The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five ministries announced China's first batch of pioneering smart factories at the 2025 World Intelligent Manufacturing Conference held on November 27. A total of 15 enterprises were shortlisted. Zoomlion successfully earned a spot with its Zoomlion Excavator Shared Manufacturing Smart Factory Project, becoming the only enterprise from Hunan Province to be included.

Pioneering smart factories represent the highest level in China's gradient cultivation system for smart factories, embodying the nation's most advanced achievements and future direction in intelligent manufacturing. The first batch of factories cover key sectors such as equipment manufacturing, raw materials, electronics, and consumer goods.

The Zoomlion Excavator Shared Manufacturing Smart Factory is located in the Earthmoving Machinery Park of Zoomlion Intelligent Industrial Town, Xiangjiang New Area, Changsha.
According to Zeng Guang, general manager of the Zvalley Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Zoomlion, the factory has created three "firsts" in the world: it is the first to implement full-process intelligent manufacturing across six core production stages of excavators; the first to achieve efficient, shared, and mixed production for over 100 types of excavators; and the first to enable cross-category collaborative sharing among excavators, cranes, concrete pumps, and aerial work platforms, establishing a new shared manufacturing paradigm in the construction machinery industry.

In this smart factory, industrial robots are the primary workforce, busily performing tasks ranging from screw installation to flipping chassis. "AI technologies are applied in over 80% of production scenarios. On average, one excavator rolls off the assembly line every six minutes, marking the fastest production speed, the shortest changeover time, and the shortest manufacturing cycle in the global construction machinery sector," said Zeng Guang. In practice, the entire process from steel plate cutting to final assembly takes just 6.5 days, enabling customized products to be delivered to domestic customers in just two weeks.

This article is from the Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Kuang Zhenzhen

Chinese source: Voice of Hunan