Discover the Rising Stars №019 | Interview with Di Fu, Founder & CEO of Hignton
Alibaba Cloud Innovation Center has introduced a new column, Discover the Rising Stars, to shed light on the backgrounds of entrepreneurs and company innovations. Through interviews, live streams, and other media approaches, we will deliver valuable news stories from multiple perspectives and dimensions, to offer you the real voices of entrepreneurs and to witness the power of technological innovations.
Ever since the Industry 4.0, the development of the supporting technology has been making significant progress, such as IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), intelligent data analysis, robotics. Now we are looking at new types of intelligent factories and brand new industrial standards, the idea of industrial intelligent manufacturing is having a growing presence in every process of industrial production.
The 19th edition of Discover the Rising Stars interviewed Di Fu, Founder & CEO of Hignton, which is also the winner of the 2021 China (Xiangtan) Industrial Software Startup Contest. From him, we could have a glimpse of the history of IIoT development in China.
01 Industrial Intelligent Gateway is Now the Essential Part of Industrial Production
Hignton was established in 2009, it is a high-tech enterprise focusing on the IIoT, remote maintenance and management of the industrial equipments. The HINET series industrial gateway and the Super Cloud platform are two flagships of Hignton, and its business range from the data collection of industrial equipment, industrial Internet application, to intelligent manufacturing. The company is known for its convergence of software and hardware, and is well capable of delivering mature and reliable industrial Internet overall solution, to build the custom Internet ecological platform for the industrial enterprises.
The industrial production is getting smarter, more and more companies have found out the curial importance of an industrial intelligent gateway in the production process. The implementation of the gateway brings significant convenience to building an intelligent factory, realizing intelligent production, and putting forth intelligent logistics.
Under such circumstances, Hignton has gradually shifted to the R&D of an intelligent gateway. “A gateway will help the company to collect all relevant data of its industrial equipments, the device protocols between the industrial equipments are much more complicated, every industrial supplier has their own private protocols, and some of them are non-standard. So the key is resolution via hardware and protocol, including heterogeneous protocols, we managed to overcome all these challenges and obtained the data from the equipments,” said Di Fu.
With years of R&D, Hignton is now offering a series of intelligent gateways, all capable of remotely conduct program download/upload, data collection, multiple protocol forwarding, and edge computing, providing real-time data from the industrial equipments. For example, the HINET-G Series Edge Computing Gateway is the newest product line from Hignton, an industrial level edge computing gateway for equipment connection, data collection, and equipment monitoring. It is powered by ARM Cortex-A7 800MHz high-performance CPU, ethernet, serial port, CAN port, and IO port available, supporting ethernet, 2G/3G/4G network, sufficient for most of the industrial application scenarios.
Due to its outstanding data collection capability, Hignton’s industrial intelligent gateway has widely welcomed in electricity, fishery, logistics, environmental, and medical industries. It is the crucial device for the overall equipment remote control.
02 Super Cloud Industrial Internet Platform to Boost the Digitalization in Manufacturing
With the help of hardware like the intelligent gateway, the industry sees significant upgrade in the stability of data transformation, but the true digitalization also needs support from the software level. For that, Hignton presented the Super Cloud industrial Internet platform, an all-round, general purpose, low threshold industrial Internet platform, depending on the outcome of Hignton’s decade of experiences in the industrial control industry, and the accumulation of 100,000 level traffic IoT application and 50+ customed IoT platform development.
The Super Cloud industrial Internet platform works its magic through the IIoT, and the data intelligence will alter the traditional modal of manufacturing, services, and business. Their core values are listed as follows: production visualization, better production progress, maintenance timeliness, lower maintenance cost, better process management, and better efficiency. The user can know the running status of the equipments at a glance, and monitor the data in real-time.
Di Fu told us, “The Super Cloud industrial Internet platform put the intelligent operation and maintenance management of industrial equipments at its core. In fact, aside from the real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities it offers, the platform provides data analysis solutions.” In collaboration with the intelligent gateway and the Super Cloud, Hignton’s technology is able to help the user monitor the actual status of the equipments and therefore makes it possible to remotely trouble-shooting the malfunctions. This not only significantly lowered the maintenance cost of the equipments, but also increased the efficiency, helping the companies go through intelligent transformation with ease.
03 Overall Solutions for IIoT is Accelerating its Landing in All Sectors
According to Di Fu, Hignton, through years of development, is able to adapt to over 90% of the industrial products in the market, among its customers, SANY Heavy Industry and Han’s Laser’s name stood out. Apart from its flagships, Hignton also provides a diverse array of overall solutions for the industrial Internet.
The solutions include water conservancy, electricity, logistics & storage, production equipment, intelligent manufacturing, and mechanical equipmen. It benefits from the advantage of the Hignton team in the field of data collection, remote monitoring, and data analysis. The company aims to build Internet infrastructure for the overall linkage of the industrial total factor, whole industry chain, and the full value chain, and contribute their effort to the transformation of “The Industrial Internet”.
“We are offering an overall solution. It accumulates decades of development, thousands of user cases, across close to a hundred of industrial experiences, which is our biggest edge,” said Di Fu.
04 Alibaba Cloud to Offer Resources to Local Industry Business
For Hignton, being able to compete in the contest, not only tested their technology power, but also opened a brand new door for their future business, and let them see more possibilities of the industrial Internet solutions. Di Fu told us that, “through this contest, we have witnessed the great influence of Alibaba Cloud’s Innovation Center. Hopefully in the future we can reach more collaboration with our partners, work together towards better development of our companies.”
Di Fu is keen to see Alibaba Cloud to push its innovation services to more cities, to bring the contest to more places and provide the resources and assistance to the business. “Whether or not Alibaba Cloud Innovation Center can provide more resources, is what the enterprises care most,” said Di Fu. Meanwhile, many outstanding startups like Hignton shall join the Innovation Center in the form of side branches, a win-win outcome.
In the rapid developing intelligent manufacturing system, industrial Internet, as the creation from the deep integration of next generation of information technology and the industry of manufacturing, is destined to be the foundation of new wave of industrial revolution.
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