By AlibabaCloud Data Intelligence Team

On August 1, the Alibaba Cloud ET Industrial Brain open platform was officially launched. In the enablement ecosystem from awareness, to knowledge, and to wisdom, Alibaba Cloud develops ET Industrial Brain, which enables industrial devices to implement self perception, self diagnosis, self decision making, and self configuration in a true sense, boosting development of the intelligent industry.

What Is the ET Industrial Brain Open Platform?

ET Industrial Brain builds a fully open industrial intelligent PaaS platform, which supports plug-in type connection of industrial mechanism models and microservices and allows third-party developers to quickly generate various industrial intelligent applications. This platform features the strong component-based upgrade capability. In addition, the ET Industrial Brain open platform consistently reduces the technical skill requirements. It provides supports for process experts and product line experts to create and accumulate knowledge and activates the internal think tanks of the enterprises, forming a virtuous cycle.

What Are the Functional Characteristics of the ET Industrial Brain Open Platform?

ET Industrial Brain is a general architecture that integrates the data factory, algorithm factory, AI workshop, and industrial applications.

Data factory: Functions provided by the data factory can support all the capability fields and items for data management. It provides the one-stop data resource management service for users, and helps users conveniently complete multiple data management applications, including the data architecture, data standard, data quality, data application, and data lifecycle management. This provides the full, standard, clean, and intelligent data for the upper-layer data applications of ET Industrial Brain.

Algorithm factory: It is an industry-oriented comprehensive algorithm management platform. It decouples algorithms from applications and enables reuse of algorithms through integrated management of the algorithm deployment, access, debugging, and call processes. Applications can quickly encapsulate solutions and improve the algorithm engineering efficiency based on the unified interfaces of standardized products.

AI workshop: The industrial brain AI workshop is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) visualized service orchestration tool. Developers can assemble the service flow, service data dictionary, service rule, and industrial rule components by dragging and dropping, thus meeting the AI requirements in specific business scenarios.

Industrial application: An open application service platform leads to the prosperity of the industrial ecosystem. Multi-dimensional and end-to-end intelligent application services are provided from the following dimensions: supply, research, production, sales, energy, and environment.

How Can We Build an Open Intelligent Industrial Ecosystem?

The ET Industrial Brain open platform provides the ecological cooperation mode for data integration, data analysis, algorithm model, and application development. With the customer authorization and control, the factory information departments, process optimization departments, cooperation companies, third-party companies, and industrial research institutes can participate in the data test and intelligent analysis of enterprises, and the image-based drag-and-drop algorithm of the AI workshop significantly reduces the application difficulties of industrial algorithms. Therefore, implementation is not constrained by a specific company or technology, and an open intelligent industrial ecosystem centered on ET Industrial Brain is built to eventually form a virtuous, active, and innovative intelligent industrial ecosystem.

Based on the ET Industrial Brain open platform, eco partners can implement standardized projects. The implementation cycle is shortened from the original six months to today's six months. The implementation process requires no reconstruction of the production line, replacement of devices, or production halt.

What Are the Use Cases of the ET Industrial Brain Open Platform?

The ET Industrial Brain open platform is applicable to supply chain intelligence, R&D intelligence, production line intelligence, marketing intelligence, and device health intelligence.

Supply chain intelligence: It analyzes and optimizes the inventory through accurate sales prediction, and uses the intelligent recommendation algorithm to minimize the inventory and improve the logistics and distribution efficiency.

R&D intelligence: It provides assistance for process optimization, recommends process parameters for different scenarios based on analysis of massive data, and predicts indicator distribution and yield rate of finished products.

Production line intelligence: It perceives the manufacturing process of devices in the workshop based on the running data of devices. Then, it locates the most critical factors that affect the yield rate and the recommended process parameter solutions, and improves the operation efficiency and yield rate.

Production line intelligence: It consolidates all the production, switching, and integration data from the production site to production management, and establishes the comprehensive digital description about the production process.

Device health management: It performs dynamic monitoring, early exception alert and fault prediction on the running status and key parameters of devices, and improves visibility of the general health status of devices.

Who Are the Target Customers of the ET Industrial Brain Open Platform?

By May 2018, more than 20 customers that directly adopt ET Industrial Brain. These customers are mainly leading enterprises in each industry or enterprises with good information systems. Major industrial intelligent services include the production process parameter optimization, production yield rate improvement, production device monitoring and warning, product image intelligent check, and supply chain process optimization. ET Industrial Brain currently has serviced some leading enterprises in more than 10 manufacturing fields in China. Typical cases are as follows:

Photovoltaic: ET Industrial Brain helps GCL Photovoltaic, which occupies the largest market share in the world, to improve the yield rate by 1% and increase the annual profit by billions of RMB. ET Industrial Brain also helps Trina Solar, which delivers the largest number of PV components in the world, to improve the yield rate of cells by 7% and increase the annual profit by thousands of RMB.

Rubber: ET Industrial Brain helps Zhongce Rubber, which is the No.1 rubber enterprise in China, to improve the internal mixing qualification rate by 5% and increase the annual profit by thousands of RMB.

Oil and Gas: ET Industrial Brain helps Hengyi Petrochemical, which has the highest PTA capacity in the world, to improve the coal combustion efficiency by 3.9% and increase the annual profit by billions of RMB.

Energy: ET Industrial Brain helps DunAn Group, which is the leading enterprise in the wind power generation field in China, to detect potential faults of fans one to two weeks in advance and reduce the annual O&M cost by 30%.

Telecommunications: ET Industrial Brain helps Comba, a world leading radio telecommunication manufacturer, to improve the product commissioning efficiency by 43% to 100%.

Others: ET Industrial Brain also serves other leading enterprises in the manufacturing industry, including GCL System Integration (world's leading comprehensive distributed energy system integrator), Pangang Group (world's No.1 vanadium producer), and Kailin Group (one of the top 3 phosphate rock producers).

How Can I Become a of the Partner of ET Industrial Brain?

Data Collection Partner

Typically, a data collection partner builds the cloud infrastructure on the industrial site, and implements data collection, data matching, and data migration to cloud. You are expected to meet the following requirements:

1. Have experience in industrial automation, non-standard automation, industrial configuration software, and industrial control system.
2. Be familiar with data storage and transmission modes in the subsectors of the industry, communication protocols of multiple systems, network architectures, and network security.
3. Can work with the solution team on the customer's site to jointly complete project implementation.

Cooperation mode: Project cooperation (framework supplier)

Division of responsibilities: Independent sub-contract project

Business model: Project subcontract agreement and standard framework price

Delivery mode: Onsite + Remote

Technical abilities:

1. Industrial control protocol, network security, and network architecture
2. PLC, DCS, and SCADA
3. MQTT, HTTP, and MySQL
4. Familiar with industrial system databases, such as MES and ERP

Database Development Partner

As a database development partner, you are expected to clean, consolidate, and analyze data that has been migrated to the cloud, construct the enterprise data model, and provide the data after governance for business applications.

You are expected to meet the following requirements:

1. Have worked in the industrial software or IT companies, have the project implementation cases in which data development is successful in the industry, and have mature solutions or product experience.
2. Be familiar with the basic data requirements of enterprises in each part of the R%D, sales, and operation, and can use the data analysis platform to meet the customization requirements of enterprise customers.
3. Can work with the solution team on the customer's site to jointly complete project implementation.

   Cooperation mode: Project cooperation

   Division of responsibilities: Independent sub-contract project

   Business model: Project subcontract agreement

   Delivery mode: Onsite + Remote

   Technical ability: Be familiar with the distributed computing framework and can process massive data.

Algorithm Development Partner

Typically, an algorithm development partner provides the vertical industry algorithms, and releases the algorithms to the algorithm factory or AI workshop of ET Industrial Brain to meet the application requirements of the implementation team.

You are expected to meet the following requirements:

1. Have one or more mature industrial intelligent solutions and wish to use the ET Industrial Brain platform to promote the solutions in large scale;
2. Technical enterprises, high schools, research institutes, or individuals with invention patents, who wish to use the ET Industrial Brain platform to quickly expand business opportunities and exert industry influence.

Cooperation mode: Release of algorithms

Division of responsibilities: Providing the industrial intelligent algorithms

Business model: Allocation of software purchase/sales profits

Delivery mode: Remote

Technical abilities:

1. Big data and AI
2. Familiar with industrial algorithms, such as image processing, optimization control, energy saving control, and defect classification

System Integration Partner

As a system integration partner, you are expected to develop the AI service based on the algorithm models trained in the AI workshop to quickly complete SaaS applications that meet customers' requirements.

You are expected to meet the following requirements:

1. Industrial information companies or IT companies without the business background of resource outsourcing.
2. Have experience in industrial project implementation, and can use the basic cloud computing, AI, big data, and industrial information technologies.
3. Can complete the customized project independently on the customer's site.

Cooperation mode: Project cooperation

Division of responsibilities: Independent sub-contract project

Business model: Project subcontract agreement

Delivery mode: Onsite + Remote

Technical abilities:

1. Be familiar with the Alibaba Cloud product system
2. Basic IT development capabilities
3. Big data and AI

Channel Partner

Typically, a channel partner expands the vertical industry customers, explores the digital requirements of the industrial enterprises, and sells the Alibaba Cloud ET Industrial Brain products.

You are expected to meet the following requirements:

1. Professional service enterprises with years of experiences in the vertical industries, and stable customers and project resources.
2. Willing to work with Alibaba Cloud to make innovations and jointly help customers to complete digital transformation.

Cooperation mode: Channel sales

Division of responsibilities: Independent sales and delivery of projects

Business model: Integration with the industrial brain, tiered pricing

Delivery mode: Onsite + Remote

Technical ability: Industrial experience, customer relationship, and business management

Summary

The cloud computing and big data based IT AI technology is a field completely different from the traditional industrial sectors. The AI technology must be deployed in the industrial sectors. It requires in-depth integration across different sectors, and collaboration and complementation of multiple skills, technologies, and cultures.

When ET Industrial Brain is being deployed on applications of the industrial production lines, data scientists learn from production process experts based on the cloud computing and Internet infrastructure, and use machine learning to mine and analyze data and predict the industrial models. In this integration process, ET Industrial Brain serves as the middle platform to implement effective exchange and collaboration between technologies, concepts, and knowledge in different fields for the first time, and generates huge economic values for the industries. So, what are you waiting for? Come and join us.

To learn more about Alibaba Cloud ET Industrial Brain, visit https://www.alibabacloud.com/et/industrial