On November 9, the put-into-operation activity of Vanlead Tire Hefei Plant was ceremoniously held in Gangji JAC Spare Parts Industrial Park, Changfeng County, Hefei City. Integrating advanced experience and advanced manufacturing technologies in such industries as auto and bio-pharmaceuticals, this plant will be built into an intelligent, automatic and green tire plant in the whole field, the whole process and all the directions, which establishes a new benchmarking for green intelligent manufacturing in the Chinese tire industry and becomes the “DreamWorks” subverting the traditional tire industry.
On November 9, the put-into-operation activity of Vanlead Tire Hefei Plant was ceremoniously held in Gangji JAC Spare Parts Industrial Park, Changfeng County, Hefei City. Integrating advanced experience and advanced manufacturing technologies in such industries as auto and bio-pharmaceuticals, this plant will be built into an intelligent, automatic and green tire plant in the whole field, the whole process and all the directions, which establishes a new benchmarking for green intelligent manufacturing in the Chinese tire industry and becomes the “DreamWorks” subverting the traditional tire industry.
Vanlead Hefei Plant is a tire manufacturing plant jointly invested and constructed by Vanlead Tire Co., Ltd. subordinate to Vanlead Group and Jianghuai Automobile Co., Ltd. With the total planned investment of RMB 1.988 Billion Yuan, this plant covers an area of 500 mu and was begun to construct on June 26, 2015. It will reach the production capacity of 1 million all-steel radial tires by the end of 2016 and 2 million all-steel radial tires in the middle of 2017.
Three Highlights of the Intelligent Plant
As introduced by Shi Zheng, the general manager of Hefei Vanlead Tire Co., Ltd., the advancement of plant rubber mixing, parts and forming process lies in the following: The production scheduling is done automatically by APS in the whole production process, then it is delivered to each machine through MES, and materials and process information are bound to RFID chips to realize the full-process recognition and traceability of the technologies. The advancement of the final vulcanization inspection process lies in that the tire specification and the inspection result are distinguished and made for information binding through the barcode recognition system and MES in the whole process to realize the full-process recognition and traceability of the technologies.
It was learnt by the reporter during visiting the plant that automatic collection and automatic feeding are realized during the automatic components production of Vanlead Hefei Plant by 30 “materials-grabbing robots”, which is the first time to be used in the link of semi-finished products of the tire industry. After the components are automatically winded and wrapped by the bead rings in the initiative tire bead core integrated production line, a six-axis robot grabs the components and they automatically fit with the bead filler with the production efficiency reduced from 59s in the traditional process to 23s. All the semi-finished parts required by forming are automatically transported to the feeding position by the AGV robot according to the instruction of the EMS, which realizes such functions as automatic transport of tread, automatic cutting of the belt ply and automatic seaming and pressing of the tire rough. It may only take 160s from component fitting to tire rough forming with the speed improved by 25% ~ 30% and the efficiency of per capita improved by 56.5%. After automatic weighting, automatic pasting the bar code and RFID binding, the formed tire rough is automatically transported to the stereoscopic carcass warehouse. This plant takes the lead in introducing four intelligent stereoscopic warehouses of sizing materials, wire cord fabrics, inside liners of carcass and sidewall and tire rough to the industry creatively, improves the utility rate of space by over 10 times, ensures the quality of the materials in accordance with the principle of first-in, first out of materials and prevents ex-warehouse of the unqualified products. Among the warehouses, the stereoscopic sizing materials warehouse has 2,464 storage locations, which can store 1,500 tons of sizing materials and finish six in-out stocks within one minute.
It is known that the Vanlead Hefei Intelligent Plant has three highlights: fast, good and saving.
“Fast” — The whole production time of one tire is reduced from 48h to 30h. An “air-sea-land” automatic conveying chain is used in the production process: The AGV and RGV trolly, trolly transportation by air through EMS, and speed chain and elevator connected with four intelligent stereoscopic warehouses realize automatic logistics and improve the logistics efficiency on the whole. Time is saved in every production procedure. For example, the traditional rubber drying link is replaced by broken homogenization of NR and automatic delivery system of SR, effectively reliving the ingredient instability of sizing materials caused by different batches of NR; the series-wound internal mixer is used to reduce the mixing times from 4.3 to 2.5; it is the first time to integrate and optimize 4 procedures during the production of tire bead cores into one procedure with the realization of integrated production.
“Good” — The homogeneity of product is improved greatly and the quality control system is ensured in a better way. Firstly, the quality of raw materials and components is stable. Besides paying attention to the stability of sizing materials, the most important raw materials, this plants also uses the month-based carbon black storage tank, the day-based storage tank and the introduced advanced equipment to improve the precision of each production component; the inventory in the middle link of the production is reduced effectively by four intelligent stereoscopic warehouses to ensure the quality of the parts and the semi-finished parts; in the final inspection link, this plant realizes automatic sorting, automatic inspection, automatic grading, automatic labeling and automatic separation of unqualified products without leak detection and leak judgment. There is no artificial error in the inspection result, which is accurate and reliable; the tire specification and the inspection result are distinguished and made for information binding through the barcode recognition system and MES in the whole process to realize the full-process recognition and traceability of the technologies.
“Saving” — An “intelligent, beautiful and clean” garden-like plant is built with advanced comprehensive treatment technologies and nearly a hundred of environmental protection measures in the industry. With regard to waste water treatment, it realizes zero discharging of industrial waste water. Besides, by recycling the industrial waste water, cleaning the waste water and sanitary sewage, collecting and storing rainwater, etc., such water serves as make-up water of industrial circulating water after comprehensive treatment, so tap water isn’t required for industrial consumption basically, and about 400,000 tons of water is saved every year. With regard to waste gas treatment, the ozone spraying technology is used for inorganic matters, while low-temperature catalytic combustion technology is used for organic matters, making the treatment rate of waste gas exceeding 98% and treatment rate of dust reaching 99.5%, which are higher than the industry level. With regard to energy conservation, steam generated in the production process is fully recycled after such links as pressure-differential power, vulcanization and waste-heat utilization, for example, using for refrigeration of the steam-driven lithium bromine chiller and the hot water-driven lithium bromine chiller. After refrigeration, hot water is used for comprehensive utilization in the plant by a volumetric exchanger. In addition, the first utilization of the permanent magnet synchronous motor technology on high-power equipment saves electricity by about 26 million KWH annually.
The anticipated objectives of Vanlead Hefei Plant are listed as follows: The annual output per capita is RMB 3.3258 Million Yuan, the comprehensive energy consumption is 0.26 ton of standard coal/ton of tires, the comprehensive qualified rate of the products is 99.9%, the production efficiency is improved by 15% and the workers are reduced by 62.4% compared with those of the traditional production modes.
Vigorous Cooperation between Domestic and Overseas Suppliers
At the beginning of the plant establishment, Fu Shoujie, the president of Vanlead Group, put forward some requirements for the construction team: Vanlead Hefei Plant didn’t simply copy the existing plant. We must dare to break the routine, jump out of the original rules, stand at the high end of the industry, and learn advanced ideas and technologies in the pharmaceutical and finished automobile industries to introduce the advanced intelligent, automatic and energy-saving technologies to the tire industry creatively. “Our concept has gained the support and strong cooperation from both domestic and overseas first-class equipment and software suppliers such as Rockwell, MESNAC, Tianjin Saixiang and Shenyang Blue Silver. We are not only building an intelligent plant with the internationally-advanced level, but also are engaged in an unprecedented pioneering work in the tire industry. Under the support of this innovative concept and enterprising spirit, the teams and suppliers of Vanlead are no longer Party A and Party B. All the people join hands to overcome the difficulties and develop new pioneered technologies, new equipment and new process in China and even the world, such as the full-process automatic logistics and integrated tire bead core equipment.
Shi Zheng also said, “During the design and construction of the plant, on the one hand, we learnt experience from advanced industries such as auto and bio-pharmaceuticals, for example, introducing the full-process assembly line management concept to the finished automobile manufacturing and making the time using standard of each process; we studied precision management in the manufacturing process from the pharmaceutical industry, establishing four intelligent stereoscopic warehouses. There are many familiar technologies in our production line, which are all the first time to be used in the tire industry. Furthermore, we make intelligentization and automation ‘throughout the production line’ creatively, jointly develop over 600 advanced systems and equipment with more than 50 domestic and overseas suppliers and put the intelligent manufacturing plant that traditional tire practitioners can’t think or do into reality.”
It is learnt by the reporter that the “super brain” driving the whole production line of Vanlead Hefei Plant is the MES information system jointly developed with American Rockwell Automation Company. As introduced by Roman Binant, the vice president of Rockwell in Greater China to the reporter, compared with other industries, there were both formula technologies and flow assembly. It was quite difficult to make the whole process intelligent. It was not a simple software purchase to cooperate with Vanlead, but established a partnership for joint development. The intelligentization of Hefei Plant was a process continuously broken, overturned and innovated. A lot of links were the first time to attempt without fixed modes for reference. Fortunately, Vanlead moved steadily together with us. We jointly overcame many difficulties in the industry and finally made a success.
Yuan Zhongxue, the president of MESNAC Co., Ltd., said that the successful operation of Vanlead Hefei Plant made MESNAC, the chief planner and the implementation party, become the first supplier providing integrated solutions for intelligent tire manufacturing in the world. Since MESNAC put forward the idea of “smart factory” for the first time in 2014, MESNAC has integrated the global research, develop and design resources and established the frame model of the smart plant, forming the full-process design scheme for intelligent production of tires. Though such schemes have been implemented in different links of many projects, Vanlead is the first to realize intelligentization in the whole process. During the implementation process of the project, Vanlead delegated the management responsibilities to a lower level and realized the management mode that the chief supplier cooperated with the single product supplier and single system supplier, which greatly reduced the management cost, improved the management efficiency, and made the whole production line throughout in less than one year. In his opinion, in this time, Vanlead Hefei Plant has realized two breakthroughs: The first one is logistics breakthrough that the daily transportation of hundred tons of raw materials is totally automatic; the second one is the product quality is improved by intelligent manufacturing to a great extent.
Guan Bingzheng, the vice president of MESNAC, introduced to the reporter that MESNAC provided a full set of automatic logistics solutions for Vanlead Hefei Plant. Through the intelligent scheduling system and automatic logistics equipment, the all-around automatic process of the tire production technologies is realized. In more than half a year, MESNAC provided and implemented more than 10 sets of products and systems, including the automatic logistics system for rubber smashing in the banburying workshop, automatic storage system of rubber sheets, automatic transfer system of rubber sheets, automatic supply and delivery system of rubber sheets, automatic supply system of rubber sheets in semi-finished products workshop, warehousing system in stereoscopic semi-finished warehouse, EMS automatic handling system of semi-finished products, AGV automatic handling system of semi-finished products, automatic logistics system of tire rough, stereoscopic warehousing system of tire rough, online detection logistics system of finished tires and automatic sorting system of finished tires.
According to the measurement and calculation of MESNAC Research Institute, through the implementation of the whole automatic logistics system, the colloidal homogenization treatment and the unmanned weighing and dosing in the raw materials workshop of Vanlead Hefei Plant can reduce the error rate caused by manually feeding raw materials to zero; unmanned operation can be totally realized during the transportation and circulation of rubber sheets in the banburying workshop; only the space utilization ratio of the stereoscopic warehouse of rubber sheets can be improved by over 10 times with unmanned production and feeding of small materials realizable; three technological links of carcass, sidewall and inside liner in the steel wire calendaring workshop can save 11 transmission workers and 12 motor tractors, greatly saving labor and material costs; in the forming workshop, 122 people can be reduced; in the vulcanization, inspection and finished-tire links, labor can be saved by 80%, and the delivery accuracy can reach 100%; the whole process can basically realize real-time data acquisition, process precision control, data visualization and other management.
As introduced by Jiang Jianping, the president of China Chemical Guilin Engineering Co., Ltd., the engineering design provider of this plant, the core design concept of this plant is “intelligent process”. According to the requirements of the users, the automation and intelligentization are throughout the whole process of this plant.
Zhang Jianhao, the president of Tianjin Saixiang Group, told the reporter that the company provided 20 sets of upgraded intelligent and automatic new oncethrough three-drum forming machines for Vanlead Hefei Plant, which is mainly featured by high efficiency and labor saving. According to the instruction of the EMS, all the semi-finished parts required for forming are automatically delivered to the feeding stations by AGV, realizing such functions as automatic transportation of tread, automatic cutting of belt ply and automatic seaming and compaction of carcass. Guangzhou Jingyuan Company merged into Saixiang in 2014 provided 35 sets of automatic mobile robots AGV carrier vehicles in the first stage, realizing the integration of the semi-finished parts and MES, unmanned operation and other functions.
Besides, there are new three-dimensional truss tire conveyor firstly developed by Shenyang Blue Silver Group, waste water and flue gas environmental protection treatment system researched and developed by New Universal, etc. “Such cases are too numerous. Some suppliers get patent and experience from the project of Vanlead Hefei Plant with more new orders. Vanlead Hefei Plant established an innovative platform, and national equipment enterprises have started innovation on this platform.” Fu Shoujie said.
Besides, by model innovation, Vanlead Hefei Plant also joins hands with Guangzhou Yuexiu Leasing Company in cooperatively purchasing domestic equipment to reduce the input in fixed assets and realize “going forward with one's burdens discarded”. This light asset model reduces the total investment in this plant to RMB 1.428 Billion Yuan, greatly decreasing the asset-liability ratio and being a pioneer in the operational financial leasing field of the tire industry. The establishment of the whole Vanlead Hefei Plant realizes the annual production value of over RMB 3 Million Yuan per capita, which is 3 times of the average level of the tire industry approximately with a construction period of only 16 months, subverting the traditional concept that the intelligent plant is “burning money”.
