Smart tech empowers Foshan enterprises to expand overseas

Digital transformation prompts companies in the southern province to pursue high-quality development and make their mark globally

In a specimen center at Guangdong Yifang Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, rows of drug specimens are neatly placed in glass cabinets. Each of them has its own "identity card ID". By scanning its QR code on the glass bottle, visitors can view information such as the collection time, place of origin, and inspection report of the herbal medicine.

Located in Nanhui district, Foshan city of Guangdong province, Guangdong Yifang, which was founded in 1992, is the country's largest TCM formula granule producer.

"What's exhibited here are nearly 200 varieties of products from 24 provinces across the country," said Zhou Lin, deputy secretary of the Party Committee and secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission of Yifang Pharmaceutical.

Having integrated with advanced technologies such as intelligent traditional Chinese medicine granules dispensing system, Yifang Pharmaceutical can ensure ingredient's safety with a built-in error checking and visual-audio verification system. This guarantees that the right TCM herbs are dispensed, which in turn eliminates human error.

Zhou said the introduction of technologies, including the artificial intelligence and cloud computing, is key to helping solve the problems and increase efficiency. The deep integration of modern technologies and TCM makes the traditional industry shine, and offers more possibilities for TCM to play a bigger role in the world.

Yifang Pharmaceutical not only actively promotes the implementation of national standards in the country, but also spares no effort to push national standard overseas. As of December 2022, the company has succeeded in applying national standards of formula granules in Macao and made progress in registering national standards of formula granules in medical institutions in countries and regions such as Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore. Yifang Pharmaceutical is not only committed to "bringing products overseas", but also to "spreading Chinese standards worldwide".

Science and technology have played an important role not only in the traditional Chinese medicine sector, but also in other areas ranging from traditional furniture industry over the past decade in Foshan.

Wision Furniture is a Foshan-based manufacturer that has added innovations to both its production methods and sales strategies, enabling it to adapt to the trend of customized consumption.

At the company's intelligent manufacturing plant, smart machines have replaced most of the traditional human work. Even the carts to carry raw wood materials and finished products are automated guided vehicles. The 40,000-square-meter plant only needs five to eight workers, who operate the computers in the control center and take an occasional tour of inspection.

Offering a range of services, from home measuring to furniture design, manufacture and delivery, the company has tapped into a market with rich potential and is currently recording annual growth of around 20 percent.

The internet has made it possible for the company to receive several orders in a single day from customers across the country. While this has helped drive the company's growth, it has also posed a tough challenge in terms of the need to produce a high volume of tailor-made furniture using traditional methods.

"That's why intelligent manufacturing is necessary, which will make it possible to produce customized products on a large scale, standardize our production criteria and achieve a material utilization rate of 93 percent," said Li Gan, general manager of Wision Furniture.

With the help of digital transformation, Li Gan is well positioned to expand business into new markets and capture the growing global demand.

Thailand is an important overseas base for Wision Furniture. As early as 2017, the company established a partnership with local traditional furniture enterprises which ranked in the top three in Thailand, mainly by transforming the local manufacturing workshops and production systems of Thai enterprises to transfer Wision Furniture's technology overseas.

Currently, Wision Furniture provides information services to overseas enterprises and charges a service fee of "one dollar per barcode". Its business volume in the Thai market is about 80 million yuan ($12 million).

Robots make robot

China's industrial robot market has seen a new peak in applications, with vigorous development in new energy vehicles, furniture, biomedicine and other industries.

"While we get off work, the production line doesn't," said Chen Feng, director of operations and human resources of industrial robot manufacturer KUKA Robotics (Guangdong) Co Ltd in Foshan city of South China's Guangzhou province.

KUKA Robotics (Guangdong) officially began production in 2019. It has produced over 6,300 robots by 2020, with a sales revenue of 972 million yuan ($149.5 million). In 2021, the company continued its rapid growth, with robot production exceeding 17,000 units (accounting for nearly 4.9 percent of the national output), and the annual output value of robotic bodies reached 2.57 billion yuan ($395 million), a year-on-year increase of 165 percent.