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The high-speed paper bag filling system fills an average of 12 bags of milk per second, and the entire process from the pasture to the packaging of a box of milk takes no more than 2 hours... At Mengniu's Ningxia factory, digital applications have not only created the highest annual labor efficiency ratio in the global dairy industry, but also turned the new quality productivity of the dairy industry from blueprint into reality.

As the "national team" of China's dairy industry, Mengniu Group continues to deepen its understanding of the development of new quality productivity and corporate responsibilities, continuously promotes "all-factor innovation" and strengthens "all-dimensional coordination", strives to create new quality productivity, and promotes China's dairy industry to "high-tech, high-efficiency, and high-quality", and continuously promotes the high-quality development of China's dairy industry.

Mengniu Ningxia factory. Photo provided by the interviewee

Digital Super Factory

In May 2023, Mengniu Ningxia Factory was completed and put into production. As the world's first fully digitalized super factory and the largest single liquid milk factory in the dairy industry, the Ningxia factory can achieve "100 people and 10 billion yuan" after full production, that is, 100 employees can create 10 billion yuan in output value each year.

Walking into Mengniu's Ningxia factory, you can see that workers are no longer doing traditional waiting jobs. Instead, they are responding to system dispatch in real time as part of the production factors, realizing the transformation of one person doing multiple jobs and achieving a highly intelligent and efficient production process.

Production line of Mengniu Ningxia factory. Photo provided by the interviewee

"In the past, it took more than 20 staff members just to direct and dispatch milk trucks to enter the site, unload milk and wash trucks. Now it is fully automatic and unmanned. It takes two or three hours for traditional factories to manually unload a truckload of goods. The Ningxia factory can use the smart procurement and supply system to enter raw and auxiliary materials into the warehouse with just one key, and the whole process only takes 2 minutes." Gao Huilei, commander of the Mengniu Ningxia factory operation command platform, introduced that the factory has become a 4.0 version "super factory" through digital technology, which can achieve full digital coverage of the entire system, entire chain, entire process and full automation.

The strategic significance of Mengniu's Ningxia factory also lies in that it will drive the integrated development of "planting + breeding" in terms of growth momentum, bringing more than 3,000 jobs to the local industrial chain; in terms of the value chain, it will use the optimization of process indicators as the operational logic to achieve automated and intelligent production models; in terms of business model, it will set an example for the transformation of dozens of Mengniu factories, and external technical products and services can be commercially replicated.

"134556" high-performance password

The construction of the Ningxia factory is an important measure for Mengniu Group to promote the creation of new quality productivity in the dairy industry and realize digital transformation and upgrading. To this end, Mengniu has summarized a set of "134556" high-efficiency codes.

"1" refers to the overall positioning of efficiency, intelligence, green and sustainability; "5, 6, 3" is the digital support for achieving efficient transformation, namely the "5 onlines" of online scheduling, online material payment, online testing, online operation and maintenance, and online decision-making, building "6 platforms" of smart procurement and supply, smart energy, smart production, smart inspection, smart logistics, and smart park, and completely opening up the "3 full chains" of the entire industrial chain from pasture to table, the entire equipment chain of manufacturers, and the entire system chain from enterprise resource planning to production line; the other "5" is to achieve the "5 major transformations" of value chain, growth momentum, organizational capability, corporate governance and business model; "4" refers to the use of the "4-in-1" indicators of floor efficiency, labor efficiency, product efficiency and energy efficiency to evaluate the high efficiency quality of the Ningxia factory.

Testing laboratory of Mengniu Ningxia factory. Photo provided by the interviewee

After one year of operation, Mengniu Ningxia Factory performed well in the evaluation of four indicators. Compared with traditional factories, the Ningxia Factory's space utilization rate increased by 37%, packaging efficiency increased by 67%, and efficiency per square meter increased by 1.06 times; in terms of labor efficiency, labor productivity increased by nearly 20 times, achieving a breakthrough of 100 people and 10 billion yuan; in terms of product efficiency, through real-time online detection of key quality points and other technologies, not only the transformation efficiency was increased by 15%, but also the quality of each package of milk was guaranteed to be high and the standards were unified; in terms of energy efficiency, the smart energy system can optimize the number of equipment, reduce abnormal losses, and achieve an overall reduction of energy consumption by 43%.

With smarter, greener, more efficient and higher-quality manufacturing performance, Mengniu Ningxia Factory has won multiple authoritative recognitions. In March 2023, Mengniu Ningxia Factory obtained the LEED Green Building Gold Certification issued by the U.S. Green Building Council. In the same year, the Ningxia Factory was awarded the "Dairy Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Base" and the 2023 National "Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Factory Unveiling Unit". In January 2024, the "Mengniu Ningxia Smart Archives Construction Innovation Practice" submitted by Mengniu Ningxia Factory was rated as a "2023 Corporate Archives Work Case with Certain Reference Significance" by the State Archives Administration.

Green innovation leads to new quality productivity in the dairy industry

Accelerating the development of new quality productivity is a necessary condition for the high-quality development of the dairy industry. The digital transformation direction of the Ningxia factory is also the strategic direction for Mengniu to develop new quality productivity.

In terms of scientific research and innovation, in recent years, Mengniu has jointly cultivated a series of high-quality alfalfa varieties, promoted dairy cow genetic improvement and efficient propagation technology, and broken through the upstream "bottleneck" technology; the "MLCT structural fat and new OPO" infant formula research results jointly developed by Jiangnan University broke the technology monopoly; the independently developed breast milk oligosaccharides passed the approval and certification of China and the United States. In June this year, Mengniu Group, as the main completion unit, submitted the "Key Technology Innovation and Application of Excellent Lactic Acid Bacteria Germplasm Resources Exploration and Industrialization", which won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award again.

Green development is the background of high-quality development, and new quality productivity itself is green productivity. To this end, Mengniu continues to implement the dual carbon goals of "achieving carbon peak in 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality in 2050". In the upstream, China Shengmu, a subsidiary of Mengniu, has planted a total of 97 million desert trees and greened more than 200 square kilometers of desert. In the production process, Mengniu has built a total of 30 national green factories and built the first dual-certified "zero-carbon" factory in the domestic dairy industry in Qujing, Yunnan. In the downstream, Mengniu optimizes packaging materials and designs to reduce the carbon footprint of products, and many products such as "Tilan Shengxue" ice cream have achieved carbon neutrality.

Text/Guo Tie

Editor: Zhu Fenglan

Proofread by Liu Baoqing