Chinese machinery giant Sany Group plans to take advantage of intelligent manufacturing to reach 300 billion yuan ($46.56 billion) in sales revenue, recruit 3,000 more workers and hire 30,000 engineers by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25).

The company's pile machine factory in Beijing, namely Sany Beijing, was recently approved as a "Lighthouse Factory" by the World Economic Forum, becoming the first one approved in heavy industry in the world.

The "Lighthouse Factory" list was jointly issued by the WEF and global market research company McKinsey & Co. It was intended to select factories leading the way in the adoption and integration of frontier technologies around the world.

Lighthouse Factories represent the highest level of intelligent manufacturing and digitalization in the global manufacturing industry today.

The official website of WEF said the reason in approving Sany Beijing as a Lighthouse Factory was that "faced with growing demand and rising complexity in the multicategory and small-batch heavy machinery market, Sany Beijing deployed advanced human-machine collaboration automation, artificial intelligence and the internet of things technologies to boost labor productivity by 85 percent and reduce production lead time by 77 percent from 30 to seven days."

Industry experts said the approval of the Lighthouse Factory demonstrated Sany's remarkable achievements in advanced manufacturing and digital transformation, and helped the company gain an advantage in competition amid the latest industrial revolution.

Dai Qinghua, chairman and senior vice-president of Sany Group, said, "Sany plans to upgrade its over 30 factories around the world to the same level of the Lighthouse Factory in Beijing, and promote the intelligent transformation in production and logistics of its key factories."

"Sany Group launched digital transformation in 2018, and started the Lighthouse Factory construction in 2019. In 2020, we invested 15 billion yuan in upgrades and transformation. We have made detailed plans in building more Lighthouse Factories and ushering in future development," he said.

Sany said that after the automatic, digital, and intelligent upgrade, its Lighthouse Factory has eight flexible work centers, 16 intelligent production lines, and 375 production facilities connected to the internet. Based on industrial internet platform, the Lighthouse Factory deeply integrates internet, big data and AI, and realizes complete connection between manufacturing factors.

Sany Beijing's factory control center, or its smart brain, is the core of intelligent manufacturing. Through the smart brain, orders are quickly assigned to specific flexible production lines, work centers, equipment and workers, to realize the whole process of data driven from order to delivery. Along the data flow, the whole process and details of manufacturing are tracked.

The company said with digital transformation, Sany Beijing's output value doubled, the overall equipment operation rate increased from 66.3 percent to 86.7 percent, and the mean time between failures dropped by 58.5 percent. Currently, the Lighthouse Factory is capable of manufacturing nearly 30 types of machineries, and plays a leading role in flexible manufacturing.

Qi Haishen, president of THE Solar Tech Co Ltd and an expert in construction, said: "Lighthouse Factories take a leading role in terms of new technologies, management systems and industrial interconnections. Their highly efficient operational mode sensitive to market demand not only takes advantage of brand premium, but also suits the development of e-commerce. Lighthouse Factories are leading the development of advanced manufacturing, as well as the joint development of enterprises in various regions."

"Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, many domestic machinery enterprises have been experiencing overload production, and the output of some advanced machinery didn't meet market requirements. Lighthouse Factories help leading enterprises, like Sany, to embrace digital transformation and increase output value," Qi said.

Che Junhua, an expert at Jinan Vocational College, said: "Chinese machinery enterprises can take advantage of Lighthouse Factories to increase their intelligent manufacturing and digitalization level, and lay a solid foundation for the long-term development of enterprises."