German engineering giant Siemens saw a factory, namely Siemens Electronics Works Chengdu (SEWC), run into formal operation in Chengdu, Sichuan Province on September 12.
Located in the west of the Chengdu Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone, SEWC is the most advanced electronics factory of Siemens around the globe currently. In addition, it is the first digital factory built by Siemens overseas and in it, the process from management and product design to manufacture and logistics is digitalized. Featuring digitalization, automation, green, and virtualization, it has a total building area of over 30,000 square meters. And the first industrial-use computer that designed and manufactured by it started massive production on the day, too.
Dr. Marc Wucherer, president responsible for industrial business at Siemens for the Northeast Asian region, said that it investigated more than 300 cities in the world and made a decision to settle down the factory in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan finally. The technology introduced was the most advanced one and this indicated that it was very confident of the Chinese market. It signed an investment agreement with the Chengdu Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone as early as October 2011 and it was core position of Chengdu in west China, support from local government, as well as a sharp edge the city owned in talent resource, logistics, and infrastructure that jointly caused it to make such a decision. It had a total of three R&D centers globally and they spread in Germany, the US and Chengdu, China, each. Through information technology, the China-based one was connected with both production bases in Germany and R&D centers in the US. And products of it would be used to satisfy the demand at both home and abroad.
Yield rate of the factory will reach over 99 percent and based on a digital enterprise platform solution by Siemens, the product delivery cycle will be only 50 percent of that of other China-based Siemens factories. Siemens had had a factory in the city prior to this and the annual production capacity is one million components. That is to say the factory produces one product per second on average. And in line with people in the know, there will be possibility for the newborn to overtake it in the near future.
An industry observer pointed out that settling SEWC in Chengdu would do good to both Siemens and the southwestern Chinese city. On the one hand, the factory would help Siemens seize more share in the global industrial field. And on the other hand, it would help Chengdu boost advanced manufacturing.
