Siemens builds a super digital factory for small pots of tea

In June 2022, with the help of Siemens, the super factory built by Xiaocan Tea with an investment of 1.5 billion yuan in Huangshan, Anhui Province was officially put into operation, providing a modern demonstration model for Chinese tea enterprises and leading the arrival of the "Tea Industry 4.0" era.

Siemens builds a super digital factory for small pots of tea

As the first intelligent factory built with the "Industry 4.0" specification in China's tea industry, the Huangshan Super Factory has completed the scientific research and development, testing and inspection of traditional Chinese tea, as well as the intelligent promotion of production methods and storage methods, established scientific production and storage specifications, and fully demonstrated the important strength of science and technology in the modernization and transformation of traditional occupations.

"If Chinese tea wants to adapt to the current consumer market and step onto the world stage, scientific tea making is the 'most difficult shortcut' to solve the problem." Du Guoying, the founder of Xiaocan Tea, said, "The establishment of Xiaocan Tea Huangshan Super Factory is an important milestone on our road to scientific tea making. Siemens' insights and experience in the field of Industry 4.0 have provided us with valuable references to migrate our advanced digital production system to the tea production system for the first time." ”

Since 2018, Siemens has been "tasting, discussing, and disagreeing" with small pots of tea. After a series of high-level dialogues and on-site visits, the two sides signed a strategic agreement at the end of the year. In the past few years, Siemens has provided a one-stop digital enterprise solution for Xiaocan Tea Huangshan Gigafactory, including digital consulting and planning, standardized system establishment, production execution system development and implementation.

"Digitalization will help the tea industry liberate itself from redundant and inefficient manual processes, and through standardized industrial production, the valuable experience sown through the ages will be transformed into a digital tea-making talent that can be replicated and even continuously optimized." Zhang Zhe, General Manager of the Digital Project Implementation Department of Siemens (China) Co., Ltd.'s Digital Industry Group, said, "Even ordinary staff can make master-level tea. ”

Innovation is not a tree without roots. The first thing Siemens did to participate in this intention was to comprehensively sort out and diagnose the complete value chain and production scenarios of the factory, starting from the digital integration of the four dimensions of product life cycle, order delivery process, digital factory life cycle and factory production line, and customized a digital blueprint from top-level planning to implementation for small pots of tea.

This blueprint clarifies the goals and positioning of the Gigafactory. At the skill level, the factory will complete the vertical integration from order to delivery system (OTD), digital closed-loop quality management, digital flexible production system, and production data integration and utilization in stages; At the operational level, the factory will promote the group development of small pots of tea with large-scale production, and become a key link connecting the upstream, middle and downstream of the industry; At the professional level, the factory will provide useful reference for China's tea industry, which is in the initial stage of digitalization, and lead China's tea to take a crucial step in the transformation of industrial consumer goods.

Under the planning of Siemens, the Huangshan Super Factory finally broke ground, integrating tea research and development, testing and inspection, intelligent three-dimensional warehousing, fully active packaging and scientific logistics, and intelligently linking people, production, logistics and supply chain. The combination of cutting-edge technology and traditional tea making not only helps small pots of tea greatly improve production efficiency and operational efficiency, improves the stability of product quality, but also provides effective solutions to solve occupational diseases.

Walking into the small pot of tea Huangshan Super Factory, you can intuitively feel the charm of science and technology. There are 243 automated equipment and 46 intelligent robots, and 90% of the automated production has been completed.

The fresh raw leaves are processed by the upstream factory and then sent here for further refinement. First of all, the AI impurity removal robot can quickly and accurately remove impurities from the tea material after the initial processing. Then through the fully active intelligent production equipment, active canning, dust removal, filling, weight detection, nitrogen filling, sealing, cartoning, plastic sealing; After that, the finished product is put into storage by the depalletizing manipulator; Finally, the automation of warehousing and logistics is completed through the intelligent warehousing system of unmanned active warehouse.

"Tea is the humanistic fruit of the soil of science, and the combination of the two is indispensable." Lu Kun, deputy general manager of the supply chain of small pots of tea, said, "The intelligent exploration of small pots of tea is systematic, in addition to the continuous operation method of 'fresh leaves in, tea out', we have also applied a series of digital skills, and the MES system jointly developed with Siemens has allowed us to truly reduce costs and increase efficiency in the process of production and operation." ”

In the digital journey of tea, the production execution system (MES) jointly developed by Siemens and Xiaocan Tea has completed the data collection and information traceability from the order to the delivery process, and integrated multiple systems such as resource solution system (ERP), data collection and monitoring system (SCADA), intelligent warehousing management system (WMS), and anti-counterfeiting system to ensure fast and efficient data flow between systems. The MES system covers many functional modules such as production management, quality management, data collection, process management, etc., so that the IT (information skills) and OT (operation skills) of small pots of tea can be integrated, and the production and management can get twice the result with half the effort.

Now, the MES system has penetrated into many production scenarios of small pots of tea super factories. Taking the material inspection of packaging materials as an example, the ERP system issues the mission of purchasing and arriving goods, and the MES system takes the initiative to create the mission of incoming materials inspection and report the inspection results. Compared with the previous manual quality inspection process, the digital quality management not only improves the work efficiency of quality inspectors, but also enables factories to respond sensitively and quickly to the festival theme and packaging material inspection mission of various customized packaging. In the process of warehousing of finished products, the MES system receives the instructions of the anti-counterfeiting system and takes the initiative to create a warehousing mission, and pushes the anti-counterfeiting and packaging information to the WMS system, which can ensure efficient outbound and production efficiency calculation.

At the same time, Siemens also relies on years of accumulated professional experience in food and beverage to standardize the processing methods of basic data in the MES system, from PLC communication methods, industrial network layout, to production line data collection and quality inspection, covering all aspects of production, and establishing a scientific and complete standardized system for small pots of tea.

In the past ten years, small pots of tea have set up higher process specifications and quality standards for the tea industry, and promoted China's tea from agriculture and semi-industrialization to the era of "Industry 4.0" with practical actions. Today, the Huangshan Super Factory has formed a "6+1" cooperative layout with its six primary factories in Fengqing, Anxi, Wuyishan, Xiuning, Menghai and Hengxian, which can not only meet the long-term needs of the small pot of tea itself, but also continue to promote the transformation and upgrading of China's tea industry with useful practices.

Siemens builds a super digital factory for small pots of tea

Sections viewed

Contact

working hours