China - August 20, 2024

Chinese 'lighthouse factories' illuminate path to smart manufacturing

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As part of its current five-year plan for national economic development, China is upgrading its industrial and manufacturing sectors to include more lighthouse factories.

A designation bestowed by the World Economic Forum, lighthouse factories are those that successfully implement so-called Industry 4.0 trends in manufacturing including large data sets, connectivity, analytics and robotics.

One of the country’s lighthouses belongs to SANY Heavy Industry, one of the world’s top heavy equipment manufacturers.

Their 100,000-square-meter No. 18 facility uses more than 1,500 sensors and 200 internet-connected robots, amongst other tech, to produce truck-mounted concrete pumps, one every 45 minutes.

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Zhu Wei, Deputy head, concrete pump business unit, SANY Heavy Industry Co., Ltd.：

"Before the manufacturing upgrade, it took us about 90 minutes to produce a concrete pump. All nine major processes and 32 key scenarios in the factory have so far been fully automated."

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Other lighthouse factories include this steel factory in east China's Jiangsu Province.

It has a massive digital control center for real-time data processing, as well as inspection robots and 5G autonomous vehicles.

Plant operators say efficiency has improved by 90 percent.

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Wang Yongjian, Vice general manager, Jiangyin Xingcheng Special Steel Works Co.,Ltd.：

"Previously, our production was operated by the rule of thumb, which led to inconsistent quality. Now, with our big data platform, we can monitor steel composition and production conditions in real time. Our automated batching system allows accurate and efficient batching, which helps achieve consistency in product quality, boosting the passing rate of our products by 23 percent."

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Of the world's 153 lighthouse factories, China has the most at 62.

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