China's state-owned Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group has ramped up efforts to advance reform, integrating its decades-old experience with the latest technological achievements.
Founded in 1950, the company based in the provincial capital of Shanxi in north China is the first heavy machinery manufacturing enterprise which is independently designed and built by China after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
For years, the company's heavy machines like cranes and mining equipment were manufactured in their respective workshops, featuring dispersed production practices with certain waste of raw materials.
As many employees were conservative and content with the status quo, the company's products, whose designs had remained unchanged for many years, became obsolete, reducing the old state-owned enterprise to the plight of getting abandoned by the market.
Driven by the distress, the company carried out profound reforms.
On the one hand, it has revamped manufacturing processes to increase production efficiency.
At the end of 2022, with the support of the Shanxi provincial government, the company moved into a new site. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the company raised funds and increased research and development efforts, to transform its production equipment into high-end intelligent ones.
And it no longer divides workshops by products, but by production processes. For example, the parts now produced in one of its workshops have been used in hundreds of products in five categories, including cranes and mining machinery.
On the other hand, the company puts scientific and technological innovation at the core of its reform. Its research and development investment has increased by an average of 25 percent each year. It invested a record of 1.44 billion yuan (about 198.15 million U.S. dollars) in research and development in 2023 alone.
Thanks to a slew of measures which encourage innovation, various creative products have been turned out.
A material handling robot independently developed by the company has greatly improved its intelligence level and production efficiency. This year, the robot won the second prize of the "Science and Technology Award" of the company, and its development team received a reward of 100,000 yuan.
Excavators' manufacturing process have undergone transformation too.
Parts are first sent to the welding workshop, where 19 robots can automatically weld the parts weighing from six kilograms to 13 tons. Now 85 percent of the parts are now welded by robots.
After being welded, the parts are transferred to the spraying workshop for painting.
The painted parts are then assembled by robotic arms.
Excavators weighing from 0.8 tons to 200 tons can be produced through the intelligent production line, and an excavator can be produced in eight minutes and 48 seconds at best.
The Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group, as an industry leader in both high-end equipment manufacturing and wind power equipment, is taking the lead in organizing an alliance with other companies, as part of efforts to build a complete and resilient supply chain of heavy machines.
State-owned heavy machinery maker deepens reform
