Automatic sorting robots accurately grab parts, AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) smart distribution cars shuttle flexibly, welding robotic arms turn 360 degrees; smart brains, full-link digital twins, unmanned production lines… This futuristic smart production picture is becoming a normal reality in some smart manufacturing factories in China.
Intelligent manufacturing is the core engine for high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.
At present, my country has built a total of 35,000 basic-level, more than 8,200 advanced-level, and more than 500 excellence-level smart factories, and 15 companies have been selected to cultivate pilot-level smart factories.
This year’s “Government Work Report” proposes to “expand intelligent manufacturing and build a number of new intelligent factories and intelligent supply chains.”
Chinese enterprises will accelerate their progress from digitalization and networking to intelligence.
my country’s pilot-level smart factories lead the world.
In the SAIC-GM-Wuling smart factory in Liuzhou, Guangxi, the rigid structure of the century-old automobile assembly line has been broken: with 78 independent intelligent islands, a new flexible intelligent manufacturing form of “cars looking for workstations, materials looking for cars” is realized, supporting mixed line production of 24 types of models; vehicles get rid of fixed trajectories and move according to the
It requires autonomous shuttle, dynamically receiving process instructions, precise assembly of intelligent robotic arms, automatic 3D visual recognition, AI full-process quality inspection, intelligent logistics scheduling… The world’s first smart island manufacturing system has amazed countless on-site observers, but the cool scene is not the purpose.
This smart factory was created to effectively deal with the three major dilemmas faced by the automobile manufacturing industry: fierce competition and accelerated product iteration, and the core contradiction between mass production and personalized customization.
Relying on more than 100 patents, software and industry standards, the new smart island automobile manufacturing model achieves “decoupled processes, reconfigurable production lines, self-adaptive production capacity, value-added data, system evolution, and expandable models.” Production efficiency is increased by 30%, new product manufacturing costs are reduced by 30%, the entire process data is traceable, and the process error is less than 0.5 mm.
SAIC-GM-Wuling Motor Co., Ltd. has become the only vehicle manufacturing company selected into the first batch of “pilot-level smart factory” cultivation lists jointly recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other six ministries.
In Ningbo, Zhejiang, Sinopec Ningbo Zhenhai Refining and Chemical Co., Ltd. is called a “cyberpunk” factory because of its spectacular night view.
Zhenhai Refining and Chemical’s 3.0 “Three New” model smart factory with new technology, new organization and new business aims to maximize the value of every petroleum molecule.
Zhenhai Refining and Chemical is the only company in the petrochemical industry to be listed as a leading smart factory.
In the enterprise’s equipment health management center, an “equipment health map” covering the entire factory is clearly displayed on the large screen of the health management platform. The operating status of the equipment is clear at a glance. The data “brain” receives information at any time, analyzes and thinks, outputs results, and pushes problems to the specific person in charge.
Zhenhai Refining and Chemical has created a high-quality intelligent valve-finding data set covering more than 10,000 pipelines, 13,302 valves and 30,954 diversions. When a leak is discovered, the nearest valve can be found immediately through the intelligent valve-finding function of the data set, helping to compress accident handling or daily operations from “hour-level” to “minute-level”.
Zhenhai Refinery has more than 100,000 pieces of main process equipment, but only has 200 related equipment operators.
Intelligence allows limited equipment operators to accurately and efficiently manage huge equipment groups.
In the YOFC optical fiber production workshop in Wuhan Optics Valley, the optical fiber preform machine tool is operating in an orderly manner, and the hair-thin optical fiber jumps out from under the drawing tower. YOFC not only makes the diameter of the optical fiber preform the largest in the world, but also achieves the goal of catching up and surpassing foreign advanced technologies; in Shandong Weichai Power Co., Ltd., digital twin technology builds a virtual R&D scene to allow the engine to be launched in the future
It has completed countless “extreme test runs” in the digital world. Through the AI-driven agile manufacturing system, the equipment can instantly identify the part model and automatically adapt the processing parameters, and complex model changeovers can be completed in seconds… The first batch of 15 pilot-level smart factories announced at the end of 2025 will cover multiple key industries such as equipment manufacturing, raw materials, and electronic information, and explore new models and new business formats such as shared manufacturing of engineering machinery, automobile island manufacturing, and agile customization of home appliances.
These leaders not only represent the current highest level of intelligent manufacturing in China, but also mark a critical leap period for my country’s intelligent manufacturing to move from digitalization and networking to intelligence.
Su Bo, deputy director of the National Strategic Advisory Committee for the Construction of a Manufacturing Power and director of the National Intelligent Manufacturing Expert Committee, pointed out that intelligent manufacturing is the only way to promote new industrialization and build a manufacturing power.
After more than ten years of development, my country’s smart manufacturing has achieved remarkable results, and 15 pilot-level smart factories have become internationally leading smart manufacturing companies.
Digital and intelligent transformation is profoundly reshaping the ecology of thousands of industries.
At 6 a.m. on June 12, in the production digital command center of the operation area of the Sixth Oil Production Plant of China Petroleum Dagang Oilfield, real-time images of the well site dozens of kilometers away were displayed on the screen, the pressure curve was refreshed in real time, and the high-definition camera clearly captured the operating status of the equipment.
A change in scene reflects the changes in an oil field.
Once upon a time, the Sixth Oil Production Plant of Dagang Oilfield was deeply troubled by aging equipment, long well spacing, difficult management and control, and high operating costs.
Today, relying on digital and intelligent transformation, this place is undergoing a profound change in production methods and value creation.
Low-voltage electrical appliances used to be a typical labor-intensive industry.
Nowadays, Chint Low Voltage Electrical Future Factory has established a full-process automated production line and digital workshop from parts production to finished product assembly around core products, becoming a national-level intelligent manufacturing demonstration factory.
Through in-depth digital transformation, Chint’s small circuit breaker production line has realized full-process automation from raw material deployment to product warehousing. It can produce a circuit breaker every 1.2 seconds. The production efficiency has increased by 335%, the product development cycle has been shortened by 22%, and the numerical control rate of key processing procedures has reached 100%.
The practice of “digital and real integration” not only greatly improves production efficiency and product consistency, but also fundamentally reshapes the factor structure of the industry.
CIMC Container Smart Factory’s “60-second container manufacturing” and Changhong Smart Factory’s “11-day delivery cycle” are both the best in the domestic industry.
Nangang’s hot rolling smart factory has built the world’s first hot rolling industry knowledge map. Through the “AI mechanism dual engine”, it has achieved a surface defect recognition rate of >99% and shortened the delivery cycle by 53%, reflecting the core advantages of “autonomous intelligence”.
Tianjin Haier washing machine factory can produce 17 washing machines offline in one minute; Shanghai Guangming Dairy Factory can produce 1,200 bottles of milk in one minute; Guangdong Gree Electric Air Conditioning Factory can produce 4 air conditioners offline in one minute, and can achieve almost zero carbon emissions… More and more Chinese factories are entering a new stage of intelligent manufacturing.
“In the past ten years, my country’s intelligent manufacturing has moved from pilot demonstrations to large-scale promotion, from single-point breakthroughs to system construction, and its role in supporting a strong equipment and manufacturing country has become increasingly prominent.” Su Bo said that our country has embarked on a characteristic path of parallel advancement of digitalization, networking, and intelligence.
The manufacturing industry has reached the mid-to-high end in many important fields, with 5G communication equipment, high-speed rail equipment, shipbuilding, new energy vehicles, wind power and solar power generation and new energy equipment reaching world-leading levels.
Since the implementation of the smart factory gradient cultivation action, the product defect rate has dropped by an average of 47% and the product development cycle has been shortened by an average of 38%.
At present, the scale of China’s intelligent manufacturing equipment, industrial software and system solutions industries has exceeded 4.5 trillion yuan.
With the deep integration of the new generation of artificial intelligence technology, the connotation of the new generation of intelligent manufacturing is richer, including intelligent production, intelligent equipment and intelligent services.
“The new generation of intelligent manufacturing will become a key engine to promote the development of high-end, green and service-oriented manufacturing. Intelligent manufacturing equipment is developing in the direction of multi-functional integration, multi-working condition adaptation, and human-machine integration.” Su Bo pointed out that with the continuous empowerment of AI technology, intelligent manufacturing technology will have the capabilities of autonomous perception, autonomous learning, autonomous optimization and decision-making, autonomous control and execution. In sync with the improvement of equipment autonomy, the human-machine relationship will accelerate the evolution from manual operation and machine assistance to human-led machine autonomous execution.
In the past ten years, my country has built a number of world-leading smart factories, and its advanced manufacturing capabilities have been greatly improved.
“The pilot-level smart factory integrates advanced manufacturing technology, new generation information technology, lean management concepts, etc., and assumes the important task of exploring future manufacturing models. It is the pinnacle of the intelligent manufacturing pyramid in my country.” Wang Minghui, director of the Research Office of the Industry Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, pointed out.
In the next ten years, the new generation of intelligent manufacturing will cultivate and develop a new generation of intelligent equipment and products, strengthen the adaptation of software and hardware, strive to make up for the shortcomings of low-level industrial intelligence technologies, coordinate and promote cutting-edge exploration and popularization, promote the digital and intelligent transformation of key industries in categories, form a batch of new models and new business formats, and promote the overall leap of the industrial system.
At the same time, it should be noted that my country still faces many practical obstacles in developing a new generation of intelligent manufacturing. Some technical concepts are very hot, but they have not yet penetrated into the workshop; some application scenarios can be piloted, but it is difficult to copy and promote; some companies are willing to transform, but they do not know how to transform, cannot afford to transform, or dare not transform, etc. The underlying reason is that the accumulation of industrial knowledge is not systematic enough, industrial data is relatively scattered, software models and equipment have not been truly connected, and there are still shortcomings in key core technologies and high-end supply.
Su Bo said that smart factories should be used as a guide to promote large-scale application by classification.
At present, the foundations of leading enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises are quite different, and we must continue to focus on the gradient cultivation of smart factories.
Support leading enterprises to build leading and excellent factories, take the lead in breakthroughs in R&D and design, production and manufacturing, operation management and supply chain collaboration, and form a mature model that can be replicated and promoted; support small and medium-sized enterprises to start from the basic work of digital networking and promote “small, fast, light and accurate” solutions, with the core being to lower the threshold and cost of becoming “autonomous”.
