From May 29th to May 30th, Wu Xiaobo and Qin Shuo jointly led a team to check in Digital Intelligence Yili to decode the new quality productivity of the dairy industry. Walk into Yili's Modern Smart Health Valley, visit Yili's global intelligent manufacturing benchmark base for liquid milk and milk powder, and feel the digital intelligence charm of Yili, the largest dairy company in Asia and the largest dairy company in China.
Text / Ba Jiuling
In a huge valley with an area of 120 square kilometers, a large building complex with an area of 38 square kilometers stands in the plain area of the mountain, which looks as high as the mountain from a distance, making people feel like a space station on an exotic planet.
Standing on the glass covered bridge and watching the video, the body seems to be flying on the prairie; The curved, corrugated architectural space is inlaid with various high-definition screens;
Along the road, there are various unique game spaces that simulate the milk production process, each of which is full of ingenuity;
From the world's leading various automation equipment and production lines - homogenizer, ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilizer, E3 ultra-high-speed filling machine production line, AGV unmanned transport vehicle, KUKA manipulator, canning production line, to the digital supply chain operation platform, intelligent control center, fully open, unobstructed, even the toilet is intelligent, the door displays various usage and hygiene data.
This is the world's leading digital and intelligent dairy intelligent manufacturing benchmark - Yili Modern Smart Health Valley.
Aerial view of Yili's modern wisdom and health valley
Let's go! See the "new business card" of China's dairy industry
In Hohhot, Yili Modern Smart Health Valley is a well-known "science fiction space", also known as the "new business card" of China's dairy industry, and people generally evaluate it like this: "All are intelligent equipment with very advanced technology!" ”
For example, with a daily processing capacity of 7,000 tons of fresh milk, it can meet the daily milk needs of cities with a population of 10 million.
In addition, it has the industry's first end-to-end full-business chain product traceability system, with an annual output of 60,000 tons, which can ensure the annual ration supply of 1.28 million babies.
In late April, when the minibus was researching Yili's Modern Smart Health Valley in advance for the "Benchmark Factory" activity, it came across a visiting group, and two local visitors said that they came to visit because of "intelligence" and other characteristic highlights.
There are also foreign visitors who made a special trip from Beijing and Tianjin to Hohhot to visit, which accounted for the majority of the visiting group.
They came from a dairy equipment company with factories in Tianjin and offices in Beijing, and they came for the first time. The trip also included their client, the head of a business with 600 cows.
"People don't know how milk is packaged and how to make it. (Yili Modern Wisdom Health Valley) has a popularization role. And everyone will know that our milk (intelligent) is actually very good, no worse than foreign ones. The person in charge of the dairy equipment said to the minibus.
For example, the shelf life of milk for up to 6-8 months comes from a six-layer composite film, which most consumers are not aware of.
The person in charge of the dairy company paid special attention to Yili's digital and intelligent achievements in dairy farming. This is what she hopes to learn from Erie.
It is understood that the Yili Modern Smart Health Valley's Eilechuan Ecological Smart Ranch Project has invested 700 million yuan and plans to have 12,000 dairy cows.
On the one hand, through genome testing and embryo transfer technology, the best performance of dairy cows is screened and cultivated, and on the other hand, through big data, the whole life cycle monitoring and management of pastures and dairy cows is realized.
In the words of one farmer: "In the past, cows' health indicators were recorded by manual observation, but now they can be easily done with a digital system." ”
The wisdom of the development of the Wisdom Health Valley
A number of docents told the minibus that the most exciting part of the tour was to see the automated production line of the "Liquid Milk Planet" up close.
The minibus has visited several smart factories before, but it is generally only possible to see the "metal machines" of different shapes that shine with stainless steel luster through the glass.
Yili has opened a large packaging production line space, where visitors can have almost zero contact with the production line equipment, such as case packers, subcontracting machines, pipe taping machines, laser printers, sealing machines, weighing and testing machines...... Right in front of you, the light is as bright as new.
They are part of the world's first E3 filler. The machine can increase the filling speed to a maximum of 40,000 packs per hour, or 11 packs per second, a global record, with an overall annual output increase of 60% and a 10% reduction in operating costs compared to the previous generation of technology.
Behind it is the application of electron beam sterilization technology in the "stuck neck" technology-level packaging material sterilization process. In the field of carton filling, the packaging material sterilization process determines the upper limit of the filling speed.
In addition, the world's most advanced video capture technology is used to detect the sticking of straws, and once a product is found to be missing a straw, it will be rejected to ensure an accuracy rate of 100%.
E3 filling machine for Yili liquid milk factory
From the site, you can also visualize the actions of some workers, such as operation and maintenance. In terms of the clothing and state of the workers, they are no longer as cramped as traditional workers.
In addition, ten orange KUKA robotic arms wave their arms to carry out palletizing work, which greatly saves labor. This is especially attractive to children, who observed many of them crouching in front of the glass stands and looking at the four arms curiously, as if they had seen the giant arms in the cartoon.
Yili automatic palletizer
The entire production process of packing boxes is almost entirely automated. After palletizing, the cartons of milk will be pulled by AGV unmanned transport vehicles to the high-speed warehouse with 22,100 cargo spaces in Asia, which is the most automated and stored.
A total of more than 160 AGV unmanned transport vehicles, each with a maximum carrying capacity of about one ton, the route of travel is planned by scanning the QR code of the charging area - the travel route of each QR code is not the same, does not interfere with each other, and the orderly passage is carried out, and the corresponding responsible person is responsible for monitoring and monitoring to maximize the transportation efficiency.
In the "Milk Powder Planet", there are two canning production lines with the most stable operation and the highest quality of canned products in the world, and the entire production line is equipped with 11 online testing equipment for online quality testing of products; The strip production line, with a total of 4 machines, can produce 1440 milk powder per minute at the same time.
Each production line can cut 45 times per minute, and each time it can cut 8 small strips of milk powder; The world's most advanced bacteriostatic four-effect evaporator; The central laboratory realizes the all-round automatic collection, analysis and application of data, and the whole process can be traced, and the detection data of more than 20 indicators in formula milk powder can be issued within 1 minute.
Among them, there are many places worth excavating and experiencing.
For example, what makes the minibus feel very interesting is the automatic process of "liquid to solid" of the transformation of concentrated milk into milk powder: the concentrated milk is pumped to the top of the 53-meter-high powder spraying tower through a high-pressure homogenizer for spraying, and the powder spraying tower adopts the world's most advanced air soaker and a height-adjustable spray gun system to complete the granulation process of milk powder while evenly supplying air, using a space difference of 53 meters, the milk powder will form hollow particles in the process of drying and falling, and the hollow milk powder can be quickly dissolved in warm water at 20 °C - 50 °C without stirring and 7 seconds.
Dairy Industry Benchmark: Yili's Digital Intelligence Evolution History
What do you think? Let's go to Hohhot to have a look. From May 29th to May 30th, Yili Station, "Walking into the Benchmark Factory", walked up.
At that time, Wu Xiaobo and Qin Shuo will lead a group of entrepreneurs to enter the "Liquid Milk Planet", "Milk Powder Planet" and the National Dairy Technology Innovation Center of Yili Modern Smart Health Valley. Yili attended and shared with Zhang Yipeng, Vice President of Yili, and Shang Zhihu, General Manager of Digital Technology Center.
The two sides will comprehensively decode the digital intelligence of Yili and the new quality productivity of the dairy industry for the entrepreneur group from a more professional, in-depth and comprehensive perspective.
This is the essence of Yili's years of development, and it is also a valuable digital and intelligent development experience that can be used as a reference for the dairy industry and even the whole industry.
With the continuous evolution of the digital era, in the face of the transformation of the industry and the deepening of consumers' digital living habits, Yili Group has already taken the lead and accelerated the launch of the digital strategy in an all-round way.
Today, on the production side, all Yili's domestic factories have realized the intelligent layout. For example, in Ningxia, Yili has built a smart dairy sample factory, which represents Yili's top level in intelligent manufacturing.
In Hohhot, Yili Milk Powder Jinze Plant was successfully selected as the "2023 Intelligent Manufacturing Demonstration Pilot Factory" by virtue of its "intelligent quality control of the whole life cycle of milk powder".
On the R&D side, it can reflect the high integration of technological innovation and digital intelligence. For example, Yili's "Quality Upgrading Project of Improved Breed Cattle" has successfully independently cultivated the No. 1 breeding bull in China; The world's first lactoferrin directional extraction and protection technology increases the retention rate of pure milk lactoferrin at room temperature from 10% to over 90%.
In addition, according to Yili's 2023 annual performance report, the end-to-end product innovation cycle has been reduced by 20%.
In addition to the realization of all-round digital intelligence in production and R&D, the achievements in marketing and supply chain should not be underestimated. For example, the 2023 annual results report mentions a 40% increase in the efficiency of indirect procurement.
For example, in March last year, Yili launched the industry's first GPT application product, YILI-GPT, taking the lead in promoting the industrial application of AIGC technology in the industry.
In May last year, the first hyper-realistic digital person "Jin Yan" in China's dairy industry was unveiled live;
In June last year, Yili's metaverse digital twin factory was officially launched in public beta, which can be called the world's first metaverse digital twin factory in the dairy industry...... These vivid innovations of Yili make people feel hot and hot.
Yili Intelligent Control Center
It can be found that Yili is accelerating on the road of digital intelligence, which is mainly reflected in the "four-fold operation system" of "full chain coverage", "full scene penetration", "all-round interaction" and "full category sharing" that it continues to build, so as to bring consumers a more intelligent and convenient dairy experience.
The minibus traveled through most of China from Hangzhou to Hohhot Yili Modern Wisdom and Health Valley, in the dry spring of this city, which accounts for more than half of the country's dairy output value and is known as the "World Dairy Science and Technology Capital", feeling the fresh air, looking up at the blue sky, tasting the natural mutton, I can't help but think of the rich dairy output value and excellent quality of this land, which is inseparable from Yili's continuous pursuit and innovation of green, intelligent and healthy industry.
From May 29th to May 30th, we went to Hohhot to experience how the traditional manufacturing industry has turned around and entered a new era of digital intelligence, and witnessed how Yili uses "digital intelligence" to make manufacturing smarter and more efficient.