BEIJING, March 4, 2021 — The world-leading provider of solutions to better life Haier’s COSMOPlat topped the list of China’s 15 leading domestic cross-industry and cross-domain industrial internet platforms unveiled by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology at the end of 2020. The evaluation was an effort to boost the development of China’s industrial internet.
Haier Group President Zhou Yunjie (left), visited Qingdao Choho Industrial Co. Ltd. on February 23. Haier’s COSMOPlat established a strategic cooperation last May with Choho, helping the company in digital transformation and upgrading.
COSMOPlat is the world’s first industrial internet platform that allows whole-process user participation. It has been assigned by the three major international standardization organizations – IEEE, IEC and ISO, the leaders to formulate international standards of mass customization solutions.
The European Union (EU) has invited COSMOPlat to get involved in its GAIA-X initiative, a cloud project aiming to enhance Europe’s data infrastructure and digital sovereignty. The EU also has decided to build the 10th innovation center for industrial internet in China, with COSMOPlat as the only partner outside the EU.
User involvement is one of the main reasons these organizations have chosen COSMOPlat as a partner. Henning Kagermann, known as the father of Industry 4.0, said that COSMOPlat builds an ecosystem on the basis of user experience, rather than just focusing on factories and automation.
The platform has so far tapped into 15 sectors, from building a customization network in the fashion industry involving designers, garment factories and clients to offering solutions to the suppliers, purchasers and processors in the stone mining business.
Haier has also expanded COSMOPlat to 20 countries in the world, boosting the growth of its international brands, such as GE Appliances in the United States, Candy in Italy and Fisher & Paykel in New Zealand.
Globally, industrial internet platforms in different regions show distinguishing characteristics. The US, led by GE and Amazon, uses its advanced Internet, information, communication and software technologies to reshape manufacturing in a top-down approach. Europe, on the other hand, with Siemens, Bosch and SAP giving full play to their advantages in high-end manufacturing, focuses on a bottom-up optimization of production process that covers intelligent factories and smart manufacturing and logistics.
China has also witnessed robust growth of industrial internet over recent years. There are about 600 industrial internet platforms worldwide, of which 500 are based in China. As both a global major manufacturer and an Internet powerhouse, China is building a user-driven industrial internet ecosystem, which highlights the linkage and interactions between the industries and users.
Haier’s COSMOPlat is a representative of the Chinese-style industrial internet, and this model is widely anticipated to bring about a new wave of industrial revolution with far more influence than the previous three revolutions.
