The "Lighthouse Factory" is a demonstrator of "Digital Manufacturing" and "Globalization 4.0" selected by the World Economic Forum in Davos and McKinsey & Company***. It refers to leading companies that have been successful in integrating cutting-edge technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and are leading the way globally.

According to the information disclosed by the World Economic Forum, the reason for the selection of Sany's piling plant is that, facing the ever-changing and increasingly complex demands of the multi-variety, low-volume construction machinery market, Sany has utilized human-machine collaboration, automation, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to increase labor productivity by 85% and shorten the production cycle from 30 days to 7 days, a reduction of 77%.

Intelligent production

In 2020, Sany invested 15 billion yuan in intelligent upgrades to its factories. This large sum of money in intelligent production is also a key factor for Sany Heavy Industry to obtain this "lighthouse factory".

Public information shows that Sany Heavy Industries Beijing Piling Machinery Factory is located in Nankou Industrial Park, Changping District, Beijing, covering an area of 40,000 square meters, is the world's largest piling machinery manufacturing base. The factory is built by Sany Heavy Industry, China Telecom and Huawei*** together, adopting 5G, cloud and AI technologies, and is one of the factories with the highest degree of intelligence, the highest per capita output value and the lowest unit energy consumption in the global heavy industry.

Compared with traditional heavy industry factories, the biggest difference between Beijing Pile Driver Lighthouse Factory is the difference in production methods. The factory is based on flexible manufacturing, adding traditional Industry 3.0 plus artificial intelligence technology and digital technology to realize intelligent production. Unlike traditional factories, the factory is mostly filled with robots that work non-stop day and night and one or two engineers who occasionally walk around. With the popularization of 5G, the whole factory is based on 5G full connectivity, and applies "5G+" technology in several scenes, such as 5G+ equipment interconnection, 5G+ industrial Internet, 5G heavy-duty AGV double-vehicle linkage, etc.

In addition, the factory is also equipped with the latest technology, such as the latest technology of artificial intelligence and digitalization, to realize intelligent production.

In addition, after automation, digitization and intelligent upgrading, Beijing Piling Machinery Lighthouse Factory has become a "smart body" integrating internet, big data and artificial intelligence, with machine vision system, FCC "smart brain", AGV, intelligent logistics, which is capable of human-machine cooperation. The smart logistics, able to human-machine collaboration, highly flexible production.

Another major advantage of digital technology is that it enables Sany pile driver factory to realize green production. By combining industrial Internet technology with industrial mechanism, the factory has established the optimal energy efficiency model and evaluation indexes, thus realizing fine management of energy and energy-saving applications. As of August this year, Sany Piling Machinery Dengta Factory has saved 386,300 kWh of electricity, 301,600 cubic meters of natural gas and 47,400 tons of water. Calculated according to the CO2 emission coefficients of each energy source in the national environmental protection index, the pile driver factory reduces CO2 emission by 3,977 tons annually, and the emission drops by 30.5% year-on-year.

According to the plan, Sany Heavy Industries will upgrade its more than 30 factories across the country and even around the world to the level of pile driver lighthouse factories, and launch key factories to further upgrade to the 3.0 level, moving from manufacturing production intelligence to digitally-driven production management intelligence, as well as logistics and distribution intelligence in a comprehensive manner.

Breaking the talent barrier

It is worth noting that, from the traditional factory to the lighthouse factory, the transformation and upgrading of technology has put forward new requirements for technical personnel.

In this regard, Sany Intelligent Manufacturing Research Institute President Richard Dong said that the introduction of technical talent and internal training is Sany spent a lot of effort to do.

In terms of worker training, Sany launched a huge training program last year, so that every worker, site personnel to learn robot operation operations, and in Changsha Sany Engineering College set up a special robotics training base. At the same time, Sany has also taken measures such as salary incentives to stimulate the enthusiasm of employees to learn robotics. Today, the level of intelligent operation of the overall factory has been significantly improved.

In fact, since the implementation of digital transformation in 2018, Sany has increased its efforts in the introduction of technical talents.

"The first thing is to introduce talents in all aspects, including the artificial intelligence aspect, the IT and Internet aspect, the industrial field, and so on. Most of the talents in the General Research Institute of Intelligence come from the IT field, industrial enterprises or information and Internet enterprises. Second, in order to attract more technical talents, Sany offers high compensation packages, including stock and other aspects, and a relatively open corporate environment. Finally, Sany, especially the construction of its lighthouse factory, is a good scenario for technology and experience to land, enabling talents to play their roles, grow continuously and develop their careers steadily, which is a way to better attract talents." Richard Dong said.

In the context of the country's encouragement of independent innovation and enhancement of domestic substitution, Sany Group Director and Senior Vice President Dai Qinghua said that when carrying out the digital transformation, the issue of software substitution is a difficult problem faced by the manufacturing industry **** the same. At present, most of the industry design and simulation software from the United States, most of the industrial control software from Germany, and the local development of industrial software is still very little.

In this regard, Qinghua believes that the current feasible direction is a new generation of cloud-native technology. Cloud native makes the Chinese manufacturing industry in the construction of a new generation of industrial software has the advantage of latecomers, including manufacturing process remote control, 5G cloud control, cloud computing and so on.

However, the transformation of these complex industrial software into cloud-native industrial software requires a lot of human and material resources, with a large number of senior talents in China **** the same efforts. Dai Qinghua said, "This is the biggest challenge facing the manufacturing industry."

On behalf of the Qinghua planning, Sany Group will continue to deepen the digital transformation, help realize the "three three" strategic objectives, that is, at the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan", the whole group to reach 300 billion in sales, 3,000 workers, 30,000 engineers. The company's business is to provide the best possible service to its customers.

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