Tobacco Asia

50 tobaccoasia Issue 1, 2025 January / February Wuhan Cigarette Factory's digital center takes the facto- ry-level MES system as its core, with systems such as tobacco silk centralized control and logistics WMS as the foundation. It gradually expands to systems such as smart campuses, compre- hensive management, and auxiliary decision-making, forming five application cluster systems: factory smart perception execu- tion applications, smart production applications, smart man- agement applications, smart campus applications, and smart decision-making applications. Through digital operation and management control of the entire factory's production opera- tions and the entire campus, it has initially achieved digitaliza- tion of factory production, management, and operations. In terms of production and quality management, Wuhan Cigarette Factory actively explores innovative technologies such as smart scheduling and material flow identification, enabling full-element and full-process forward control and reverse trace- ability, improving online automatic detection and smart qual- ity control capabilities. In terms of equipment management, it promotes the construction of smart standalone machines and smart production lines, utilizing digital equipment operation and maintenance and equipment status monitoring and analysis. In terms of energy management, it refines the grid management of energy supply and demand ends, breaks down energy con- sumption indicators, predicts demand, and reduces the factory's comprehensive energy consumption. By driving manufacturing flexibility and accuracy with smart equipment and enhancing production capacity and efficiency with automated processes, Wuhan Cigarette Factory has achieved ef- ficient production lines through digital transformation and smart factory construction, building a stronger manufacturing founda- tion for the high-quality development of its brands. Developing a "5G+" digital management system Shifang Cigarette Factory, located in Shifang, Sichuan prov- ince, is the first cigarette factory in China's tobacco industry to achieve the "Level 4 Maturity of Intelligent Manufacturing Ca- pability" and currently the only one. The factory is a brand-new one built after relocation and technological transformation, with its intelligent development concept deeply embedded since the inception of the project. Starting from the goal of building a first-class digital smart factory, Shifang Cigarette Factory innovates "5G+" smart appli- cations in the fields of quality, equipment, collaboration, man- agement, and experience, driving and optimizing decisions with data, and exploring the construction of a digital production and operation management control model. So, how does data drive decision-making? Shifang Ciga- rette Factory collects real-time data from over 70,000 points in the cigarette packing workshop, as well as from various process- es and links in warehousing and logistics, which continuously converges to the production command center. The intelligent production scheduling system intelligently schedules produc- tion with one click based on the production plan issued by the company's headquarters, combined with the factory's recent situation in tobacco materials, equipment and facility operation, etc. Personnel at the factory's production command center ex- plained that in the past, the handling of production situations mainly relied on manual communication, with delays and lags. Now, the command screen provides real-time feedback on pro- duction process status data, enabling instant command and dis- patch throughout the entire process. For the primary processing workshop, the first important task is to detect whether there is mold or foreign matter inside the cigarette packs. In the past, manual sampling for inspection was limited in number, but now, with the support of advanced technologies such as machine vision, near-infrared spectrosco- py, and intelligent mold analysis models, the primary processing workshop of Shifang Cigarette Factory has increased the cover- age of tobacco inspection to 100%, with significantly improved inspection quality. The loosening and reconditioning of tobacco is also intelligently controlled by the system, which judges and predicts the outlet moisture content, and adjusts water flow, re- turn air temperature, and exhaust opening without manual in- tervention or parameter setting. At the same time, the control of tobacco stem drying equipment provides machine learning and intelligent decision-making effectively improving the stem processing capability. It is not just the equipment that has become smart, but also the people. Workers in the primary processing workshop of Shifang Cigarette Factory wear glasses with MR (mixed reality) technology. When they reach each inspection point, various in- formation parameters of the relevant equipment appear in their field of view. When encountering difficulties, workers can acti- vate the remote assistance mode to invite maintenance experts for guidance, greatly improving efficiency and saving costs. At Shifang Cigarette Factory, there are many intelligent applications. Robots calculate routes to implement the optimal solution for palletizing, and AGV forklifts automatically load, unload, and transfer goods. Video surveillance, inspection ro- bots, drones, etc. form a dynamic inspection "air-ground team" in the park, providing early warnings for violations. The person in charge of the factory said that by exploring intelligent applications such as 5G+ data collection, 5G+ intel- ligent material preparation, 5G+ digital twin, 5G+ process qual- ity inspection, and 5G+ assisted maintenance in the fields of production, logistics, and the park, the factory has achieved pre- cise and reasonable production organization and arrangement, significantly improved quality and efficiency, effectively reduced waste of resources, ensured continuous and efficient equipment operation, increased lean enterprise management, and provided better environment for employee growth. Currently, the fac- tory's overall production efficiency has increased by over 10%, and the rate of high-quality products has reached 100%. Conclusion From the explorations of three cigarette factories in China's tobacco industry, it can be seen that intelligent manufacturing provides a solid material and technological foundation for the transformation and upgrading of cigarette manufacturing and the modernization of the tobacco industry, becoming an impor- tant lead for the continuous innovation and development of the tobacco industry in the future.

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