Jiadien Co., Ltd.'s smart factory turns "customization" into "mass production"

Reporter Sun Xianchao, Securities Times

How does a highly customized high-voltage explosion-proof motor achieve mass production in an intelligent factory? Jiadian Co., Ltd. (000922) provides the answer.

As the first listed company in China to achieve full coverage of industrial motor products, Jiadian Co.’s motor division currently offers 347 series of motors, nearly 4,000 varieties, with single-machine power ranging from 0.37 kW to 80,000 kW. The company features a wide variety of products and customized manufacturing, with complex full-process procedures and high coordination difficulty.

In recent years, Jiadian Co. has accelerated its digital and intelligent transformation, building industry-leading smart factories and the country’s first digitalized high-voltage motor assembly workshop, which has been put into operation, filling a domestic gap. The completion and operation of the smart factory effectively solve industry pain points such as long-standing difficulties in maintaining product quality consistency and high cost pressures, truly enabling large-scale production, high-quality control, and rapid delivery of customized high-voltage explosion-proof motors.

Recently, Securities Times reporters visited Jiadian Co.’s smart factory and learned that the company’s digital workshop has increased production efficiency by over 36%, capacity by more than 56%, and the first-pass yield rate far exceeds industry averages.

The workshop says goodbye to “people waiting for materials”

In Jiadian Co.’s digital workshop, assembly worker Cong Hao is focused on entering work order numbers into the MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) system. Relying on this system, key information such as daily dispatch volume, motor assembly features, bill of materials, parts arrival status, and standard working hours are clearly visible, providing precise guidance for assembly operations.

As a frontline employee in the high-voltage motor assembly and final assembly positions, Cong Hao personally feels the dramatic changes brought by digitalization. “In the past, picking up materials meant running to the warehouse, pushing carts and using cranes to transport back and forth, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive,” Cong Hao said. Now, the workshop is equipped with intelligent parts warehouses and station turnover warehouses, with materials delivered in advance. During work, AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) handle parts transportation, heavy-duty AGVs transport large components, and they are paired with lightweight cranes (KBK) and RGVs (Rail Guided Vehicles). From material calling to delivery, the entire process is automated and unmanned.

On-site, the reporter saw that after Cong Hao initiates a material call in the MOM system, the intelligent scheduling system responds immediately. An automatic forklift retrieves materials from storage shelves to the transfer station, then the AGV precisely delivers them to Cong Hao’s station. The entire process takes less than 10 minutes.

Jiang Yunbo, deputy director of Jiadian Co.’s workshop, explained that before digital transformation, the workshop relied heavily on traditional factory operation modes, with severe shortages of personnel, cranes, and other core resources, limiting efficiency improvements. At that time, the workshop had only two cranes, and due to the large size of motor parts, different processes and shifts often competed for lifting resources. Employees often had to wait for equipment, resulting in downtime and significant time spent on manual handling and equipment waiting, which severely constrained capacity.

After the digital workshop was put into operation, heavy physical labor such as manual lifting, prying, and moving was eliminated, greatly reducing workers’ labor intensity and significantly improving safety and comfort. Currently, the workshop’s labor costs are reduced by about one-third, with staff reallocated to market services and other positions. The flexible staffing system can respond to order fluctuations effectively.

As the core competitiveness of equipment manufacturing enterprises, production efficiency and product precision have achieved comprehensive breakthroughs through digital empowerment. For example, the processing of motor housings now uses PAMA machining centers, reducing the original nine processes on three machines to two processes on one machine, compressing the cycle from three days to four hours.

“The precision of motor bearing processing and the coaxiality of the rotor directly determine whether common industry issues such as vibration, heat generation, and shaft wobble can be solved, affecting product reliability and lifespan,” Jiang Yunbo said. After introducing high-end automated processing equipment from abroad, processing accuracy improved from 20 steps (0.2mm) to 5 steps (0.05mm), significantly enhancing product precision and quality.

“Smart Brain” penetrative command

The production data of the digital workshop is not isolated but uploaded in real-time to the company’s data center, managed by a “smart brain” that enables unified scheduling and overall management.

Walking into Jiadian Co.’s data center, four large screens display real-time updates, showing the entire enterprise’s operational status: production plans for March and beyond, order fulfillment details, delay details, days overdue, and high/low voltage product fulfillment status, all clearly visible.

Li Jie, assistant manager of Jiadian Co.’s data center, explained that the company has established a two-level penetrating management command system, consisting of seven primary centers and five secondary centers. The five secondary command centers are located in the five major production workshops and are linked in real-time with the primary centers, with issues reported directly.

Among the seven primary centers, the production scheduling command center acts as the “brain” of the entire plant, achieving full visibility from order to delivery: monitoring monthly production plans, high/low voltage motor progress, urgent order distribution, completion rates, and pending work; issuing early warnings for equipment failures, material shortages, and procurement plan timeliness; and tracking the entire process from order receipt, scheduling, processing, assembly, to qualified warehousing and shipment readiness.

The equipment and efficiency monitoring center connects equipment operation, fault repair, inspection, maintenance, and repair processes, promoting a shift from reactive repairs to predictive maintenance, minimizing unplanned downtime. Currently, the plant has 1,388 pieces of equipment, with data automatically collected from 180 CNC and intelligent devices; plans are in place to connect over 60 more this year, reaching a total of 240, while older equipment that does not meet conditions will be phased in gradually.

Based on this, Jiadian Co. has also innovatively applied AI assistants and digital employees, mainly deployed in the control room and production command center, to enable intelligent dispatching, system scheduling, and centralized data management. Production data from workshops is uploaded in real-time to the central control room for unified scheduling and management.

“Our self-developed digital employees can replace manual work for many repetitive, rule-based tasks, achieving automation of business processes,” Li Jie said. “Production plans are automatically tracked, exported, and issued without manual intervention. We automatically export production outlines from SAP, send them via OA (Office Automation) clients to the workshop, and synchronize with workgroups, allowing workshops to organize production directly according to the plan.”

Currently, the data center has launched seven types of digital employees: five for on-site display covering R&D, production, sales, procurement, and finance; two additional types for HR operate in the background.

The digital employees have doubled efficiency. For example, “Jia Xiaojiang” (Production Specialist) handles intelligent scheduling of production plans, data collection and analysis, and process upgrades, working 16 hours daily, processing 4,200 data points per day, with a 12-fold increase in work efficiency and 99% accuracy in business data.

Relying on the dual drive of the data hub and digital employees, Jiadian Co. is achieving comprehensive digital and intelligent upgrades from the workshop floor to enterprise management.

Creating a new industry benchmark

In interviews, the Securities Times learned that Jiadian Co. has established three major digital workshops: high-voltage motor assembly, low-voltage motor assembly, and motor housing processing, forming a scaled intelligent factory. Currently, the factory adopts a human-machine collaboration model: highly automated processing stages, while core motor assembly still relies on manual fine-fitting to balance efficiency and craftsmanship.

“The company has proactively laid out the intelligent transformation of high-voltage motor production, and will continue to deepen digital and intelligent applications to consolidate its technological leadership and shift from a traditional motor manufacturer to a full lifecycle operation and maintenance service provider,” said Wang Hongxia, secretary of Jiadian Co.’s board.

Notably, the construction and operation of Jiadian Co.’s smart factory have set a strong demonstration and driving effect for the domestic motor industry, especially in the high-voltage explosion-proof motor field. Jiang Yunbo explained that the smart factory directly pushes the overall quality upgrade of the industry. Relying on high-precision automated equipment and digital processes, the company’s product processing and assembly accuracy have greatly improved. While optimizing staffing, production efficiency and product quality far surpass traditional models. This high-quality, high-efficiency advanced paradigm has prompted peers to upgrade equipment and optimize processes, elevating industry standards in manufacturing and quality.

Jiadian Co. has redefined industry performance benchmarks through its smart factory, especially achieving a leap in core indicators such as vibration values. The national GB/T10068 standard was early set at 2.8mm/s, recently improved to 2.3mm/s, now a common industry threshold. With the help of the smart factory, Jiadian’s regular products can be stably controlled at 1.8mm/s, and high-end customized products for oil and petrochemical industries can be maintained below 1.3mm/s, far better than national standards.

“Vibration value is the most direct indicator of a motor’s operational stability and lifespan, measurable directly by sensors. Our breakthroughs mean that motors now achieve significant improvements in long-term reliability, bearing temperature rise, and air gap uniformity,” Jiang Yunbo said.

More importantly, with comprehensive improvements in quality, efficiency, and standards, Jiadian Co.’s smart factory has truly established a benchmark for industry transformation and upgrading. “Our improvements in quality, efficiency, and standards have directly enhanced our market competitiveness and user reputation, and also pushed domestic peers to follow automation and intelligent upgrades, raising the overall technological level and manufacturing capability of China’s motor industry,” Jiang Yunbo added. From housing processing accuracy to complete machine assembly precision, from core indicators to overall performance, the entire chain’s quality upgrades have created a strong demonstration effect, leading the industry toward high-end, intelligent, and high-quality development.