To further strengthen our advantages of technological innovation and intelligent manufacturing and to raise production and competitiveness of our self-service equipment to meet increasing market demand, SNBC initiated investment and construction of the smart terminal industrial park in 2019.

SNBC smart terminal industrial park covers an area of 1.47 million square feet with a total investment of $221.57 million US dollars. It is intended to be the largest intelligent equipment production base in China once completed. Industrial park Phase I, with the coverage area of 789,353 square feet, the construction area of 936,460 square feet and the total investment of $127 million US dollars, will be focused on the production of smart retail terminal products including smart micro-supermarket and vending machine. By the end of 2021, the full capacity of industrial park Phase I is expected to reach 100 thousand units/year and SNBC’s total capacity of smart terminal equipment will reach 350 thousand units/year.  

Now Phase I has entered the stage of equipment installation and commissioning (trial production). The intelligent manufacturing system marked by interconnectivity of workers, machines, products and factory, formed a competitive manufacturing chain of smart terminal equipment.

Among the Phase I, the manufacturing shop which is equipped with international advanced intelligent production equipment with the highest level of automation, the intelligent warehouse management system and the integrated information management platform attracts the most attention. Through connectivity of nine information systems such as ERP/MES, the manufacturing shop develops an automated, intelligent and digital production system. Thus an integrated intelligent production base engaged in sheet metal processing, painting and equipment assembling is established.

 Machine replaced manpower—the automation rate over 90%

Without noises of roaring machine nor busy workers, what you can see in the clean and bright workshop are the smart material storage system feeding and discharging materials automatically, various precision components getting cut and bent automatically on machine tools, robotic arms welding and polishing flexibly and different workpieces loading and unloading by robots and then delivered flexibly to different spraying processes for production. There are only several workers monitoring machines which complete the whole process of sheet metal, welding and painting on the production line.      

Sheet-metal workshop     

Stepping into the sheet-metal workshop, the smart material storage system with a length of 130 meters and a height of 10 meters at the first sight. Four stackers move up and down and accurately transport materials to machine equipment on both sides of the material storage system for production according to the system setting. There are 1849 storage locations which can pile up to 30 layers in the smart warehouse, improving the space utilization rate by 1500%. By coordinating with FAB production management system and offline editing software of each machine tool, the smart material storage system can realize smart management and turnover of materials. It is now the most advanced and the longest material storage system with the highest level of automation in the world.

Automatic material storage system

High speed punch press equipment

Plate bending center

Welding workshop

In a transparent shield, several automatic welding robots are brandishing their flexible robotic arm to automatically complete the welding work. The welding robot can finish welding of one unit in 15minutes with only one worker feeding material, which saves 50% manpower and improves productivity by 75% than before.

In order to protect environment and employee’ health to the greatest extent, SNBC introduced Donaldson dust removal and filtration system into the welding workshop, which can effectively filter out more than 98% of the particulate matter to achieve harmless emissions.

automatic welding robots working

Painting workshop

By application of equipment such as LiftMaster Store, the painting workshop can realize real-time automatic monitoring of various parameters of the whole process, automatic addition of pretreatment agent through the control system, automatic liquid level control, electrophoretic automatic spraying, immersion treatment, fully automatic spray coating by powder spraying robots and so on. Thus, it can truly realize automation and unmanned operation as well as real-time switch of electrophoretic mode, non-electrophoretic mode and mixed-line production mode, achieving the annual production capacity of 600,000 loads.

As for the wastewater treatment, the painting workshop is equipped with the most advanced production equipment from German KMU to meet EU standards and realize zero emission.

Painting area

Comprehensive interconnection creating a practical example of industrial Internet

Through data interconnection, Phase I of SNBC smart terminal industrial park truly achieves intelligent control. The whole production workshop realizes interconnection and interworking of nine information systems including ERP, PLM, FAB, MES, SCADA, APS and SRM. Once customer place an order, various customized demands will be implemented through intelligent production scheduling system APS, sheet metal automatic production management system FAB, workshop manufacturing execution system MES, equipment management system SCADA, etc. and production status of the order can be monitored in real time.

Data board

Intelligent logistics：AGV+ power and free conveyor

In the west side of the production workshop, there are dozens of cabinets which have just completed from the foam filling operation placed in order in the designated yellow area and a laser AGV shuttling back and forth to transport heavy cabinets to final assembly line for further processing. The whole process requires no manual assistance. The transporting route of the AGV can be automatically and timely adjusted according to changes in the production process, making the manufacturing on the production line more convenient and fast.

AGV conveying mahines automatically

Besides, there are two power&free conveyors with a total length of nearly 1000 meters covering the production workshop, realizing fully automatic conveying from the sheet metal area to the painting area, sorting center to final assembly area, which successfully solves the rigid requirements on the flexibility of the production line due to the diversification and heavy loading of the workpieces in the workshop, which facilitates the fast and efficient docking between different processes and fully ensures the connection of different process routes.

Power and free system

In the three-dimensional warehouse sorting center responsible for the sorting and distribution of raw materials in different production areas, according to the sorting tasks assigned by the manufacturing Operation Management (MOM) system, the laser AGV coordinates with the power&free system to sort raw materials by region, realizing the functions of automatic sorting and automatic conveying to the station and so on.

Intelligent manufacturing is an important direction of global manufacturing revolution. In the future, SNBC will take the smart terminal industrial park as the carrier, keep up with the market demand of smart terminal and continue to improve the core competitiveness of products.

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