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As people pay more and more attention to nutrition and health, natural green and high-quality milk sources have become important factors in measuring a glass of good milk. Ningxia, located in northwest China, is located in the "golden milk source belt" and is a national high-end dairy cow breeding base and a high-end dairy product production base. It has a dairy cow inventory of over 900,000 heads and has ranked first in the country in terms of growth rate for five consecutive years.

As production capacity increases, digital technology is also driving the development of the local dairy industry. In May last year, Mengniu's fully digitalized factory was completed and put into production in Lingwu City, Ningxia. It is the world's first fully digitalized factory in the dairy industry and the world's largest single liquid milk factory.

One year after it was put into operation, how is the factory doing? On July 16, the "Searching for New Quality Productivity Benchmarks in China's Dairy Industry" hosted by the Media Tea Party was held. Nearly 100 journalists and media KOLs from home and abroad visited the Mengniu Ningxia factory to explore what kind of innovative results this digital factory has brought.

1,270 technical business management innovations

Mengniu Ningxia Factory is located in Lingwu Lingang Industrial Park, Yinchuan High-tech Zone. It used to be a barren land until Mengniu came here to invest and build a factory in 2020, injecting new impetus into the local industrial development.

Now, a few years later, an intelligent, modern and future-oriented factory has appeared before our eyes. Walking into the factory, in the clean, tidy and green factory area, you will first be attracted by the production and carbon reduction data displayed on the large automated screen; walking to the digital exhibition hall on the second floor of the factory, one digital screen after another and miniature models vividly present the intelligent operation mechanism, and a mysterious digital man "appears" to guide you.

Digital exhibition hall on the second floor of Mengniu Ningxia factory

Currently, the factory has a total of 24 production lines. It is understood that unlike traditional factories, the factory has achieved "full digitalization and intelligence" in the entire system, the entire chain, the entire process, and full automation. It is a "green and intelligent" factory that integrates 5G+ three-dimensional, benefit-oriented, efficient, and intelligent, and is committed to building a 4.0 version of the super factory.

It is important to know that in the production process, each pack of milk involves more than 100 business points, thousands of action elements, 36 key control points, and 139 inspection items. How to connect these links and avoid the "isolated island" phenomenon is crucial. Mengniu's solution is to widely apply digital platforms, big data analysis, and AI scenarios in various physical businesses, and to drive the innovation of management and operation models through digital technology, so as to realize the digitization of all businesses and the digitalization of all businesses.

Mengniu Ningxia factory production line

According to Gao Huilei, commander of the operation command platform of Mengniu Dairy Ningxia factory, the factory focuses on six major smart platforms, including smart procurement and supply, smart energy, smart production, smart inspection, smart logistics and smart park. Through the "five onlines" of online scheduling, online material payment, online testing, online operation and maintenance, and online decision-making, it has realized a new operation model of integrated management and control, one person in multiple positions, and system command. It has currently achieved 1,270 technical business management innovations.

Innovation brings disruptive results that are visible to the naked eye. For example, the production line is "accelerated". The high-speed paper bag filling system fills 40,000 bags of milk per hour on average, with packaging efficiency increased by 67%, space utilization increased by 37%, and labor productivity increased by nearly 20 times. In addition, the original cumbersome links have also become light and efficient. For example, when the transport vehicle approaches the gate, the system will recognize the license plate number and automatically release it. The driver only needs to open the APP and follow the instructions to complete sampling and testing, milk loading and unloading, and vehicle cleaning.

What is even more surprising is that although the factory covers an area of ​​nearly 600 acres, it has only 100 employees, but the average daily production capacity per person reaches 40 tons, creating the highest labor efficiency ratio among dairy factories in the world, and enabling 100 employees to produce 1 million tons of liquid milk per year, creating the "three hundred" goal of 10 billion yuan in output value.

Improving quality and reducing consumption

While operating efficiently, Mengniu pays more attention to quality improvement. Driven by the value concept of "people-oriented" and "consumer first first", the Ningxia factory design team created multi-scenario digital application services.

It is understood that after one year of operation, Mengniu Ningxia factory has achieved a 15% improvement in transformation efficiency through technologies such as real-time online detection of key quality points, ensuring unified milk quality standards.

At the same time, the factory realizes centralized control of production line equipment through the intelligent control platform, and the intelligent production system realizes closed-loop control of the production process, which meets the traceability of the entire product chain and the entire life cycle. The efficiency of one-click quality traceability is shortened from 2 hours to 2 minutes, ensuring that every drop of milk meets the product quality. At present, the factory has won the "Excellent Unit for Fresh Milk Quality Management" award issued by the Ningxia Dairy Industry Association.

A corner of Mengniu Ningxia factory

Achieving "green, low-carbon and sustainable development" is also one of the core goals of the factory construction. In terms of energy efficiency, Mengniu Ningxia Factory has built a smart energy system that can automatically judge the match between production and energy, optimize the efficiency of equipment according to production conditions, achieve energy conservation and emission reduction, and reduce energy consumption by 43% overall.

It is worth mentioning that the factory has passed the LEED "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" green building gold certification issued by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Tian Quan, director of Mengniu Dairy Ningxia Factory, said that in more than a year since it was put into production, the Ningxia factory has used vivid production practices to demonstrate the three major characteristics of high technology, high efficiency and high quality, which coincides with the main characteristics of "new quality productivity".

Today, Mengniu's Ningxia factory has achieved the "four effects in one" of labor efficiency, energy efficiency, product efficiency and floor space efficiency, and is opening up 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 lines, etc., to realize the value chain, growth momentum, organizational capabilities, corporate governance and business model.

All these are telling the outside world that this smarter factory is using digital means to redefine consumers' next glass of milk. It is a model for exploring new quality productivity in China's dairy industry, and it also injects new impetus into the digitalization and sustainable development of the global dairy industry.

From 1 to driving cluster development

The changes brought by Mengniu Ningxia Factory are not limited to this. Its location, Yinchuan, is known as "the paradise of dairy cows and the blessed land of dairy companies". It focuses on the reconstruction of the high-end dairy industry chain and clustered development. The industrial ecology is more perfect and has become the core area of ​​high-quality and safe dairy industry in my country. In particular, Lingwu City is planning to build a 224,000-acre modern breeding base with high standards, 63 large-scale dairy farms, 189,000 dairy cows, and a daily output of 2,782 tons of fresh milk. The main indicators of fresh milk are higher than the EU standards and significantly better than the domestic average.

At present, Lingwu City has initially formed a high-end milk industry chain from dairy cow breeding, breeding of fine varieties, forage planting, feed matching to intensive processing, product packaging, and scientific and technological research and development. A relevant person in charge of Mengniu Group said that Lingwu City plans to build a 10 billion cluster comprehensive park for the Mengniu high-end milk industry chain, bringing together industry giants such as COFCO, Yihong, Fuyang, and Yimei, and initially forming a high-end milk industry chain from dairy cow breeding, breeding of fine varieties, forage planting, feed matching to intensive processing, product packaging, and scientific and technological research and development.

In such a favorable industrial development environment, the commissioning of Mengniu Ningxia Factory not only sets a new benchmark for intelligent manufacturing in the industry, but also drives the digital upgrade of the upstream and downstream industrial chains, realizing the development of clusters from 1 to 2. It is reported that since the commissioning of Mengniu Ningxia Factory, it has brought more than 3,000 job opportunities to the upstream and downstream of the local industrial chain, formed a series of industrial clusters such as raw materials and auxiliary materials, accelerated the high-quality development of the entire dairy industry chain, promoted regional economic and social development, and helped the revitalization of the national dairy industry.

Members of the visiting group communicate with factory staff

After visiting the Mengniu Ningxia factory, the interview team members said that digitalization has injected new vitality into the development of the dairy industry. One member even said that he saw the future of dairy factories here.

Mengniu said that as the "national team" of China's dairy industry, Mengniu will continue to be "naturally strong" in the future, upholding the corporate culture that innovation is the mission of innovators and challenge is the glory of challengers, insisting on innovation and breakthroughs, daring to be the first in the world, and daring to make products that others cannot or even dare not think of. It will continue to deepen the understanding of the development of new quality productivity and the main responsibility of the enterprise, continue to promote "all-factor innovation", strengthen "all-dimensional coordination", focus on building new quality productivity, create more "Ningxia factories", and promote China's dairy industry to "high technology, high efficiency, and high quality", and continuously promote the high-quality development of China's dairy industry.

Author: Guo Panpan