ICT helps renovate old factories into smart ones

[Reston, the US, March 28, 2016] The Manufacturing Quality Management (MQM) Testbed project, jointly launched by Huawei, Haier Group, China Telecom, and the China Academy of Telecommunication Research, CATR (formerly China Academy of Information and Communications Technology), was approved by the Steering Committee of the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) in US.

The MQM project aims to develop a set of quality control methodologies that can be used repeatedly and adopt the IIC's Industrial Internet Reference Architecture to turn traditional manufacturing facilities into smart factories that are capable of efficiently producing high-quality products. By integrating modern information technologies into the existing factories, the MQM Testbed solution can help address a number of problems, such as a lack of capacity, high labor and management costs, and inconsistent quality, caused by obsolete equipment technologies and labor-intensive manufacturing.

According to Huawei, "MQM Testbed is the first testbed program from China approved by IIC. Through this project, we aim to apply advanced industrial internet technologies to factories to help them become digitized and modernized, and thus to ensure product consistency, boost productivity, and reduce equipment maintenance costs. Huawei will develop the MQM Testbed in cooperation with its partners by the end of 2017. To promote and accelerate the application of industrial internet technologies in the "Made in China 2025" initiative, we will work with our industry partners through the MQM Testbed project on service innovation and trials."

Huawei will apply its smart edge analytics solution for industrial data, which is based on cognitive computing, to the MQM Testbed. This will enable factories to be able to quickly process, analyze, and store data. By integrating the industry-leading deep learning algorithms with traditional machine learning, Big Data analytics, and other technologies, factories will be able to ensure the reliability of production data analytics, intelligently monitor the status of equipment in operation, diagnose faults, make status forecasts, and determine whether equipment needs repairs.

Following the approval of the MQM Testbed, Joseph Fontaine, Chairman of the IIC Testbed Working Group, along with members of the IIC's Steering Committee, congratulated Huawei, Haier, China Telecom, and CATR, and spoke highly of the Huawei-led joint team for receiving the approval in such a short time.

IIC is a renowned organization focusing on prompting applications of industrial internet internationally. It has over 250 member companies, including many leading companies in the industrial and IT sectors throughout the world. The approval of the MQM Testbed by the IIC demonstrates that Huawei and its partners have made active contributions to industrial internet development and have achieved an impressive initial success. The project is expected to have great influence on Chinese and global manufacturing sectors.