The development  path  of  industry  is  mechanization, automation, digitalization  to  intelligence, and the information of enterprises from electronic process, digital management, production automation, operation network to enterprise intelligence. The concept of  digital transformation is also evolving, from the goal of increasing efficiency and meeting customer needs to the goal of business innovation and improving customer experience.

The industrial Internet has different characteristics from the consumer Internet

Internet + is actually a combination of industrial Internet, consumer Internet and government Internet, three aspects have different characteristics, both related, but also very different. Industrial Internet and industrial Internet are often synonymous.

The industrial Internet has different characteristics from the consumer Internet. The first is personalization, although the consumer Internet faces more than one billion Internet users, it is common, and the different enterprises of the industrial Internet are personalized. The consumer Internet is global and easy to standardize, while the enterprise network does not need global networking, so the enterprise Intranet is connected to a variety of devices, and standardization is very difficult.Secondly, the threshold is high, the consumer Internet terminal is relatively simple, easy to popularize and upgrade, and the industrial Internet involves a variety of production equipment. The business chain of the industrial Internet is very long, the model is complex, and the needs are diverse, and it is not only necessary to provide industrial Internet products, but also to provide solutions. In addition, the industrial Internet has higher requirements in performance, rapid response, reliability, and security. There is also a large demand for capital on the industrial Internet.From the perspective of talent, the threshold is also high, both need to understand information technology, but also to understand the production process of the enterprise. Companies are sensitive to data involving technology and trade secrets, and fear that connecting production lines will increase the risk of data breaches.

There is no way to replicate the consumer Internet model to the industrial Internet

From the business model point of view, consumer Internet is often more than burn money, gather popularity, circle users, earn traffic, income by advertising and dues, etc., this model is no way to copy to the industrial Internet.

The soul of the Internet is innovation, which is the same for the industrial Internet and the consumer Internet, but it does not mean that the mode of thinking of the consumer Internet can be used on the industrial Internet. The implementation subject of the two is also different, the industrial Internet needs more support from leading enterprises in the subdivision field, and the main role is still the real economy enterprises.The whole ecology is also different, the main carrier of consumer Internet is mobile phones, relying on IOS and Android operating systems to build an APP STORE platform to support a large number of third-party apps, while the industrial Internet currently lacks a universal platform and industrial apps.Therefore, most enterprises feel that the industrial Internet can not see, touch, shout loudly, and heat slowly. The reason can not be attributed to the traditional enterprises are not active, and the industrial Internet has a maturation process.

Even with the basic technical support conditions, there is still a lot of optimization work to be done to meet the requirements of the industrial Internet, especially the integration of information technology (IT) and industrial technology (OT).IT technology is widely used in the consumer Internet, but industrial IT technology is different, including sensors, programmable logic controllers, monitoring and data acquisition systems, manufacturing execution systems, enterprise resource planning, and so on.OT technology in industry, including materials, machines, methods, measurement, maintenance, management, modeling, etc. IT and OT need to be combined, otherwise the industrial Internet is still a different thing.

Artificial intelligence will be widely used on the industrial Internet

Technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence will play an important role in the industrial Internet. Talking about artificial intelligence first, there are many examples that show that optimizing production management using artificial intelligence algorithms on the basis of the Internet of Things and big data can improve production efficiency or improve product quality. Now the best use of artificial intelligence technology is the production data is relatively complete enterprises.

The current artificial intelligence is just artificial plus machine intelligence, and simple machine intelligence is imperfect. First of all, the industrial data may not be comprehensive and accurate enough, and secondly, the model derived based on data is not necessarily better than the enterprise's understanding of the production law accumulated over the years, even if the trained model accuracy rate is 99%, in fact, the system will still make many mistakes. Current machine learning usually uses a curve to fit the data, so called machine learning, neural network is actually a classifier, we find the classification rules, there are some small differences on the edge of the classification is easy to blur. Moreover, the current neural network process lacks transparency and explanation, and the results may lose their physical and chemical significance. The key to true machine intelligence is the ability to use causal inference rather than relational inference, so an environment in which engineers and AI work together, interpreted by human experience, needs to be created.

The combination of blockchain with the Internet of Things and third-party institutions enables the Industrial Internet

The credit problem of the industrial Internet can be solved with the help of blockchain. Blockchain through the block chain data structure, distributed ledger, digital signature and smart contract four encryption security methods, through the algorithm without the need for third-party institutions to get the integrity of the transaction process guarantee. Blockchain has many successful application cases in product traceability, but blockchain is not without problems, blockchain uses trust algorithm code to replace trust, and the code will be cracked by hackers, is software more trustworthy than people? Combining blockchain with the Internet of Things and third-party institutions can improve security. At present, many private enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises occupy a very low proportion of real estate, and banks cannot provide loans to them. If we take private loans, the interest rate will be very high, and enterprises will be overwhelmed.

An enterprise engaged in steel logistics supply in Wuxi can now use the Internet of Things to monitor the product transfer warehouse, although the products of the warehouse are temporarily stored, but it is still real estate for a short time, the bank can obtain short-term real estate data through camera monitoring, according to these pledge information can be lent to the borrower. Of course, if the monitoring of the product out of the warehouse, the bank will find out in time. In fact, before the product is released, the borrower can repay the loan first, and every link is added to the blockchain supervision. In this way, the interest rate is reduced to 7.1%, which is only 1.5 percentage points more than the bank's interest rate, namely the Internet of Things regulatory fees. The use of the Internet of Things to supervise the storage of movable property, to achieve the coordination of logistics, capital flow and information flow, with blockchain management, to adapt to the short and urgent needs of enterprises, borrow and repay, to solve the problem of difficult loans and expensive loans for some small and medium-sized enterprises.

The security of the industrial Internet cannot be solved by the enterprise itself

Some companies believe that by encrypting our core data, and then storing it scattered, and storing it out of order, even if it is stolen, it cannot be solved, and there is no way to read it. But today's hackers can re-encrypt your encrypted data so that the enterprise itself can't read it. Therefore, data encryption can not solve the enterprise security problem, intrusion prevention is the most important.

The industrial Internet security of enterprises cannot be solved by an enterprise itself, it is necessary to obtain the big data cooperation of industrial control system integrators or original factories, network information security enterprises, and government departments, obtain real-time threat intelligence and risk notification and solutions, and use external forces to help enterprises improve the security defense of the industrial Internet. But there is also a problem, in the security information cooperation at the same time how to protect the data of the enterprise is not leaked, in the development of the industrial Internet and security issues, it is necessary to formulate laws and regulations on enterprise data sharing, open application and enterprise data protection as soon as possible.

The industrial Internet is the foundation of industrial digitization, networking and intelligent development, and the industrial Internet is the "second half" of the Internet, with different characteristics from the consumer Internet. IT needs to meet the requirements of high security, ultra-reliable, low delay, large connection, personalization, and IT and OT compatibility for enterprise applications, and needs to develop ICT technologies that optimize the industrial Internet. Although there are still many technologies that are not perfect, it does not mean that the industrial Internet cannot be started now. The full realization of the industrial Internet is a long-term process that can be started by any enterprise, and the work of digital transformation can be started from any stage to manage innovation and technological innovation to meet the challenges in development.

(Wu Hequan, former Vice President and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering)