Yunnan Tobacco and Smart Manufacturing

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The tobacco industry of southwest China’s Yunnan Province – the largest tobacco-growing region in China and known as the Kingdom of Tobacco – is in a process of technological transformation intended to implement new best practices of smart manufacturing within the context of in-depth integration of IT technologies and industrial productivity.

By Tobacco China Online

Integration of IT and Industrial Productivity

In 2015, with China’s economy slowing down somewhat, a broad and comprehensive drive of technological transformation and upgrade of the country’s manufacturing industry came to the forefront of public agenda. As part of the new round of the scientific, technological, and industrial revolution, many nations are studying how to grab a commanding lead in development.

It became quickly apparent that one of the areas with the most potential is integration of information and communication technologies with various industries, which would provide a driving force for the implementation of smart manufacturing practices – a fundamental and inevitable approach to give another jump-start to the manufacturing industry in China with an emphasis on strengthening the manufacturing capacities rather than growing in size.

The integration of IT and industrial production means a deep amalgamation of the latest available technologies with existing manufacturing capacities, which will set information technology as the driving agent of a new wave of industrialization needed by the Chinese economy. The core of such integration will be the support offered to IT deployment in pursuit of sustainable development.

Such integration, therefore, is not merely an obscure policy measure open for debate, but at this point, a necessary step required by the realities of the Chinese economy.

If one compares hardware and manufacturing technologies, the majority of Chinese enterprises still lag – sometimes, by decades – behind their counterparts in developed countries. However, when it comes to the internet and communications technology, the situation is drastically different. A comprehensive look will quickly reveal that IT is arguably the only battleground where China is most certainly on equal footing with the western world. In fact, in some European countries, the internet ecosystem even lags far behind the dynamic one that already exists in China – the local manufacturing industry’s greatest asset it should be able to leverage when trying to overtake the competition.

The integration between IT and China’s manufacturing capacity is intended to assist the People’s Republic in breaking away its manufacturing industry from many of the primitive processes currently employed in production and manufacturing of various goods, giving a further boost to research and development on the one hand, and the process of sales and aftersales service on the other hand, while morphing production-based manufacturing into more service-based manufacturing. Such a change would signal a new spurt of growth in the manufacturing industry, which is also a key point of industrial integration.

Yuxi Cigarette Factory – the Integration Front Runner

The Yuxi Cigarette Factory, affiliated with Hongta Group in Yunnan, has a well-deserved reputation as a leader in integrating information technology and manufacturing capacities.

Walking across the floors of the leaf tobacco cutting workshop at the Yuxi Cigarette Factory, one can’t help buy be struck by the sight of huge orange-colored robotic arms unpacking leaf tobacco bundles at the arrival site. In the cigarette rolling and packing workshop, the few equipment operators present simply click the material feeding button on the manufacturing execution system (MES) terminal at the machine stand, and the automatic guided vehicle (AGV) module in the logistics system of the elevated depot automatically sends the material needed for production to the machine stand from the elevated depot quickly and efficiently. Such effective and orderly work processes simply can’t be deployed without powerful computer terminals running the processes of the so-called “One Web for All” system, a brilliant example of how deployment of IT can elevate the manufacturing process to spectacular heights.

As a core production factory of Hongta Group, the Yuxi Cigarette Factory has turned itself into a first-rate, second-to-none cigarette manufacturing facility. To oversee the proper integration of new technologies into the manufacturing process, the Yuxi Cigarette Factory has established a management board specifically in charge of this development under the direct leadership of the cigarette factory director who personally made sure that the deployment was given absolute priority.

Strategically, the Yuxi Cigarette Factory intends to become an advanced cigarette making model factory unique anywhere in the world. To achieve this, it needs to persistently maintain its status as a manufacturing enterprise of high-quality products. To ensure fulfillment of its strategic targets, the factory has formulated a three-stage plan for development from a “digital cigarette factory” to a “smart cigarette factory” and then to a “lean smart cigarette factory”. By doing so, the goal is to achieve breakthroughs at key points at every stage, in steps and at different levels, by gradually implementing IT deployment across the business, integrating information systems and automated production schedules, facilitating business processes, improve decision making by the management, and streamlining of production and operation.

Integration is the Future

In 2009, Hongta Group, vying to be Yunnan Province’s most forward-looking tobacco product manufactuer at the time, established an information management section to gradually bring the separately operated networks and information systems scattered in the different workshops and departments under the control of a single information management system, ensuring that management, planning, designing, development, operations, and maintenance are unified under the same umbrella. At the same time, Hongta Group has defined the relevant business processes in accordance with newly issued standard operating procedures for its production factories.

The application of information technology will inevitably bring about great changes in the way people communicate and cooperate. Following the example of Yuxi Cigarette Factory, many companies in Yunnan province have tried to apply similar working mechanisms for innovation including the idea of forming more “cross-functional” teams to remove departmental barriers, strengthen effective operations, modernize working processes, keep promoting the precision and efficiency of business processes, streamline coordination of business within their enterprises, and make the leading lines smoother and more effective. Since the degree of market dynamics has kept strengthening, that geographical advantages and industrial boundaries have been minimized. Local tobacco manufacturers have tired hard to strengthened cooperation within the entire business chain with suppliers, interested parties, and their customers, developing an atmosphere of openness, togetherness, mutual benefit and achieve win-win results.

Lower consumption of energy and higher efficiency are also two of the benefits brought about by IT integration into the production stream. The use of a new generation of information technologies embodied by the internet, the internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing is bringing about great opportunities for the tobacco industry to revitalize their own production facilities, but of no less importance, the entire manufacturing sector in the province.

Today, both information technology and the manufacturing industry are undergoing this process. In-depth integration between IT and manufacturing capacities will not only lead to changes in the management and operation of enterprises, but will also, more significantly, change their way of thinking, as well as the general behavior of people. Smart manufacturing will result in fundamental changes in the industry. Oriented toward the future, the tobacco industry has always managed to adapt itself to the trends of development and benefit from favorable opportunities to realize greater business success thanks to constant innovation and development that never stops.