King Long Successfully Transforms from Manual Production Line to Intelligent Manufacturing

When entering the spacious and bright overseas general assembly workshop of King Long, people will be naturally attracted by the equipment which bears close resemblance to a bank queuing machine. According to the introduction of the staff in the workshop, this intelligent computer works far more complicatedly than the queuing machine, with a powerful data collection and processing center as its core. This is the epitome of numerous achievements made by the company during its digital transformation in 2017.

Zhang Di, Leader of Overseas General Assembly Comprehensive Team, is Operating Skillfully on the Electronic Terminal

King Long may not stand out in the past 2017. But in fact, a sweeping intelligent manufacturing transformation has been well under way in production, logistics, quality control and others.

In recent years, the Chinese government has been promoting strategies and programs to make China a manufacturing giant, including Made in China 2025 and “Industry 4.0", while taking "innovation-driven, quality first, sustainable development, structure optimization and talent-based" as the basic guiding policies. Such strategies and programs are leading the development and transformation of the entire manufacturing industry and remodeling the industrial value and form. Furthermore, intelligent manufacturing is the strategic move of the company to promote product quality and manufacturing efficiency during the period covered by the “13^th Five-Year Plan”. The first-phase objective is to achieve manufacturing process-based data visualization (digital prototype, drawings, materials, alteration forms, procedure specifications, process card and abnormalities), visualization of the entire process from order recording, production and warehousing to delivery, and the digitization and automation of material supply in production line, robot, equipment control, data collection and quality control.

In 2017, King Long established a pilot intelligent manufacturing project of Overseas Manufacturing Department. Within only one year, by means of 3D large-screen central control board and the intelligent mobile terminal and on the basis of the existing data of MES and SAP systems, the company has successfully integrated the key business scenarios and statistical indicators of production, logistics and quality, made manufacturing in its factories more transparent, promoted the coordination of the entire supply chain and established models of quality inspection data acquisition during manufacturing process and quality tracing of raw materials, laying a solid foundation for King Long’s strategic plan of intelligent manufacturing transformation. At present, cloud-speed application of intelligent manufacturing and kanban, PQC manufacturing quality control and upgraded quality tracing have been put into use successively.

From Human Management to Intelligent Production Line

During the initiated PQC manufacturing quality control (i.e., process quality digitalization), the intelligent terminals on the overseas comprehensive lines such as the tablet demonstrated by the team leader Zhang Di are all data-collecting tools used in King Long’s intelligent manufacturing project to digitalize the paper-using process and to make manufacturing process more technologically sophisticated.

“In accordance with the previous human management style, the entire manufacturing process of a vehicle was recorded in the paper process card accompanied with the vehicle. Once problems appear later, we have to find the vehicle and the process card, and it is also hard to count up the quality-related issues.” Mr. Zhang commended the PQC improvement project of intelligent manufacturing. He said, “It was hard to trace the problems found out after vehicles go into warehouses in the past; however, the current digital quality inspection can not only make all the problems searchable, but also automatically generate reports. In this way, problems can be solved by directly contacting relevant personnel. For any defects, only pictures need to be taken, filed and confirmed on a tablet, which avoided the secondary errors that may occur when typing data from paper records into computers in the past.” PQC manufacturing quality control system not only features stable and efficient information central control and processing, its various early warning functions also play an important role during the mass production period.

In addition to promoting efficiency in the workshop, PQC manufacturing quality control is more essential to the collection of production performance assessment information. For example, the production plan achievement, the tendency of input and output, the production material shortage warning and the logistics status of workshops are all updated in a real-time and dynamic manner on the boards in the workshops. The assessment of front-line personnel and defect frequency of vehicles will also be directly related to operators, and such information will be used as key indicators for the assessment.

The ultimate objective of intelligent manufacturing project is to make the manufacturing process more intelligent

With King Long’s intelligent manufacturing project goes further, Logistics Department has started to operate its scanning-based parcel-taking business in a more mobile and real-time way since last year. Previously, the work of the department completely relied on paper. If the goods are signed and recorded, and then transported away, it is really hard to trace them. However, the current materials’ real-time warehousing, production and distribution status, suppliers’ delivery and the efficiency of work high above the ground can all be realized via operations on mobile terminals. Even problems such as material shortage of orders can be immediately checked on the mobile board.

“Currently, our real-time information interaction with suppliers enables more rapid and accurate logistics management. Especially, 10 workers have been saved in terms of book-keeping.” Su Longquan, leader of Warehouse Management Division, says, “We only need to scan the QR code on materials with our mobile phones to collect the real-time information during material transfer. It is just like the ordinary online shopping. The system records each and every material transfer. We just search on the mobile terminal when we want to trace the material.”

Simple as it sounds, it is backed by the whole manufacturing management and control system. Su Longquan expressed that if the material cannot be recorded timely, the cost calculation of the whole vehicle will be affected. Nowadays, the intelligent manufacturing project guarantees the timely record of material information, which provided solid support for company management.

While we understand the warehousing information, the journalists visited the Yuchai high rack warehouse located at the production base of overseas vehicles. Yuchai high rack warehouse, established in April 2016, is gradually transferring from the traditional manual forklift operation to the automatic goods picking via scanning after the intelligent manufacturing transformation. At the present stage, it is equipped with the functions such as automatic storage and positioning, and the immediate sending of material-receiving notifications to the workshop.

New automatic forklift

The forklift identifies its location via the QR codes on goods shelves

Promotion of Quality Inspection Efficiency

As the member of the intelligent manufacturing project team, Sun Ningyun from Material Examination Division says, “The Company occupies a large area and stores a variety of materials. Any problem found out had to be recorded on papers and then manually entered into computers the office. Frequently, we spent most of the day in doing this.” Sun Ningyun takes her mobile phone and clicks app to show us the operation interface of the app. She tells us that currently, not only can the quality problems be uploaded rapidly during the quality inspection, the procedure draft and multi-party countersigning can also be immediately made. In addition, all the information collected at the mobile terminal will be sent to all relevant persons as attachments. As for previous problems, you can trace on the mobile terminal to see whether or not they have been properly resolved.

Look Forward to the Year of 2018 together with “Intelligent Manufacturing Information Team”

The development from nothing will not be trouble-free. The intelligent manufacturing informanization team of King Long consists of a group of excellent key staffs and elites who come from different systems. As part of the emerging intelligent manufacturing project, the young team is passionate, boldly innovative and full of undaunted courage. It frequently overcomes the difficulties or brings ideas that seem impossible into reality during the project. “Dare to think and act” is just the byword for this team. Based on the confidence in its own professional knowledge, the whole team dares to boldly and resolutely open up the brand-new journey of intelligent manufacturing. Hong Shixuan in Software Application Management Division, as the internal consultant of the project, has many feelings. According to his introduction, since the intelligent manufacturing project needs to be completed within a limited period of time and is widely covered, the whole team cannot but compel itself to learn new knowledge constantly while advancing the project when teammates face the new ideas and technical applications in this brand new field. Each of their steps is an achievement of brainstorming and the collision of thought from the team. Even a tiny process will be discussed repeatedly, in a bid to deliver the best performance. Thanks to this endeavor, they have realized the transformation of the traditional ERP project at last.

The brand-new journey of the Year of 2018 has started and the fresh management principle of “Expand the Market, Strengthen the Innovation, Shape the Originality and Promote the Transformation” will lead the intelligent manufacturing group of King Long to open up a new pattern.

“The whole company has been fully equipped only for sieving every minute to start the new journey”. In the new year, the intelligent manufacturing project of King Long will press ahead steadily and proudly open up an intelligent future!