In recent years, major economies across the globe have vigorously advanced manufacturing revitalization. Fueled by the boom of Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet, Internet of Things, cloud computing and other technologies, many world-class manufacturing enterprises have launched practical smart factory construction projects.

For instance, Siemens’ Amberg Electronics Plant realizes mixed-model production of multi-variety industrial controllers. FANUC has achieved a high degree of automation and intelligence in the production of robots and servo motors. It employs automated high-rise warehouses to transfer materials between various intelligent manufacturing cells in the workshop, supporting unattended operation for up to 720 consecutive hours. Schneider Electric delivers full automation throughout the manufacturing and packaging processes of electrical switches. Harley-Davidson of the United States widely adopts intelligent manufacturing cells composed of machining centers and robots to realize mass customization. Mitsubishi Electric’s Nagoya Works deploys new human-machine collaborative robotic assembly lines to complete the shift from automation to intelligence, substantially boosting output per unit production area. MAN, a global heavy-duty truck giant, has built a complete in-plant logistics system. AGVs transport assembly components and finished vehicles to enable flexible adjustment of assembly lines. The company has also set up material supermarkets, yielding remarkable operational results.

At present, manufacturing enterprises in China are under immense pressure to transform. On the one hand, surging labor costs, overcapacity, fierce market competition and growing personalized demands from customers force manufacturers to shift from low-cost competition strategies to building differentiated competitive advantages. At the plant level, manufacturers face severe labor shortages and a lack of professional technicians. They have to cut staff while boosting efficiency, creating an urgent need to build smart factories. On the other hand, the rapid rise of emerging technologies including the Internet of Things, collaborative robots, additive manufacturing, predictive maintenance and machine vision has laid solid technical foundations for enterprises to construct smart factories. Supported by strong policies from central and local governments, a growing number of large and medium-sized enterprises across various industries have embarked on smart factory development.

Enterprises in China’s automotive, home appliance, rail transit, food & beverage, pharmaceutical, equipment manufacturing and furniture sectors have strong demand for automated and intelligent upgrading of production and assembly lines, as well as brand-new smart factory construction. Benchmark smart factory projects have emerged, including those of Haier, Midea, Dongguan Jinsheng and Sofia.

For example, Haier’s Foshan washing machine plant realizes order-oriented configuration, production and assembly. It adopts highly flexible unmanned automatic production lines, extensively deploys precision assembly robots, applies MES for full-lifecycle order execution management, and enables full-process traceability via RFID. The plant achieves interconnections between machine-to-machine, machine-to-material and human-to-machine. Sofia delivers comprehensive personalized customization covering style design and structural dimensions. Its highly intelligent production and processing control system meets cutting requirements for custom-sized and specially structured panels from consumer personalized orders. Dongguan Jinsheng fully adopts domestically produced machining centers, CNC systems and industrial software. It realizes automatic equipment data collection and inter-workshop networking, builds a plant Digital Twin model, and forms a smart factory dedicated to mobile phone shell processing.

Nevertheless, numerous problems and misunderstandings persist among Chinese manufacturers in smart factory development:

1.Blind procurement of automated equipment and production lines

Many manufacturers mistakenly equate smart factory construction with automation and robot deployment. They blindly pursue “dark factories”, roll out robot upgrades for individual workstations to replace manual labor, and launch rigid automated production lines that only process or assemble a single product. These enterprises only invest in high-end CNC equipment without matching supporting software systems.

2.Lack of automatic equipment data collection and workshop interconnection

Enterprises fail to require open data interfaces when purchasing equipment. Most devices cannot automatically collect data, and workshop-wide networking remains unimplemented. Major automation vendors adopt proprietary industrial buses and communication protocols, while the OPC UA standard has not yet been widely adopted.

3.Opaque plant operation layer

There is insufficient support from information systems for plant operations, leaving the workshop as an opaque “black box”. Full-process traceability of production cannot be achieved, and critical production management data such as manufacturing BOM and working hours are inaccurate.

4.Low equipment performance utilization

Production equipment is underutilized, and equipment health status lacks effective monitoring. Unplanned downtime caused by equipment failures frequently disrupts production schedules.

5.Widespread information and automation silos

Smart factory construction involves suppliers of intelligent equipment, automatic control systems, sensors, industrial software and other fields, leading to high integration complexity. Many enterprises suffer from both information silos and automation silos. Automated production lines are built without unified planning, requiring intermediate warehouses for material transfer between separate lines.

The root cause lies in the broad coverage and extreme complexity of intelligent manufacturing and smart factory systems, alongside insufficient in-depth understanding from enterprises. Under such circumstances, manufacturers must avoid hasty, leap-forward construction that results in wasted capital investment. To deliver tangible outcomes, enterprises should cooperate with experienced consulting service institutions, align internal IT, automation and lean teams with active participation from senior management, conduct thorough demand analysis and overall planning tailored to their own products and production processes, and advance smart factory projects in a steady and pragmatic manner.

Source: Information and Software Service Network