgrading of Chinese enterprises." Li Dongsheng said in an interview.
After 40 years, TCL, a small factory that used to produce tapes in Huizhou, Guangdong, has grown into a globally competitive technology group with business covering more than 160 countries and regions, spanning three core industries: smart terminals, semiconductor displays, semiconductor photovoltaic and semiconductor materials . TCL's Huaxing Optoelectronics focuses on innovation in the field of semiconductor displays, which has become an important part of its strategic layout.
moves towards intelligence: China's manufacturing industry is ushering in a transformation
TCL Huaxing currently has 8 panel production lines and 4 module factories, with an investment amount of more than 240 billion yuan, and has become one of the world's leading semiconductor displays. Its products cover large, medium and small panels and touch modules, electronic whiteboards, splicing walls, automotive, e-sports and other high-end display applications, and build core competitiveness in the global panel industry. In this process, intelligence is indispensable.
In the research and development and design process of product , the past showed that the product design cycle was long, the new process, the verification process of new materials was long, and the cost was high. Now TCL Huaxing introduces an artificial intelligence engine and uses "
IoT x AI" technology to output all product design data and data for simulation verification, reducing the design process and greatly improving design efficiency. The production process of
semiconductors is very complex. From a piece of glass to a display screen, dozens or even nearly a hundred processes have to go through. The defect problems and backgrounds faced are also very complicated. It is impossible to use traditional optical detection equipment to conduct detailed defect detection and classification. TCL Huaxing has developed an ADC (automatic defect classification) system, using deep learning and artificial intelligence technology, allowing machines to automatically detect, classify, segment and logically judge defective products, and the quality detection efficiency has been greatly improved. In the past, it took 1-2 hours to intercept abnormally, but now it has been shortened to 40%, saving tens of millions of labor costs per plant in TCL Huaxing every year.
In addition, TCL Huaxing has invested tens of millions of yuan to establish a fully covered Internet of Things system, which can detect slight changes in the environment, measure the characteristics of micron-scale circuits, analyze the drift of data through big data, and predict product quality, make early warnings, and detect and deal with them early. Now, no matter whether there are any problems with the product or equipment, the directly responsible employees and supervisors can receive the information immediately and process it in a timely manner.
It can be said that TCL Huaxing’s flexible intelligent manufacturing system has played a key role in business synergy, planning adaptability, cost measurement, process transparency and performance measurement.
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: By 2025, key enterprises in key industries will initially achieve intelligent transformation
TCL Huaxing starts from the first year of intelligent manufacturing: multi-engine driver in progress
intelligence is not the only highlight of TCL Huaxing’s intelligent manufacturing.
In fact, as early as 2016, TCL Huaxing planned the "three transformations and four steps" intelligent manufacturing development route. " Sanhua " means automation, dataization and intelligence. This year also became the first year of the development of intelligent manufacturing of Huaxing .
In terms of automation: TCL Huaxing started with the factory construction blueprint planning, synchronously planned how to realize the automated operation of the factory, data interaction between systems, and control and analysis of the backend production process. Based on actual needs and industry experience, TCL Huaxing cooperates with top global information technology companies to gradually establish a comprehensive computer integrated manufacturing production system, including manufacturing execution system (MES), automation control (BC), automated delivery system (DSP), reporting system (RPT), central monitoring system (CFM) and other systems, and gradually explores an intelligent manufacturing development route with " Internet + " as the core.
TCL Huaxing t1 project is the first high-generation LCD panel production line in my country that relies entirely on independent innovation to build. When the t1 and t2 projects were launched, TCL Huaxing's automation level was at an extremely high level. Since the glass substrate is 2.5 meters long, 2.2 meters wide and only 0.5 mm thick, it needs to be processed and flowed in thousands of precision equipment, which took more than 10 days and took 4 kilometers. It cannot be completed by manual alone. At that time, TCL Huaxing had accumulated more than 2 billion yuan in investment in automation equipment. The automation workshop consists of thousands of sets of robots and hundreds of thousands of sensors, and a huge number of robots and sensors form the foundation of TCL Huaxing Smart Factory. TCL Huaxing has nearly 70 automatic production systems and about 3,000 robots support automated production. Among the 140 processes and testing sites, about 120 are fully automatic, and the other 20 are automated more than 70%. Automated production equipment accounts for more than 95% of the total production equipment of the enterprise.
In recent years, TCL Huaxing has achieved automatic acquisition, automatic reporting and automatic recording of data through Internet of Things technology, reducing the on-site inspection manpower by 80%, greatly improving timeliness; using data analysis tools, reducing the risk of abnormalities causing downtime in manufacturing equipment.
A scene in Huaxing workshop, video screenshot
In terms of dataization, each product of TCL Huaxing needs to control about 25,000 parameters in all processes, and more than 2TB of production data are generated and collected every day. There are nearly 1,000 testing sites in the entire production process, among which the number of pictures that need to be determined by the optical and lighting sites every day exceeds 2 million. These data are of great help to the management of TCL Huaxing. At the same time, TCL Huaxing also realized that the value of data has not been fully utilized and utilized, and some aspects of data still have key shortcomings.
In 2017, TCL Huaxing began to deploy factory AP (access point) construction, and tens of thousands of IoT points solved the communication and coordination of people, machines, materials, methods and rings in real time. The data collected by the Internet of Things is analyzed and modeled through big data platform, providing data support for intelligent AI ( artificial intelligence ) applications such as virtual measurement and device monitoring. TCL Huaxing independently developed and built the internal management system of BI ( Business Intelligence ). As the "central brain", it processes production data at a level of 100 G every day, and summarizes, analyzes and manages the data, and accurately and visually presents information on production, yield, inventory, quality, sales and other aspects on 24 screens in the battle room. "Data collection, knowledge formation, wisdom action" has gradually become an important path for TCL Huaxing's decision-making.
In an interview, Li Dongsheng particularly emphasized the importance of intelligent manufacturing in improving TCL Huaxing's business management capabilities. He believes that automation can improve quality, improve accuracy, and improve efficiency, while intelligent energy can further improve efficiency and quality. TCL Huaxing uses automation and intelligent equipment to replace people with automation and intelligence, with higher production efficiency and better product quality, while reducing labor costs and improving efficiency and benefits.
moves from manufacturing to "intelligent manufacturing" . What is the confidence of Chinese companies?
Chinese companies have the confidence to embrace the broader sea of stars, which is inseparable from industrial capabilities, especially the improvement of manufacturing capabilities.
In the past decade, China's industrial ecosystem has accelerated its transformation and upgrading, and has entered a period of concentrated explosion in breakthroughs in efficiency, product and technological advantages.But all of this cannot be separated from the manufacturing process. Solid products such as panels are made after all. This involves excellent precision manufacturing capabilities and advanced process level. These capabilities are gradually cultivated in the practice of "building self-built teams and building self-built lines" and cannot be simply copied.
TCL Huaxing has established a deep foundation in precision manufacturing and other aspects. Li Dongsheng said: "Although integrated circuit has higher requirements for precision manufacturing capabilities than semiconductor displays. One is to make transistor on silicon wafer , and the other is to make transistors on glass substrates; one is 7 nanometers, and the other is 2,000 nanometers... But the basic principles are the same, including the same professional equipment and professional terms. For example, all use lithography machines and photoresist , and all require exposure etching, but the process accuracy is different and the equipment requirements are different."
is based on TCL Huaxing's high-end manufacturing and precision manufacturing capabilities that Li Dongsheng dared to continue to enter semiconductor photovoltaics, semiconductor materials and integrated circuits from the field of semiconductor display. Because these are all high-tech, heavy asset , and long-term industries, they all require extremely high cost control, efficiency improvement capabilities, and high-tech manufacturing and process levels.
"All Things Birth: TCL Dares for 40 Years" commented: "In the era of becoming a manufacturing power, winning scale is the usual path. In the era of becoming a manufacturing power, ability is the key to breakthrough and innovation in key technologies and materials fields. Systematically improving competitiveness is the key. This is also the key to Huaxing's success."
This article is an exclusive article of Observer.com and may not be reproduced without authorization.
