Smart Factories Accelerate as the 15th Five-Year Plan Begins: Over 56,000 Basic-Level Smart Factories Built Nationwide

As China enters the opening year of its 15th Five-Year Plan, smart factories have become a core lever for the digital transformation of manufacturing. According to research reported by Xinhua News Agency, more than 56,000 basic-level smart factories, over 9,000 advanced-level and more than 500 excellence-level smart factories have been built nationwide, together with 15 leading-level smart factories, and the scale effect is being released rapidly.

Policy and data: intelligence is moving into deep penetration

The 15th Five-Year Plan outline explicitly calls for promoting the intelligent, digital and networked transformation of manufacturing, and for implementing the intelligent manufacturing programme and the industrial internet innovation and development programme. The latest figures show that China's core artificial intelligence industry has exceeded RMB 1.2 trillion, overall AI penetration in key industries is above 80%, and adoption among manufacturing enterprises above designated size has passed 30%.

At the National Advanced Manufacturing Conference held on 16-17 September, it was disclosed that in the first half of this year the value added of equipment manufacturing and high-technology manufacturing above designated size grew by 9.3% and 13.3% year on year respectively, and that new growth drivers contributed more than 50% of the growth of industry above designated size in the first seven months.

Changes on the shop floor: from experience-based to data-driven

The research found that intelligent batching robots, AGV carts and robot arms for precise material feeding have become standard equipment in smart factories; AI inspectors identify appearance defects and dimensional deviations automatically with millisecond-level high-speed inspection; and digital twin systems build a mirror copy of the production line to support dynamic simulation and optimisation across the whole process.

Typical enterprise cases show that, through intelligent upgrading, output per production line has more than doubled, efficiency per employee has increased more than sixfold, product consistency and stability have improved markedly, and failure rates have fallen sharply.

Honred Technology: precision assembly equipment for smart factories

As a source manufacturer of automated assembly equipment, Honred Technology keeps pace with the artificial intelligence plus manufacturing direction. Its products cover CCD vision-guided screw machines, in-line automatic screw fastening platforms, multi-axis fastening equipment, dispensing machines, potting machines, conformal coating machines and soldering machines, with MES integration, real-time torque data upload and barcode traceability, and can be embedded seamlessly into smart factory production lines.

To meet the requirements of smart factories for fast changeover, process consistency and data traceability, Honred provides a full service chain from standard models to non-standard customisation, supports sample testing and process validation, and helps manufacturers complete intelligent upgrading at a lower overall cost.