Following the Industrial Revolution and the Internet Revolution, the manufacturing industry has now entered the era of the Industrial Internet, where full connectivity serves as the engine and driving force for the development of intelligent manufacturing.

Facing the vast and complex enterprise foundational network, key challenges include:

• How to reduce management complexity, improve efficiency, and make operations and maintenance (O&M) more intuitive and convenient;

• How to resolve common network issues such as slow internet access, latency for critical services, and unstable teleconferencing;

• How to ensure secure user authentication anytime, anywhere, enabling the right people to access appropriate network resources.

To help enterprises address these challenges, a tailored solution for foundational network infrastructure planning has been designed. Networks are unleashing unprecedented power, becoming a key productive force for creating new value and consequently catalyzing a new model of internet-enabled agile manufacturing.

• Network Management: Constructs an integrated O&M platform for enterprises. Establishes a three-tier service response system based on ITIL standard processes through HelpDesk, network O&M departments, and suppliers; Helps customers streamline people, organizations, processes, systems, and tools within the network O&M process, progressively enhancing management capabilities; The eSight integrated O&M platform provides tool support for unified enterprise operations, enabling integrated management of users, devices, and services. Efficient enterprise O&M is achieved through a hierarchical management system. The solution realizes standardized, routine, centralized, and automated management of the enterprise network.

• Service Assurance: Builds a high-quality experience support and guarantee system for enterprise critical services. Ensures quality of service (QoS) for latency-sensitive services through flexible deployment of critical services and the creation of regional low-latency zones; Flexibly configures link bandwidth based on service requirements, conducting regular reviews, traffic analysis, and bandwidth adjustments; Achieves application acceleration through various methods such as data structure simplification via compression and consolidation, optimization of transmission pipelines using WAN acceleration software, and reduction of data transmissions through local caching and request bundling; Implements differentiated services for different business types, employing QoS policies to prioritize and guarantee critical core services.

• Wide Area Interconnection: Employs a hierarchical and structured network architecture that is stable and highly scalable; Regions utilize unified egress points, allowing new branches to connect nearby to the enterprise network, enabling rapid network extension; Domestic links utilize carrier-leased lines and the Internet for wide coverage; Overseas regions connect uniformly to the domestic region via back-to-back connection points and links, with mutual backup through MPLS VPNs from dual overseas multinational carriers, achieving unified regional service aggregation; Full Mesh connectivity within regions is implemented via regional carrier MPLS VPNs, allowing regional services to operate without detouring to headquarters, creating regional <100ms latency zones and effectively reducing network costs.

• Campus Network: Covers network solutions for headquarters, regional centers, branch offices, and various functional zones within campuses such as general office areas, high-security office areas, guest management areas, meeting rooms, laboratories, production areas, warehouses, and logistics parks. Adopts a hierarchical networking model with Access Layer + Aggregation Layer + Core Layer + Edge Routers, implementing zoned aggregation.

• Campus WLAN: Achieves full-scenario coverage across the enterprise campus, supporting diverse indoor and outdoor applications including enterprise office work, meetings & training, experimentation, open-air campus areas, construction sites, underground parking lots, workshops/warehouses, and guest access.

• Data Center Network: Helps customers build the most suitable data center network based on enterprise scale and business requirements. The solution provides multi-layer network products, offering comprehensive support for internal data center interconnects, cross-data center connectivity, disaster recovery backup, security, and management. It aims to provide users with end-to-end one-stop services, simplifying the customer's data center network construction.

All signs indicate that digital manufacturing is the essential path for Chinese manufacturing as it advances towards intelligent manufacturing. As the specific realization of full digital transformation within the manufacturing sector, what changes will digital manufacturing bring to Chinese industry?

Consulting firm McKinsey addresses this: "Digital manufacturing technologies will transform every link of the industrial chain: from R&D and supply chain to factory operations, marketing, sales, and service. The digital links among designers, managers, employees, consumers, and industrial physical assets will unleash immense value and reshape the manufacturing landscape entirely."

For leading manufacturing enterprises, there are three primary drivers for actively pursuing full digital transformation:

• Accelerated R&D: Technologies like virtual reality, cloud computing, and collaboration enable co-creation, reducing communication costs and significantly shortening time-to-market for new products.

• Operational Excellence: IoT and big data analytics provide managers clear visibility into the flow of raw materials, components, and finished goods across the entire value network. This enables optimized factory operations and product shipments, reducing costs and improving efficiency.

• Business Innovation: The use of new technologies like the Internet and IoT delivers better customer experiences. Customers are willing to pay for these enhanced experiences.

The IT Infrastructure for Intelligent Manufacturing

It is evident that without the support of information technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT), the full digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises would be impossible. An IT infrastructure meeting the requirements for intelligent manufacturing should comprise three key components: a software-defined connected factory infrastructure, data processing, and applications. The infrastructure forms the foundation supporting other application systems. Data processing is responsible for handling the massive data collected by the infrastructure to enhance business insights. Applications help enterprises achieve upstream/downstream collaboration and business process optimization.