Tianjin Yihong Printing and Packaging 'Soft-Hard Integrated' Intelligent Factory Construction Practice
Currently, the printing and packaging industry is at a critical stage of transformation and upgrading from 'labor-intensive' to 'technology-intensive.' Rising costs, labor shortages, and increasing demands from customers for delivery timeliness and product quality are making traditional manual management models increasingly unsustainable. Issues such as discrepancies between accounts and actual inventory, chaotic material flow, and production line stoppages due to lack of materials are common persistent problems in the industry. Reconstructing production operations and logistics management systems through digital intelligence has become a strategic imperative for leading printing and packaging companies to overcome development bottlenecks.
Tianjin Yihong Intelligent Packaging Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'Tianjin Yihong') is a comprehensive printing and packaging company integrating prepress design, plate-making, printing, and post-press processing. It owns nine wholly-owned subsidiaries and has established long-term cooperative relationships with well-known brands such as Mengniu, Three Squirrels, and Junlebao. Facing the pressure of digital and intelligent transformation in the industry, Tianjin Yihong focuses on digital intelligence as its core driving force to build a benchmark intelligent factory in the printing and packaging industry.
Top-level Design: Centered on the Process Route
The success or failure of building a smart factory depends on whether the top-level planning truly aligns with the factory's business processes. The Tianjin Yihong Intelligent Project centers on the process route, uses the logistics flow as its framework, is driven by data as its essence, and covers the entire lifecycle from raw material storage to finished product dispatch.
The main process route is as follows: Rolls of paper are cut into sheets by a paper cutting machine, then transported by AGV to the cutting machine for trimming, and then further transported to the printing machine for multicolor printing; after printing, the materials rest for 4–6 hours, then are transferred via a corridor to the surface treatment workshop where one or multiple processes such as lamination, embossing, hot stamping, and die-cutting are completed in sequence; finally, the rollers are glued together with face paper by a laminating machine, folded into boxes, and wrapped for packaging to form the finished product (corrugated cartons) or the face paper is transported upstairs by a freight elevator to the premium box workshop, where greyboard is grooved and die-cut, then laminated with colored box paper, and processed by a rigid box machine to form premium box products.
The finished products can be shipped directly in the buffer area on the first floor, or they can be transferred by AGV to the freight elevator, stored in the flat warehouse on the fourth floor, and then dispatched out of the warehouse for loading after the delivery order is triggered. The entire process route spans multiple floors and functional areas, with long material flow lines and many conversion nodes. The project plan takes "let the data flow lead the animal material flow, and let the system scheduling replace manual coordination" as the core concept, and takes this as the starting point to build a "software and hardware integration" digital intelligence system.
Hardware reconstruction: the whole process of automatic handling system
01/ Printing workshop: the core area of automation transformation
The printing workshop is the area with the greatest intensity in this transformation, through the standardized transformation of the three processes of paper separator, paper cutting machine and printing machine, with conveyor lines and forklift AGVs, to build a complete closed loop of automatic pallet circulation.
The paper separator adopts the U-shaped operation mode of "automatic dismantling of the upper pallet → → full pallet →AGV transfer", and the symmetrical layout of the north and south units realizes the seamless connection of paper slitting to transfer. In the paper cutting link, the forklift AGV completes the automatic connection of material loading and unloading; After the empty pallets generated by paper cutting are stacked by the stacking machine, they are returned by the AGV to the paper separator and paper cutter unloading port to realize the automatic allocation of pallet resources.
The transformation of the printing machine is the most technical part of the project. Take the UV printing machine as an example: on the feeding side, the forklift AGV sends the pallet full of paper to the loading port of the machine, and automatically enters the paper loading position through the jacking transfer device, and the flyer mechanism automatically picks up the paper; On the blanking side, the empty pallet flows along the conveyor line on the side of the machine to undertake the printed paper; The full support automatically travels to the end of the conveyor line, and is connected and transferred by AGV to the stationary area or sampling inspection area, and the whole path is in an "S-shaped" automatic closed loop, completely replacing the old operation method of frequent round trips of manual forklifts.
02/ Cross-floor logistics: Vertical transportation automation
The intelligent project has carried out special transformation of a freight elevator on each side of the north and south, installed a roller conveyor inside the car, and set up a docking conveyor line at the elevator entrance on each floor, so that the freight elevator becomes a vertical extension of the ground AGV system.
After the renovation, on the first floor, forklift-type AGVs transport materials to the freight elevator entrance. The materials are automatically conveyed into the elevator car, then ascend to the target floor, and are discharged onto the floor conveyor line via the elevator rollers. The subsequent transport is completed by the floor AGV or manual stacker forklift.
The fourth-floor flat storage area of the company can store more than 700 pallets of finished products. When storing, the finished products are lifted by the freight elevator, then picked up by the fourth-floor hidden forklift AGVs and automatically placed in storage according to the WMS-assigned locations. When retrieving, the warehouse operator issues a command in the system, and the AGV automatically transports the goods to the freight elevator entrance, descends to the first floor to wait for loading. Empty pallets generated by outbound orders are lifted back up by the freight elevator for recycling. Throughout the entire inbound and outbound process, human labor is only required for system operation, with physical labor intensity close to zero.
03/ RFID empowerment: the digital intelligence base for material tracking
The tray adopts an integrated label of "barcode RFID chip", the appearance of the barcode is visible, and the built-in chip stores material information. Forklift AGV is equipped with RFID reader, every time the handling task is performed, the system automatically verifies whether the pallet number is consistent with the task number, realizes the accurate mapping of materials and tasks, prevents the operation risk of "taking the wrong goods, moving the wrong place" from the source, and ensures that the material ledger in the digital system and the on-site physical objects are synchronized in real time, which is also one of the key data entrances for the whole plant to achieve "digital intelligence drive".
Software empowerment: Collaborative control of the four major platforms
Hardware upgrades lay the physical foundation, and software collaboration is the real engine to unlock the value of digital intelligence. Tianjin Yihong Intelligent Project deploys four major platforms: MES, WMS, WCS, and LES, and builds a full-link digital intelligence management and control system covering production execution, warehouse management, equipment control and logistics scheduling.
01/ MES Manufacturing Execution System
Realize automatic material calling and automatic work reporting. When the machine feeding conveyor line is idle, the system automatically issues the replenishment task to the AGV. After the printing is completed, the system automatically records the number of work orders completed based on real-time data collection, and the production information flows online throughout the process, greatly reducing the manual entry time of clerks.
02/ WMS Warehouse Management System
The system is the core tool to solve the stubborn problem of "inconsistent accounts". After the system is launched, all raw materials entering and leaving the warehouse must be retained by the system operation, and each record has a clear time and responsible person. The system provides an inventory pre-alert table synchronously, automatically triggers reminders for low inventory, and procurement decisions are upgraded from "empirical estimation" to "data-driven".
03/ WCS Equipment Control System
Responsible for the unified scheduling of AGV, conveyor line, jacking and transfer and freight elevator and other automation equipment in the whole plant, it is the "nerve center" that connects the upper business logic and the execution of the underlying equipment, ensuring that every logistics instruction is accurately and timely transformed into equipment actions.
04/ LES Logistics Execution System
Carry out unified queuing and priority management of various logistics tasks such as material calling, material replenishment, transfer, and return to the warehouse to avoid resource conflicts when multiple tasks occur concurrently, and ensure the smooth and orderly logistics beat of the whole plant.
Real-time data sharing between the four platforms, and at the same time docking with the factory ERP delivery notice, realizing end-to-end data penetration from customer orders to finished product delivery, so that the concept of "digital intelligence driven" can be truly implemented at every business node.
Data collection: The machine is fully networked
The company's digital intelligence project has completed the digital acquisition transformation of 32 main production equipment in the workshop on the first floor, covering all core equipment such as paper separating machines, printing machines, laminating machines, laminating machines, embossing machines, hot stamping machines, die-cutting machines, and folder gluing lines.
The operating status, production quantity, fault alarm and other data of each machine are imported into the MES in real time to form a digital dashboard of the visual workshop. Management can grasp production capacity data, equipment utilization rate and abnormal information without relying on manual statistics, providing a solid digital intelligence foundation for the continuous promotion of lean production.
Management change: from site cleanliness to process standardization
01/ The appearance of the site has been comprehensively improved
AGV requires materials to be neatly stacked on standard pallets according to the specified storage location, which forces on-site operation specifications. In the past, the workshop environment of random stacking has been fundamentally changed, and a clean and orderly site is not only the prerequisite for system operation, but also the basic guarantee for safe production.
02/ Logistics collaboration is fully online
The use of raw materials previously relied on offline verbal communication between the captain and the warehouse manager, and information delays and unclear responsibilities were the norm. After the system is launched, all material requests are submitted online through MES, and the warehouse management performs the warehouse according to the system tasks, and each material circulation has a complete electronic voucher, realizing the fundamental transformation from "verbal agreement" to "system control".
03/ Comprehensive data-based procurement decision-making
WMS real-time inventory data and pre-warning tables allow the purchasing department to bid farewell to the history of buying paper by feeling, and the waste of repeated procurement and material backlog is effectively curbed, and the inventory turnover efficiency is improved.
Core values and industry inspiration
The value of Tianjin Yihong intelligent project can be summarized from the following four dimensions:
(1) Efficiency improvement and growth rate: the whole process is automatically upgraded, eliminating manual transfer bottlenecks, shortening the production cycle, and making the production line flow cycle more stable.
(2) Cost reduction and consumption reduction: AGV automatic transfer greatly reduces the physical labor intensity of front-line workers, effectively saves labor costs and reduces raw material waste through automatic reporting.
(3) Standardized management: The AGV system forces the site to be clean and standardized, creating a standardized and visual digital intelligence workshop.
(4) Link to the overall situation: MES, WMS, WCS, LES and ERP data are connected, opening up the whole link of production, logistics and warehousing, and comprehensively enhancing supply chain management and control capabilities.
From the perspective of industry significance, the Tianjin Yihong digital intelligence project proves that in a complex printing and packaging factory with multiple floors, multiple processes and multiple varieties, through reasonable top-level design and integrated integration of software and hardware, it is possible to realize the automatic scheduling of the whole logistics process and refined digital intelligence control of warehousing.
The intelligent factory built by Tianjin Yihong is a complete implementation of the concept of "digital intelligence-driven" in the printing and packaging industry. Intelligent manufacturing is not a simple equipment upgrade, nor is it a pure software to the cloud, but an overall digital intelligence project with process flow as the skeleton, data collection as the nerve, software platform as the brain, and automation equipment as the limbs, and organic integration and coordinated operation.
For peer enterprises that intend to promote transformation, formulating plans from pain points and implementing simultaneous design of software and hardware is the correct path to make digital intelligence move from "concept" to "value". With the continuous penetration of artificial intelligence technology in the fields of quality prediction and process optimization, the digital intelligence process of the printing and packaging industry will be further deepened.