On May 28, at the “2026 BRICS New Industrial Revolution Partnership Forum” held in Xiamen, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s first batch of overseas smart factory case collections was officially released.
Only 13 enterprise benchmark factories across the country were selected, and the tire industry strongly occupied 3 seats. Overseas factories of Zhongce, Linglong, and Double Star were jointly included in the list. This marks the official transformation of China’s intelligent tire manufacturing from “product output” to “technical standard output”.
Linglong Tire: Europe’s benchmark for full-process intelligent manufacturing, entering the high-end supply chain
Linglong’s Serbian factory is the first full-process intelligent factory built by the Chinese tire industry in Europe, and is also the largest greenfield investment project in Serbia to date.
The factory deeply integrates technologies such as AI, industrial big data, and robots to realize full-process automation.
In terms of cross-border collaboration, Linglong has built a “China headquarters-European factory” data, business and value stream collaboration network, with amazing results: the single-tire production cycle has been compressed to 22 minutes, the delivery time has plummeted from 35 days to 5 days, and the number of employees has been optimized from about 5,000 to 2,200.
With its hard-core quality, the plant quickly passed the audits of Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and other car companies and obtained Ford Q1 certification. It became profitable within half a year of being put into production.
After the second phase of expansion, it will be equipped with green projects such as recycled rubber and photovoltaics. The water reuse rate will exceed 90%, realizing the deep integration of intelligent manufacturing and low carbon.
Double Star Tire: Modular and efficient replication, single-shift production capacity soars by 150%
Double Star Cambodia’s smart factory produces 8.5 million sets of high-performance radial tires annually.
The factory uses ERP and MES as the core to achieve full-process data connectivity.
Its biggest highlight is the independent research and development of the MEP intelligent information matching system, which overcomes the problem of full-process automation of liquid/powder raw materials, and the single-shift production capacity soars by 150%.
At the same time, the factory adopts a “modular intelligent manufacturing system” to efficiently copy domestic mature experience overseas and build a suitable overseas informatization path.
Data shows that the factory’s production efficiency has increased by about 40%, operating costs have been reduced by about 30%, defective product rates have dropped by about 30%, energy consumption per unit product has been reduced by more than 30%, and safety accident rates have been significantly reduced by 93.3%.
Zhongce Rubber: Thailand base creates high-performance radial tire smart manufacturing support
Zhongce Thailand’s high-performance radial tire smart factory was selected together this time, demonstrating the hard-core strength of leading companies in overseas layout.
As the core support for Zhongce’s overseas production capacity, the factory has achieved a double leap in production efficiency and product quality through advanced intelligent manufacturing systems and digital management, providing a solid guarantee for the company to establish a foothold in Southeast Asia and radiate around the world.
The industry pointed out that the three major tire factories packaged and exported manufacturing models, technical equipment and management experience in the form of “mother factories”, which not only hedged geographical and tariff risks and established a global presence, but also provided overseas data to feed back the iteration of domestic production lines.
China Tire is contributing its “China Solution” to the global manufacturing industry and embarking on a new path of high-quality overseas expansion.
