An Explosion-Proof Motor Guided by a "Smart Brain" Directs Production! Jiadien Share's Intelligent Factory Transforms "Customization" into "Scalability"

A highly customized high-voltage explosion-proof motor—how can it be mass-produced at scale in an intelligent factory? Jiadian Co., Ltd. (000922) provides the answer.

As the first listed company in China to achieve full coverage of industrial motor products, Jiadian’s motor division currently offers 347 series of motors, nearly 4,000 varieties, with single-machine power ranging from 0.37 kW to 80,000 kW. The company features diverse, customized production characteristics, with complex full-process workflows and high coordination difficulty.

Jiadian’s digital transformation has achieved a qualitative leap. Photo by Sun Xianchao

In recent years, Jiadian has accelerated its digital and intelligent transformation, establishing an industry-leading smart factory and the country’s first high-voltage motor digital assembly workshop, which has been put into operation, filling a domestic gap. The completion and operation of the smart factory effectively address long-standing industry pain points such as product quality consistency and high cost pressures, enabling large-scale, high-quality production, quality control, and rapid delivery of customized high-voltage explosion-proof motors.

Recently, a reporter from Securities Times visited Jiadian’s smart factory and learned that the company’s digital workshop has increased production efficiency and capacity by over 36% and 56%, respectively, with first-pass product qualification rates far exceeding industry averages.

The workshop says goodbye to “people waiting for materials”

In Jiadian’s digital workshop, assembly worker Cong Hao is focused on entering work order numbers into the MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) system. Relying on this system, key information such as daily dispatch volume, motor assembly features, bill of materials, parts arrival status, and standard working hours are clearly visible, providing precise guidance for assembly operations.

Jiadian’s intelligent factory. Photo by Sun Xianchao

As a frontline employee in the high-voltage motor assembly and final assembly positions, Cong Hao personally feels the dramatic changes brought by digitalization. “In the past, picking materials meant a long trip to the warehouse, pushing carts or using cranes to transport parts back and forth, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive,” he said. Now, the workshop is equipped with an intelligent parts warehouse and station turnover storage, with materials pre-distributed. During work, AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) handle parts transportation, heavy-duty AGVs carry large components, and they are paired with lightweight cranes (KBK) and RGVs (Rail Guided Vehicles). From material calling to delivery, the entire process is automated and unmanned.

On-site, the reporter saw that after Cong Hao initiated a material request in the MOM system, the intelligent scheduling system responded immediately. An automated forklift retrieved materials from the storage racks to the transfer station, then an AGV precisely delivered them to Cong Hao’s station—all within 10 minutes.

Jiadian’s workshop deputy director Jiang Yunbo explained that before digital transformation, the workshop relied heavily on traditional operations, with personnel and cranes as core resources, which were severely strained, limiting efficiency improvements. At that time, there were only two cranes, and because motor parts are large, different processes and shifts often competed for lifting resources. Workers frequently had to wait for equipment, wasting significant time on manual handling and equipment waiting, which severely constrained capacity.

After digitalization, heavy manual tasks such as lifting, prying, and transporting were eliminated, greatly reducing workers’ physical labor and significantly improving safety and comfort. Currently, labor costs are reduced by about one-third, with staff reallocated to market services and other roles. Staffing is flexible and can respond to order fluctuations.

As the core competitiveness of equipment manufacturing, production efficiency and product precision have achieved comprehensive breakthroughs through digital empowerment. For example, the motor frame machining process now uses a PAMA machining center, reducing the original nine steps on three machines to two steps on one machine, compressing the cycle from three days to four hours.

“The precision of motor bearing machining and the coaxiality of the rotor directly determine whether common industry issues such as vibration, heat generation, and shaft wobble can be solved, affecting product reliability and lifespan,” Jiang Yunbo said. After introducing high-end automated machining equipment from abroad, machining accuracy improved from 20 steps (0.2mm) to 5 steps (0.05mm), significantly enhancing product quality.

“Smart Brain” for integrated command

Production data in the digital workshop is not isolated but uploaded in real-time to the company’s data center, managed by a “smart brain” for unified scheduling and overall management.

Entering Jiadian’s data center, four large screens display real-time updates, showing the entire enterprise’s operational status: production plans for March and beyond, order fulfillment details, delay records, days products remain unfulfilled, and high/low voltage product fulfillment status—all clearly visible.

Li Jie, assistant manager of Jiadian’s data center, explained that the company has built a penetrating management command system with one-level and two-level linkage, consisting of seven primary centers and five secondary centers. The secondary centers are located in the five main production workshops and are linked in real-time with the primary centers, with issues reported directly.

Among the seven primary centers, the production scheduling command center acts as the “brain” of the entire plant, visualizing the full chain from order to delivery: monitoring monthly production plans, high/low voltage motor progress, urgent order distribution, completion rates, and pending work; issuing early warnings for equipment failures, material shortages, and procurement schedule adherence; tracking the entire process from order receipt, scheduling, processing, assembly, to quality inspection, warehousing, and shipment readiness.

The equipment and efficiency monitoring center connects equipment operation, fault repair, inspections, maintenance, and repairs, promoting a shift from reactive repairs to predictive maintenance, minimizing unplanned downtime. Currently, the plant has 1,388 pieces of equipment, with data automatically collected from 180 CNC and intelligent devices; plans are to connect over 60 more this year, reaching a total of 240, while older equipment lacking conditions will be phased in gradually.

Based on this, Jiadian’s data center has also innovatively deployed AI assistants and digital employees, mainly in the control room and production command terminals, to enable intelligent dispatching, system scheduling, and centralized data management. Production data from the workshop is uploaded in real-time to the central control room for unified scheduling and management.

“Our self-developed digital employees can replace manual work for many repetitive, rule-based tasks, automating business processes,” Li Jie said. “We’ve achieved automatic tracking of production plans, automatic export, and automatic issuance, eliminating manual order running and operations. Production outlines are automatically exported from SAP, then automatically dispatched to the workshop via OA (Office Automation) clients and synchronized to work groups, allowing the workshop to organize production directly according to the plan.”

Currently, the data center has launched seven types of digital employees: five for on-site display covering R&D, production, sales, procurement, and finance; two additional types for HR operate in the background.

The digital employees have doubled efficiency. For example, “Jia Xiaojiang” (Production Specialist) handles intelligent scheduling of production plans, data collection and analysis, and process upgrades, working 16 hours daily, processing 4,200 data points per day, with a 12-fold increase in work efficiency and 99% accuracy in business data.

Driven by the dual engines of data centralization and digital employees, Jiadian is achieving comprehensive digital and intelligent upgrades from the workshop floor to enterprise management.

Setting a new industry benchmark

In an interview, the Securities Times learned that Jiadian has built three major digital workshops: high-voltage motor assembly, low-voltage motor assembly, and motor frame machining, forming a scaled intelligent factory. Currently, the factory employs a human-machine collaboration model: highly automated processing stages, while core motor assembly still relies on manual fine-fitting, balancing efficiency and craftsmanship.

“Early in the industry, the company laid out the intelligent transformation of high-voltage motor production. In the future, we will continue to deepen digital and intelligent applications, consolidating our technological leadership and transforming from a traditional motor manufacturer to a full-lifecycle operation and maintenance service provider,” said Wang Hongxia, secretary of Jiadian’s board.

Notably, the completion and operation of Jiadian’s smart factory have created a strong demonstration and driving effect for the domestic motor industry, especially in the high-voltage explosion-proof motor field. Jiang Yunbo explained that the smart factory directly pushes the overall quality upgrade of the industry. Relying on high-precision automated equipment and digital processes, the company’s product machining and assembly accuracy have greatly improved. While optimizing staffing, production efficiency and product quality surpass traditional models. This high-quality, high-efficiency paradigm has prompted peers to upgrade equipment and optimize processes, elevating industry standards and quality benchmarks.

Jiadian’s smart factory has redefined industry performance standards, especially in the key metric of vibration. The national GB/T10068 standard was early set at 2.8mm/s, recently improved to 2.3mm/s—already a common industry threshold. With the smart factory, Jiadian’s regular products can be stably controlled at 1.8mm/s, and high-end customized products for oil and petrochemical industries can be maintained below 1.3mm/s, far better than national standards.

“Vibration value is a direct indicator of a motor’s operational stability and lifespan, measurable via sensors. Our breakthroughs mean significant advances in long-term reliability, bearing temperature rise, and air gap uniformity,” Jiang Yunbo said.

More importantly, through comprehensive improvements in quality, efficiency, and standards, Jiadian’s smart factory has truly set a benchmark for industry transformation and upgrading. “Our improvements in quality, efficiency, and standards have directly enhanced our market competitiveness and user reputation, while also compelling domestic peers to follow suit in automation and intelligence, raising the overall technological level and manufacturing capability of China’s motor industry,” Jiang Yunbo added. From frame machining accuracy to complete assembly precision, from core indicators to overall performance, the entire chain’s quality upgrades have created a powerful demonstration effect, leading the industry toward high-end, intelligent, and high-quality development.