Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Robot Unit 3 discovered a large factory that wasn’t too badly damaged in an industrial district in the north of Fort Worth City.
A large automobile factory! I found a car factory.
Da Li gave Chen Jin a short introduction about this area. “Automotive industry was the economic backbone in Fort Worth; more than half of the residents here worked in related fields. They called it ‘The City of Cars.'”
Their well-developed automotive industry made Fort Worth City the influential capital of heavy industry….Which was also the reason why this city was a nuclear bombing target.
Entering the massive factory, Chen Jin noticed that on the production line made with numerous mechanical arms, cars were waiting to be assembled. They were all domestic electric vehicles, and there were hundreds of them, all waiting to be rolled off the line.
Sadly, however, due to the war they had, it would never happen. In addition to that, a multitude of facilities outside of the factory, such as the coal-fired plants, component suppliers, and warehouses for various autoparts, were all destroyed when the bomb hit; the chances for him to restore the entire factory and put the production line into operation again were basically zero.
But did that mean Chen Jin didn’t gain anything? No!
Led by the robot Da Li, Chen Jin came to the center of intelligence management, and accessed the rigorously guarded central control room after the medical robot, Da Bao, cut the bulky, metal gate open with his laser gun.
KUANG KUANG!
They forced open a cabinet that seemed like a chest of drawers on the control desk, and pulled a fist-sized cube off the bottom center of the cabinet. The entire cube was black, with a bottom covered with golden pins; it was an industrial solid-state drive assembled with 2,014 layers, and it had a built-in neural network, with a memory capacity of up to 10 PB (10,240 TB).
Moreover, it was also the most crucial “core of industrial intelligence” in this car factory. All the data that kept this production line working, the confidential manufacturing procedures, the programming information, and the solution plans, were stored in this “core of industrial intelligence.”
As for the value of this “core of industrial intelligence,” well, not even 10,000 tons of gold would be enough to pay for it! With this core, he could build a car factory and manufacture hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles, even if he was just an amateur who knew absolutely nothing about neither those vehicles nor the automotive industry. Chen Jin wouldn’t need to learn anything or hire any mechanics, or do any experiments and research, for this whole operation.
All he had to do was rebuild the production line, assign the robots to their designated working position, and install the necessary autoparts. Once all of that was done, the electric vehicles would be automatically manufactured one after another.
Da Li explained, “Their industrial production approach tremendously changed; one of the biggest changes of it all was that they were no longer dependent on humans. Traditionally, for the automotive industry, human engineers were in charge of jobs like adjusting various parameters of the production line, optimizing assembling processes, and discarding unnecessary procedures; a factory would need to hire a lot of engineers. Some of the important fabrication procedures also depended on humans; as a result, the cost of employment increased with the rising demands for their professional skills and proficiency.”
Chen Jin nodded, and Da Li continued, “But the situation changed with the rise of this core of industrial intelligence. Industrial manufacturing no longer depended on humans. The core of industrial intelligence can collect data by itself, analyze, make adjustments and optimize accordingly, and store all the manufacturing information. With intellectual learning and the agile mechanical arms, humans were gradually replaced, making it an unmanned factory that reduced a lot of labor costs. Furthermore, it also reduced the cost of start-up businesses, making it much easier for those who wanted to join the high-tech industry. Especially with the mature 3D printing technology, combined with the core of industrial intelligence, private capsule factories started to emerge and individuals were able to produce complex parts with great quality. For instance, a significant amount of the autoparts in this factory came from a privately-owned capsule factory.”
Capsule factories integrated with the core of industrial intelligence was the primary result brought by the Industrial Revolution 4.0, which was also how the industrial system would work in the future. And now, Chen Jin had found a core of industrial intelligence for automotive manufacturing. Additionally, other robot units brought him even more great news: In the north of the industrial area, there were 115 capsule factories, and a batch of raw material for 3D printers.
All of a sudden, he was filled with great confidence. He was confident that he could transform Haierfa and take full control of it! “And I thought I was just here to explore, pick rubbish, and maybe strike it rich, not take control of a planet. I guess I was wrong! With the rise of the core of industrial intelligence, industrial development doesn’t depend on humans anymore; the combination of industrial robots and intellectual learning has completely replaced humans. The saying that ‘growing an industry requires a lot of industrial population’ is no longer the case. The industrial development continues to move forward even without the industrial population. Even I, the only alien human on Haierfa, can establish an industrial system. The age of one-man industrial development has come!”
As for the capsule factories, they could be categorized into two groups:
One was the “general capsule factory”, a.k.a. the “multi-purpose factory;” it could print out any products within its printing range with the information the users gave them. This kind of capsule factory was able to produce thousands of various products as long as specific materials weren’t requested.
The other one was the “custom-made capsule factory;” because of the customized design, the factory could only produce a specific kind of parts, much lessening the varieties of products. But it was also for that reason that the factory could create high quality items with better materials and supplies, meeting demands for high-standard purposes.
Of all the capsule factories the robot units found, 70 of them were “custom-made factories,” and 45 were “general factories.”
Seeing these capsule factories, Chen Jin came up with an idea. “What if I took all of these capsule factories back to the huge crater camp and print out all the essential parts a wind turbine needs, and assemble them? I can then solve the energy shortage problem at the crater!”
The coal-fired plants in Fort Worth City had already been destroyed by the nuclear bomb. Even if they hadn’t, there was no way Chen Jin could collect enough coal to restore the plants; he had to set up a power station to solve the problem. Now that he had all of these capsule factories, he could print out all the necessary parts and solve the power shortage problem completely. He was sure of it! Chen Jin once again was filled with excitement. “I can’t believe I’ve gotten so many surprises in Fort Worth City!”