1. Analysis of the current status of smart factory construction at home and abroad

In recent years, major economies worldwide have been vigorously promoting the revival of manufacturing. Amid the booms of Industry 4.0, industrial internet, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing, many outstanding manufacturing enterprises worldwide have implemented smart factory construction practices.

For example, Siemens Amberg Electronics factory has achieved mixed-line production of multiple types of industrial control computers; FANUC has achieved a high degree of automation and intelligence in the production processes of robots and servo motors, using automated automated warehouses to transfer materials between various intelligent manufacturing units in the workshop, achieving up to 720 hours of unattended operation; Schneider Electric has achieved full automation of the electrical switch manufacturing and packaging process; Harley-Davidson in the United States extensively utilizes intelligent manufacturing units composed of machining centers and robots to achieve large-scale customization; Mitsubishi Electric Nagoya Manufacturing uses a new human-machine integrated robot assembly line, achieving a shift from automation to intelligence, significantly increasing output per unit production area; Global heavy-duty truck giant MAN has built a comprehensive in-plant logistics system, using AGVs to load assembled parts and complete vehicles, making it easy to flexibly adjust assembly lines and establishing a material supermarket, achieving significant results.

Chinese manufacturing enterprises are facing tremendous pressure for transformation. On one hand, rapidly rising labor costs, overcapacity, fierce competition, and growing personalized customer demands have forced manufacturing companies to shift from low-cost strategies to building differentiated competitive advantages. At the factory level, manufacturing enterprises face difficulties in recruiting workers and the immense pressure of lacking professional technicians. They must achieve workforce reduction and efficiency improvement, urgently advancing smart factory construction. On the other hand, emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, collaborative robots, additive manufacturing, predictive maintenance, and machine vision have rapidly emerged, providing strong technical support for manufacturing enterprises to advance smart factory construction. Coupled with strong support from national and local governments, more and more medium and large enterprises across various industries have embarked on the journey of building smart factories.

enterprises in China's automotive, home appliance, rail transit, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, equipment manufacturing, home furnishings, and other industries have strong demand for automating and intelligent transformation of production and assembly lines, as well as building brand-new smart factories. Models for smart factory construction such as Haier, Midea, Dongguan Jinsheng, and Shangpin Home Delivery have emerged.

For example, Haier Foshan front-loading washing machine factory can configure and produce according to order, using highly flexible automated unmanned production lines, widely applying precision assembly robots, employing an MES system for full-process order execution management, and using RFID for full traceability, achieving machine-machine interconnection, machine-to-machine interconnection, and human-machine interconnection; Shangpin Home Delivery achieves comprehensive personalized customization from style design to structural dimensions, establishing a highly intelligent production and processing control system that meets consumers' cutting needs for special sizes and structural panels resulting from personalized customization; Dongguan Jinsheng fully adopts domestic machining centers, CNC systems, and industrial software, achieving automatic data collection and workshop networking, establishing a digital mapping model (Digital Twin) for factories and building an intelligent factory for phone case processing.

However, Chinese manufacturing enterprises still face many problems and misconceptions when promoting smart factory construction:

(1) Blindly purchasing automated equipment and automated production lines. Many manufacturing companies still believe that advancing smart factories means automation and robotization, blindly pursuing "dark factories," promoting single-station robot transformation, promoting machine substitution, and launching rigid automated production lines that can only process or assemble single products. They only focus on purchasing high-end CNC equipment but lack the corresponding software systems.