The battery industry has developed by leaps and bounds in the past two years, and its production capacity has expanded rapidly. How can manufacturing companies forge extreme manufacturing capabilities to match the quality and efficiency demands of the TWh era? Ningde era lit two lighthouse factories to provide direction for the industrial chain leading ability.

Launched by the World Economic Forum, the Global Lighthouse Network aims to identify world leaders who are good at adopting and integrating the advanced technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to build a community platform for learning and sharing. At present, the number of lighthouse factories in the world has reached 132, and China is the country with the most lighthouse factories, reaching 50.

The Lighthouse factory can use artificial intelligence, big data, 3D printing and other technologies on a large scale to improve efficiency and competitiveness, transform business models and promote economic growth, while strengthening labor capacity and protecting the environment, and promote manufacturers in all regions and industries to participate in learning.

In the global lithium industry, there are only two lighthouse factories selected, both from the Ningde era. In the lighthouse factories of the Ningde era, the application of digital technology has brought significant cost reductions, enhanced delivery capabilities, and reshaped the relationship between labor and production. Ningde era not only crossed the “pilot trap”, let the technical experience of the lighthouse factory in the internal replication and flow, but also with the lighthouse network to absorb more nutrients, and actively promote the digital transformation of the upstream and downstream industry chain.

What built the lighthouse factory, and what direction did the lighthouse factory illuminate? Securities Times reporters recently entered the Ningde era to take you to understand how a battery was born and how a lighthouse was lit.

Towards TWh

Turn to advanced technology for answers

What is the length of a second? It is basically equivalent to the time that the heart beats once, and it is also the time that a production line in Ningde era makes a battery cell. Under such a production rhythm, the core defect rate pursued by Ningde era is one in one billion.

Such extreme manufacturing capacity was born in the two lighthouse factories of Ningde era, and gradually promoted to more production bases around the world.

Ningde Times Headquarters Base and Sichuan Times Yibin Factory were awarded the title of “Lighthouse Factory” in 2021 and 2022 respectively. According to the World Economic Forum, the company has achieved a defect rate of only one part per billion in the production time of 1.7 seconds per battery group, while increasing labor productivity by 75% and reducing annual energy consumption by 10%. On this basis, the Yibin factory achieved a 17% increase in production line speed and a 17% reduction in optimal rate loss.

This string of numbers is a response to the challenges facing the industry in the Ningde era. The battery industry is moving towards the era of TWh in a large-scale expansion, requiring manufacturing capacity to go to the limit, whether it is a power battery or an energy storage battery, it needs to be safer, more efficient and more stable. The manufacturing industry usually uses PPM(parts per million) to represent one to two defective products per million products, which is already a world-class manufacturing level in automotive, electronics and other fields, and power batteries need to further reduce it to PPB(parts per billion) level.

The current battery field has become increasingly competitive. The industry expects that according to the current expansion rate of the various plans, the battery industry or will eventually move toward overcapacity, but this excess will be reflected in structural overcapacity, and high-quality battery products will still be in short supply. Therefore, improving product quality has become an indispensable tool for battery manufacturers to cope with competition.

“Expanding a production line with 2GWh capacity to 10GWh, or even higher, is not an upgrade if it only relies on equipment.” At the same time, digital technology needs to be practical, effective and reliable, not just a concept.” Dr. Malin of the Intelligent Manufacturing Department of Ningde Era told the Securities Times interviewer that in the lighthouse factory, the integration between different processes is higher, the standardization of the wire is stronger, the production beat is faster, and the unmanned is done more thoroughly, and behind this is the invisible data model, system algorithm, edge computing and other capabilities in support.

Take, for example, the coating process, a delicate process in the manufacture of battery electrode sheets, which requires that the stirred stock is evenly applied to the thickness of only a few microns. The traditional coating process is very dependent on manual experience, and the debugging accuracy can only rely on the manual operation of the “coating master” to cope with the instability of the coating process.

In this regard, Sichuan Times Yibin Factory developed a closed-loop control algorithm for lithium electric machining process, modeling and deep learning of various combined parameters of more than 1000 kinds of powders and fluids. Realize the foil coating micron grade  believers epiphyseal haunters  China  instantaneous  return capsule restore the luanhe river bath 1 hot relieve  curl    harmonic squid to have finish Jin  does not command where yu delta hsu tu yao has the  m:  lutetium  vigilant さ Pian huang ran Zhuo ⑾ hong shi Suan �

“We found through calculation that the lighthouse factory has brought considerable cost reduction effect through technology application, but also to ensure the delivery capacity, delivery speed and quality have been recognized by many major international customers, which is also a potential benefit.” “Marin said.

It is worth mentioning that the lighthouse factory is also changing the relationship between labor and production. Securities Times reporters saw in the headquarters base of Ningde Times that the number of employees needed for the lighthouse factory production line is very small, and only a few links such as manual sampling and equipment operation and maintenance still need employees to participate.

“It’s not that we don’t need people. People are still an important factor of production.” Marlin said that the automation of equipment is to empower people, liberate unnecessary repetitive labor, and produce more demand for interdisciplinary talents, “Originally our IT colleagues lack of understanding of manufacturing, and manufacturing colleagues do not understand software algorithms, so we set up a special intelligent manufacturing department as early as 2020, Improve the professionalism and complexity of the team in terms of big data, artificial intelligence, equipment control, etc.”