Chongqing — During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), Chongqing will implement smart manufacturing in-depth and cultivate and build a number of smart factories, digital workshops, and industrial Internet platforms with advanced international levels. During the past 13th Five-Year Plan period, Chongqing has completed 2,563 smart renovation projects, built 359 digital workshops and 67 smart factories, boosting enterprise production efficiency by 70.2%. Today we will focus on smart factories as a keyword to see how Chongqing's smart factories look.
Walking into the Jinkang Liangjiang Intelligent Factory, located in Chongqing Liangjiang New Area, the most intuitive feeling is that no matter which workshop you are in, there are robots everywhere. The entire production line's welding, gluing, piping, and transfer between stations are all operated by robots.
Automatic robots are assembling seats at Jinkang Liangjiang Smart Factory. (Photo provided to iChongqing)
It turned out that the factory deployed more than 1,000 intelligent robots in the five process workshops of stamping, welding, painting, final assembly, and battery. The key processes are 100% automated and 100% full-time online inspection. Even the trolleys transporting parts in the workshop aisles have all realized automated loading and unloading. There are only a few workers who operate the instrument in the factory.
In addition to the modern automobile industry, the traditional handicraft industry is also transforming and upgrading production lines and building smart factories. As one of the three famous pickles globally, Fuling Pickles, its manual production process is China's national intangible cultural heritage. However, as the only listed company in the pickles industry in China, Chongqing Fuling Zhacai Group has bid farewell to the hand workshop, and only 1% of the high-end pickles is still used.
In the Fuling Zhacai Production Workshop, a fully intelligent production line operates in an orderly manner, with only a few staff members in quality supervision. (Photo by Jieyu Wang)
According to reports, 20 years ago, the production of Fuling relied on labor. After 2000, Chongqing Fuling Zhacai Group began to automate the production process. While inheriting the flavor characteristics of traditional foods, it further ensures food safety and hygiene. At present, more than a dozen processes are completed on the assembly line, from the entry of raw materials to the product packing and out of the warehouse. The factory has established an automated production line with an annual output of 200,000 tons of pickles and kimchi, with only more than 20 workers for quality supervision.
The global manufacturing industry is accelerating towards a digital and intelligent era. And intelligent manufacturing has become an inevitable choice for the development of manufacturing enterprises. As an important industrial base in China, Chongqing is vigorously implementing an innovation-driven development strategic action plan led by big data intelligence, making full use of big data intelligence to transform and upgrade traditional manufacturing and promote manufacturing development to digitally networked and intelligent capabilities.