Securities Times|The flexible manufacturing of "Big Mac", Sany counterattacks the world!

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Can a "steel monster" like a crane lift a weight, just and soft? The secret of Sany's resurgence is to deeply promote the digital and intelligent transformation and lead the industry in a new direction.Under the condition of high digital intelligence, not only the labor production efficiency has been nearly doubled, but the production cycle has also been greatly shortened to the calculation of days, making Sany Heavy Lift more stable and powerful in the global market.

From "the first in China" to "the first in the world", the development process of Sany has witnessed the counterattack of China's construction machinery industry from all aspects of market and technology, leading the world's advanced level, and becoming a dazzling Oriental Star.

Weightlifting iflight

Walking into the Sany Heavy Lifting welding workshop in Ningxiang City, Hunan Province, six huge workstations for welding frames are lined up, extending to a depth of hundreds of meters. Ten o'clock in the morning is the peak time for production, but in this welding workshop, there are only one or two workers on each workbench. On each table, two large welding robots hang from a two-metre-high truss and pull two wires on a huge frame nearly 10 metres long, more than 2 metres wide and weighing several tons.

After a series of highly automated production processes, a 50-ton crane can complete the gorgeous transformation from steel plate to the whole machine within 14 days, and sell to construction sites, ports and terminals in hundreds of countries and regions around the world, among which the sales performance to the European and North American markets is particularly prominent, and the sales volume continues to grow rapidly at a rate of doubling year-on-year.

"Our truss robot dual-machine collaboration technology is the first to be used in the country and even in the world, which is very huge for the improvement of efficiency." Xue Yutian, vice president of Sany Heavy Lifting Technology Institute, told reporters, "In the past, this link required four workers to carry out a whole day of welding work, but now two robots can be completed with high quality within 4 hours." ”

Because of the extremely large and heavy workpiece size and the composition of thousands of parts, the welding workshop with an automation rate of more than 70% is not the workshop with the highest automation rate in Sany Heavy Industrial Park. In the outrigger workshop of Sany Heavy Lift, the automation rate is more than ninety, and the automation rate of the painting workshop is as high as 100%.

All manufacturing links have also benefited from the introduction of automation technology, and product consistency and worker safety have also been greatly improved.

In the welding workshop, workers used to need to climb the height of welding through tooling, which was inconvenient and occupied a large space. Today, the welding torch is held in the hands of the robot, and the laser eye replaces the naked eye to determine the position of the weld. Thanks to the high technology, the frame can be welded to an accuracy of 0.01 mm in all positions – less than 1/10th the size of a human hair. The 100% automation of the paint shop not only avoids workers from inhaling toxic and harmful spraying dust, but also improves the utilization rate of spraying materials to nearly 100%.

From "human-assisted machines" to "machine-assisted humans", more and more intelligent equipment has been introduced, and the human resource structure of Sany has also undergone tremendous changes. Machine programming, equipment operation and maintenance, has become a common skill for Sany Heavy Lift industrial workers, the reporter in the process of visiting the park, it has been difficult to distinguish who is a worker and who is an engineer on the spot. High-achieving students from 985 and 211 colleges and universities are on the same scene with teachers, engineers and skilled workers are mixed and matched, and the new worker team of Sany is further accelerating the process of intelligent production technology.

Flexible manufacturing

If it is said that breaking through the automation hardware of automatic blanking, welding, and teaming is the "flesh and blood" of digital and intelligent transformation, then the brain of the smart factory based on the manufacturing operation management platform as the core is the "soul" of Sany Heavy Digital and Intelligent Transformation, helping the company to realize the transformation from "rigid" to "soft", and the production potential has been greatly exerted.

In ancient times, there have been cranes with rudimentary structures, although the core function is simply lifting heavy objects, but in the rich application scenarios derived from a variety of product types and forms, the demand for flexible production capacity under intelligent guidance is very strong.

In the product system of Sany crane, the existing truck size and lifting capacity is only 12 tonsTruck cranesThere is also the "world's first crane" with a maximum lifting capacity of 4,500 tons, and the size of the two is similar to that of ants and elephants. This "world's first crane" worth hundreds of millions of yuan, covering an area of nearly 4,200 square meters, is about the size of 10 basketball courts, the main engine has four tracks and eight drives, and the arms are 216 meters long, and the weight of a lifting is equivalent to more than 3,000 cars, which is a solid giant.

"The crane is a typical multi-variety, small-batch product, and the market is constantly changing, and the demand is complex and diverse. Therefore, only by using the means of intelligent manufacturing to improve our agile delivery capabilities, improve product quality, and reduce our product costs, can we meet market demand. Xie Tao, general manager of Sany Heavy Lift Division, told reporters.

In a typical production process of Sany restart, the production plan will be transmitted to the central intelligent brain headed by MOM, and then transmitted to the terminal robot program, waiting for the handling robot to transport the workpiece in place, the terminal robot determines the workpiece through the machine vision system, and automatically debugs the corresponding welding program in dozens of manufacturing solutions according to the size of the workpiece.

In the past, customers from all over the world could not produce a few non-standard models customized according to the construction scene in a year. This kind of non-standard products are often the "big enemy" of modern industrial assembly line production, but after the intelligent transformation, Sany Heavy Rise Factory can still "calmly" take orders. In fact, with the support of digital and intelligent technology, Sany is not satisfied with "being able to take orders", but can "do a good job" and "save energy".

In the context of high digital intelligence, key technologies and production processes are all online controllable. At the quality level, even the degree of tightening of a single screw is registered, ensuring full traceability. In terms of energy conservation and emission reduction, through real-time monitoring and management of the energy consumption of each production link, the precise control and optimization of the production process are ensured, and the carbon emissions in the production process are reduced while reducing the waste of water, electricity and production raw materials.

It is worth mentioning that this whole set of smart factory brains was independently developed by Sany Heavy Start, which has become the company's secret book. Xue Yutian said: "As a benchmark for promoting intelligent manufacturing in the industry, we attract a large number of peers to visit and learn every day, but the software system cannot be learned, and this kind of thing can only be developed by itself without a standardized system." If you don't know how the control logic is extracted, you'll never learn it. ”

Looking back on the company's process of promoting digital and intelligent transformation, Xie Tao couldn't help but sigh, "Digital and intelligent transformation is a first-class project, and the first-in-command must personally go down, unify his thinking, and make every effort to promote it in order to achieve the deep transformation of digital intelligence." There has always been a saying within Sany that has been passed on among employees, "Sany's digital transformation will either turn over or overturn." This sentence is exactly what Liang Wengen, chairman of Sany Group, put forward when the company comprehensively promoted the digital and intelligent transformation in 2018. Since then, Sany has invested more than 5% of its sales revenue in technology research and development every year, and digital intelligence is the majority of R&D investment.

Overseas promotion

Strong intelligent manufacturing capabilities support Sany to attack overseas markets.

In the past three years, Sany Heavy Rise has ushered in a golden period of overseas business development, and overseas sales have doubled year by year. Xie Tao introduced that among the main products, its crawler crane market position has continued to maintain the world's first, and the market share of truck cranes, all-terrain cranes, off-road cranes and other products has also increased significantly, and the export volume is the first in China.

In the first four months of this year, the proportion of overseas sales of Sany Chongqi has been the same as that of China, and in some months it has even exceeded the domestic sales volume, and it has shown a continuous upward trend, and production orders have been scheduled until the end of the year. Among them, the sales to the traditional construction machinery power Europe and North America are particularly prominent, with a year-on-year increase of as much as double. In order to meet the growing production demand, Sany has also launched another batch of technological transformation and intelligent equipment to improve production efficiency and product quality.

In fact, due to the late start of industrialization, the development of China's construction machinery industry has lagged behind European and American countries for a long time. In the field of cranes, China's first truck crane was not born until the 50s of the last century by imitating products from the former Soviet Union. However, due to the lack of market driving force, resulting in a serious lag in domestic large-tonnage lifting equipment, the lifting capacity of crawler cranes in China at that time only reached 50 tons, which is 1/16 of similar products in Germany.

It is the driving force of domestic demand, which drives enterprises including Sany Heavy to continuously strengthen research and development, break through the manufacturing limit, and become one of the world's top machinery manufacturing enterprises. In recent years, China's construction climax in the fields of petrochemical, electric power, steel, construction, transportation, infrastructure and other fields has led to the continuous upgrading of super-large cranes.

The first 1,000-ton all-terrain crane in China, the first 400-ton crawler crane in China, and the world's first 4,500-ton crawler crane have been launched in Sanshang. From "the first in China" to "the first in the world", the development process of Sany has witnessed the historical process of China's construction machinery industry in the market and technology from catching up to leading.

The high-speed expansion of Sany Heavy Lift overseas is the epitome of the overseas expansion of China's construction machinery industry. According to data from the China Construction Machinery Industry Association, in 2023, the cumulative export value of China's construction machinery will be 341.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.8%. The overseas performance of leading enterprises is far better than the industry average, and a number of enterprises, including Sany Heavy Industry, have achieved a historic breakthrough that the revenue scale of overseas markets is higher than that of the domestic market.

Taking the listed company Sany Heavy Industry as an example, the company's operating income from overseas markets in 2023 will reach 43.258 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 60% of the total revenue, while in 2020 this proportion was only 11%. At the same time, the gross profit margin of Sany Heavy Industry's international business also increased by 4.42 percentage points over the same period last year to 30.78%. The double increase in sales scale and profitability proves the current situation of high-quality development of related enterprises in overseas markets.

Xie Tao said that in the next stage, the demand for lifting equipment in the domestic market will continue to be polarized, and the large-scale wind power and bridges will continue to drive the demand for super-large crane equipment; Benefiting from the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside and the old city renovation policy, the demand for compact and flexible lifting equipment will gradually rise. At present, for the domestic market, Sany Heavy Lift continues to iterate the R&D technology of large cranes on the one hand, and at the same time accelerates the development of products with small wheelbase and small turning radius to adapt to the new market environment.

Overseas markets will continue to be a key area for Sany to restart. Xie Tao believes that the company will maintain rapid growth in overseas markets in the past five years. "We will continue to increase the pace of going out, under the concept of local operation and service first, from the past product export to the integration of global resources, and make every effort to develop global business. In key overseas markets, the company invested in the construction of crane production lines to promote domestic intelligent manufacturing technology to overseas manufacturing. When it comes to the future, Xie Tao is full of ambition.

Content source: Securities Times