Intelligent baking sealed cabin, giant robotic arm, automatic counting machine, "spider hand" automatic packaging machine...... Walking into the Qiaqia Food Transparent Factory, you will see a giant intelligent machinery and equipment running at high speed. In the transparent factory live broadcast held every year, Qiaqia invites every netizen in front of the screen to become an online quality inspector to witness the escort of modern technology for nut quality manufacturing.
Recently, "new quality productivity" has become a hot word, and the 2024 government work report proposes to vigorously promote the construction of a modern industrial system and accelerate the development of new quality productivity. Nuts as a necessary food for the leisure and reunion of the Chinese people, now upgraded to more and more people's scientific diet, balanced nutrition of daily nutritional necessities, experienced from the past workshop production, street peddling, to today's industrialization, standardized processing changes, including Qiaqia food as the representative of both the physical industry base and digital technology capabilities of the head enterprises, accelerate the layout of the implementation of digital and intelligent transformation, with scientific and technological innovation to drive the industrial chain restructuring and industrial transformation and upgrading, competing for "nut industry new quality productivity".
Qiaqia Food Hefei Factory Palletizing Arm Work. Photo courtesy of Liu Meng
Adhere to the drive of scientific and technological innovation, and accelerate the development of new quality productivity
Scientific and technological innovation is the core element in the development of new quality productive forces. "Innovation is allowed to fail, and innovation is not allowed. On the wall of the exhibition hall of the Hefei headquarters of Qiaqia Food, this slogan is particularly eye-catching.
At the beginning of its business, Qiaqia Food planted the seeds of innovation. In 1999, "Qiaqia Melon Seeds" achieved two major innovations - the process was changed from frying to boiling, which was more flavorful and not dirty, and the packaging was changed to kraft paper, which was more environmentally friendly.
In 2001, after the establishment of Qiaqia Food Co., Ltd., it has been firmly on the road of innovation, deeply engaged in independent research and development, from raw materials to transportation, storage, processing, packaging and other aspects of comprehensive research and innovation.
Initially, the melon seeds were boiled by the workers one pot at a time, and then entered the kang room to manually turn the kang many times to dry and cool, and finally packaged. In 2007, Qiaqia introduced kang drying line equipment, using semi-automatic packaging, and the packaging efficiency was increased by 150% compared with manual work. After that, Qiaqia independently developed the world's first automatic assembly line for melon seeds, which is fully packaged, connected and conveyed, and automatically packed in one step, so as to improve quality and efficiency through technological innovation.
Small yellow bags of daily nuts on the production line. Photo courtesy of Liu Meng
With the changes of the times, Qiaqia Food, which started from melon seeds, has begun to lay out the field of nuts in recent years. This is not only changing the product matrix, but more importantly, technological innovation. Taking advantage of the trend, Qiaqia has completed the industrial upgrading from "manufacturing" to "quality manufacturing + intelligent manufacturing", and has made new breakthroughs in technology and production.
In order to make product production more standardized, Qiaqia has also carried out intelligent transformation covering the whole industry chain, especially the construction of production lines for automation and digital factory applications, and on the basis of optimization and analysis of the technological process, through collaborative research and development with production equipment manufacturers, the whole production process from winnowing, cooking, drying, to baking, selection, packaging and other production processes has been intelligentized. According to Wang Zihan, director of Qiaqia Food Hefei Factory, this is one of the most automated production lines in China, integrating a number of pioneering technologies and breakthroughs.
From "sweat flowing" to "intelligent flow", the development of intelligent systems and intelligent equipment has given the nut industry more and more "sense of science and technology".
The "intelligent counting particles" system introduced by Qiaqia. Photo courtesy of Liu Meng
Develop new quality productivity and accelerate digital and intelligent transformation and transformation
The starting point of new quality productivity is "new", the key is "quality", and the foothold is "productivity". Obviously, the improvement that digital intelligence can bring to the food industry is not only in the production process, but also relies on the construction of the whole industry chain, from production to sales, from the front desk to the back office, so as to control product quality at all levels.
Freshness is the lifeline of nuts, as a local enterprise bred and grown in Anhui, Qiaqia also adheres to the spirit of innovation in the same vein as the city, from raw materials to transportation, storage, processing, packaging and other links to carry out comprehensive research and innovation, the whole industry chain implements the "fresh strategy", and Qiaqia takes "quality" as the core to create "technology, fresh enough" safe food.
From melon seeds to nuts, Qiaqia's popular single product Qiaqia Small Yellow Bag Daily Nuts uses unique key preservation technologies: eight-stage temperature control, low-temperature light baking, to stimulate the crispy taste of nuts, and at the same time, the eight-fold fresh-keeping process and milk-powder-grade fresh-keeping packaging are used to make the product oxygen content less than 1%, reaching the "milk powder-grade" preservation, which fully guarantees the freshness, nutrition and deliciousness of Qiaqia nuts.
With the application of advanced equipment and intelligent systems, the "transparent factory" has also come into being. According to reports, the "transparent factory" is a global cloud live broadcast carried out with the blueprint of "Internet + factory", which displays the workshop environment and production process in an all-round way and without dead ends, "'transparent factory' is the product of industrial upgrading," so that consumers not only become users of products, but also become supervisors of product quality control. The relevant person in charge of Qiaqia Food said.
Qiaqia Food Hefei Factory, the packaged products will be shipped to all parts of the country. Photo courtesy of Liu Meng
It is worth mentioning that Qiaqia has also established an e-commerce intelligent three-dimensional warehouse. Different from traditional underground warehouses, this three-dimensional warehouse is about 24 meters high and has a six-story building height, and its storage capacity is 8 times that of an ordinary warehouse. This is the first automated warehousing system in China that integrates B2B and B2C, which is not only linked with online consumer orders, but also unpacked, conveyed, sealed, posted express orders, sorting and other operations are all completed under the control of the intelligent system, and the goods can be successfully shipped out of the warehouse after 15 minutes of online ordering.
Quality and safety are the lifeblood of products. For example, Zuo Conglin, head of the Qiaqia Food Information Center, said that in terms of safety, Qiaqia uses the one-item-one-code traceability system to enable producers, suppliers, processors, distributors, retailers, regulators and consumers in the food supply chain to obtain food source and status information at any time to ensure food quality and safety.
Founded in 2001, Qiaqia has accompanied the Chinese people for more than 20 years, and has the courage to try new things and constantly break through themselves since its inception. Over the past 20 years, we have continuously strengthened basic scientific research on nuts. Qiaqia Food's "Key Technology for Storage, Processing and Quality Assurance of Dried Nuts" won the "National Science and Technology Progress Award" issued by the State Council, and was certified as the "National Nut Processing Technology R&D Professional Center" by the Ministry of Agriculture of China, and was awarded the "Pilot Demonstration Unit of Nut Intelligent Manufacturing, Pilot Demonstration Unit of Integrated Development of Manufacturing and Internet, and National Green Supply Chain Management Enterprise" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China.
"In the future, Qiaqia will continue to improve technological innovation, accelerate digital and intelligent transformation, promote the development of new quality productivity, shape new momentum and new advantages for enterprise development, and continue to move towards high-quality development. The relevant person in charge of Qiaqia Food said.