To realize the vision of becoming the "strongest in China and world-class" automotive tooling digital intelligent manufacturing enterprise, FAW Moulding has adhered to strategies of "technological informatization," "management digitalization," "equipment modernization," and "international business," for many years. As FAW Moulding's brand effect, product quality, and manufacturing process levels enhance continuously, each "action" in building its smart factory is viewed as a directional marker for the industry, becoming an imitation target for enterprises aspiring toward advanced manufacturing. Being among the first to engage with FAW Moulding in digital projects, EMAN has repeatedly driven the implementation of FAW Moulding's smart factory.

From vehicle design to tooling manufacturing, a unified principle must be followed, demanding a high level of integration. Such development facilitates comprehensive control over body quality, costs, and timelines. Before the 21st century, Chinese mould and fixture departments or companies often worked in silos, finding communication difficult, delaying many issues until the production preparation stage, severely restricting the product quality of white bodies and production cycles.

To consolidate technological and managerial competitive advantages, FAW Moulding needs a solid “backbone” in the form of an advanced, intelligent digital factory. At the heart of this is the continuous enhancement of digital R&D, manufacturing, and management levels. With the accumulation of vast manufacturing technical data by the early 21st century, FAW had the foundation to build a digital factory while the industry was embracing mould and fixture integration.

At that time, FAW Moulding’s workshops simultaneously handled 200,000 to 300,000 workpiece procedures, making reasonable manual production planning impossible. Moreover, FAW Moulding was challenged by product changes, quality incidents, and inter-departmental processing commissions, significantly complicating management.

In 2005, EMAN was a pioneering company developing industry-specific mould management software in China. With a strong professional backdrop from the State Key Laboratory of Material Forming and Die & Mould Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and a passion for domestic software innovation, FAW Moulding partnered with EMAN to achieve lean management. By analyzing the characteristics of white body tooling products and work processes, both parties developed and implemented a system for key segments in mould production, constructing an information management system tailored to FAW Moulding’s production characteristics, achieving successful results in practice.

With EMAN’s Mould MES System, FAW Moulding achieved intelligent management from master project plans, departmental monthly plans, workshop work plans (detailed to each team and machine), to acceptance plans (internal and external). Managers at all levels associated with production could track differences between actual and planned executions through the Mould MES System, identifying and resolving exceptions early. Besides calculating processing and setup work hours, the system allows comprehensive analysis of quality issues registered during manufacturing, facilitating overall product information statistics.

The successful implementation of the Mould MES System enabled FAW Moulding to benefit from digital transformation: mould quality increased by 15%, process preparation efficiency improved by 50%, production schedule completion rate reached 90%, delayed moulds decreased by 25%, and equipment utilization rose from 60% to 80%, representing a qualitative leap forward for FAW Moulding and laying an important foundation for ongoing collaborative stability.

Rising labor costs are a persistent challenge in manufacturing. As an industry leader, although FAW Moulding can mitigate some cost increases through its strength, the insufficient in-house support for small part processing raised concerns at FAW Moulding’s executive level. Given the company’s overall capacity demands, mould products have 40% small parts requirement, while welding products need 80%. These parts demand long processing hours with high component hardness, often leading to issues like tool breakage and severe tool wear during processing. When such incidents occur, they necessitate stopping the current process, replacing the tool, restarting the program from the beginning, wasting machine time, and reducing processing efficiency.