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In February this year, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released a ranking of the 100 occupations with the most job shortages in the fourth quarter of 2021, of which more than 40% of the vacancies belong to the manufacturing industry. Young people would rather deliver takeaways in the wind and rain, and are no longer willing to enter the factory “three shifts and assembly lines”, they pursue more meaningful jobs and better wages. In fact, as early as the beginning of 2020, a platform has set a record of 580,000 new registered riders within two months, of which nearly 40% of the young people used to be workers in the manufacturing industry.

On the one hand, because of the huge talent gap, it is difficult for manufacturing enterprises to develop into application innovation enterprises, and it is difficult to increase commercial profits. Therefore, it is difficult to pay higher salaries for technical talents to attract them to join. On the other hand, due to the lack of high-end manufacturing jobs in the market, young talents do not have the opportunity or are no longer willing to join the Industrial jobs of “screwing screws”.

Among the many measures to attract young people to return to factories, a very critical step is to improve the quality and social recognition of vocational education. Vocational education is an important answer to the current dilemma in the manufacturing industry.

Wuhan Ship Vocational and Technical College

Wuhan Ship Vocational and Technical College (hereinafter referred to as “Wuhan Ship”), with a history of 70 years, is a top professional and technical institution of higher learning in the fields of ship marine engineering, modern manufacturing and information technology. It is also a national training base for skilled talents. According to the data of “Manufacturing Talent Development Planning Guide”, by 2025, the top ten manufacturing fields with the largest talent gap will include “offshore engineering equipment and high-tech ships”, as well as “new generation information technology industry” closely related to it. ” and “high-end CNC machine tools and Robots”. Wuhan Ship is working to make up for the shortcomings of technical talents in these three fields.

Wuhan ship demonstration production line and MiR composite robot at work

In recent years, with the continuous upgrading of the intelligent manufacturing industry, advanced automation technologies represented by collaborative mobile robots and collaborative robots have been increasingly used in the field of shipbuilding. In order to ensure that the technical capabilities mastered by students match the needs of manufacturing positions to the greatest extent, Wuhan Shipbuilding has introduced and comprehensively built an automated demonstration production line for marine parts, simulating the real production environment, and practicing “integration of engineering and learning” in daily teaching.

As a key part of the demonstration production line automation technology deployment, Wuhan Ship also introduced MiR Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR: Autonomous Mobile Robots). The MiR250 AMR and the FANUC CRX-10iA collaborative robot are combined to form a composite robot, which is responsible for the loading and unloading tasks of intelligent terminal equipment, so that the production unit can effectively form a modular combination.

Zhou Yu, deputy dean of the School of Mechanical Engineering of Wuhan Shipbuilding Vocational and Technical College, said: “We hope that through this advanced intelligent manufacturing production line for marine parts, we can improve the training of manufacturing talents and the nurturing of new production technologies in three aspects. First, the school Teacher, this automated production line is an experimental base for the secondary development of their technology. The second is for students to help them master the design, deployment and cutting-edge equipment operation capabilities of automated production lines. Finally, the school hopes that this production line can become the entire central China region. An educational and scientific research base, allowing ship practitioners in the region to gain opportunities to improve their skills.”

MiR’s composite robot picks up and delivers production materials from three-dimensional containers

Simulating the real ship manufacturing environment, the composite robot composed of MiR250 AMR and FANUC collaborative robot can complete the logistics docking of key production links in the whole chain. After the MES system places an order, the composite robot goes to the Modula three-dimensional container to pick up materials.automatic

After the reclaiming is completed, it goes to the truss lathe for processing. During the process, the collaborative robot grabs the semi-finished product of the car and boat and turns it over for reprocessing. Subsequently, the composite robot docked with the CNC machine tool and the vertical machining center to carry out multiple loading and unloading processes. After the collaborative robot grabs the finished product, the rudder stock and the rudder blade are placed on the assembly table for automatic rudder assembly. After the rudder is marked, the MiR250 is paired with a collaborative Robotic arm to grab the marked workpiece and store the container.

As the developer of the Wuhan Ship Demonstration Production Line Project, Wang Fan, senior development engineer of Beijing Fanuc Electromechanical Co., Ltd., said: “The construction of this project has high equipment integration, complex precision, and difficult implementation. In the early stage of project deployment, MiR250 AMR shows the maturity and stability of the technology. The product is easy to use, safe, quickly adapts to the site environment, and has excellent operation performance. Relying on its excellent hardware design, it can seamlessly connect with each station on the production line. In addition, MiR AMR software capabilities It is powerful and can collect production line data in real time, which is convenient for us to read and analyze various information such as angle and position, and then apply it to the virtual 3D model to form a digital twin, achieve centralized information management, and enable real-time optimization of robot deployment.”

Wuhan Ships introduces cutting-edge automation technology in daily teaching

Through this demonstration production line, with the blessing of digital twin technology, the students of Wuhan Shipbuilding can complete the virtual debugging ability training of the manufacturing production line, learn the relevant knowledge of AMR, collaborative robot and other equipment debugging and parameter configuration, and obtain the knowledge from ERP dispatch Order, MES system order, to the final completion of the processing tasks of each unit, get the whole process of intelligent manufacturing training, become a real technical talent.

In addition to Wuhan ships, MiR’s AMR technology has been adopted by many Chinese universities and colleges for daily teaching and research and development work, including many well-known 211 and 985 key universities. MiR AMR is mainly used for research and education work in automation-related disciplines and professions.

Zhang Yu, Sales Director of MiR Autonomous Mobile Robot China, said: “MiR has accumulated rich experience in the manufacturing industry and has been deployed in the entire industry chain in many fields, including upstream material and equipment manufacturing, midstream module manufacturing, and downstream brand complete machines. These practical experiences fully support us to let this mature technology enter colleges and universities, and help teachers to cultivate technical talents that are urgently needed in the market. We will continue to deepen our efforts in various fields of manufacturing and directly or indirectly support the deep transformation of local enterprises , attract and encourage more young talents to return to the factory.”