Mushrooming smart factories, representing the pinnacle of global smart and digital manufacturing, are shedding lights on China's digital transformation in its manufacturing sector.
Every 76 seconds, a new Xiaomi car rolls off the production line at its assembly plant in the Yizhuang of Beijing, where highly automatic machinery is seen roaring at full steam.
In the assembly workshop, more than 700 robots are operating around the clock, guided by artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
"We have the industry's first AI-powered X-ray system that can inspect every large die-casting part and it's dozens of times more efficient than our manual inspection," explained Kang Yanzhao, director of battery workshop at Xiaomi Auto plant.
Not only automotive factories, but traditional energy enterprises are also actively driving the digital transformation of their operations. By using digital twin technology, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec, has developed an industrial internet platform, boosting labor productivity by over 30 percent and cutting energy consumption per 10,000 yuan (about 1,380 U.S. dollars) of output value by 8 percent.
"By combining the latest information technology with traditional petrochemical industrial technologies and systems engineering, we've been able to really improve resource efficiency across the whole supply chain and make production processes much smarter. This has pushed China's petrochemical industry to a new level of intelligence," said Wang Zizong, deputy chief engineer of Sinopec.
Experts say that innovative practices in smart factories will drive the digital transformation of manufacturing and inject new momentum. Moving forward, China will expand excellence-level smart factory promotion and prepare to launch pioneer-level cultivation, aiming to further promote the expansion, deeper integration, and elevated evolution of intelligent manufacturing.
Smart manufacturing advances production lines in China
