The high-tech facility began operations just three years ago as the owner’s global manufacturing center. honor, Android A smartphone brand spun off from Huawei Technologies in November 2020Honor boasts two key indicators at this factory: automation rate and local equipment rate.
The factory’s automation rate — the percentage of tasks that machines can perform instead of humans — has risen to 85 percent today, up from about 70 percent when it began making mobile phones three years ago. For example, just 22 workers run one 150-meter-long assembly line, with robotic arms and laser machines taking the whole process from raw main boards to finished products boxed for shipping, in a highly automated production environment.
The workers, all likely in their early 20s, wear uniforms and special shoes and work on a clean, tidy factory floor — a stark contrast to the conditions in mainland China, when factories were known for being “labour-intensive” and hostile.
Honor’s high-tech factory in Shenzhen is 85 percent automated. Photo: Honor
The factory’s local equipment ratio, i.e. the proportion of Chinese-made machinery used in production, is currently around 60 percent due to the continuous introduction of imported tools from China. Germany and JapanStill, Honor’s homegrown devices are prominent on the factory floor, each with its own special logo.
Located in Shenzhen’s Pingshan District, the factory proudly displays three bronze plates issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The most recent plate, issued in May, rated the factory at “Level IV” for smart manufacturing maturity, officially recognizing it as one of China’s super factories. Few factories in mainland China could qualify for “Level V,” China’s highest rating for manufacturing facilities with global influence.
In Chinese factories, smartphones and Electric carIn recent years, the company has been actively promoting automation in order to improve production efficiency. MilletFor example, earlier this year the company launched what it calls a completely “fully empty” factory in Beijing, meaning no workers are needed on the factory floor.
Decades of development and globalization have accumulated capital, talent, technology and supply chain resources in China, allowing more super factories to emerge on the mainland, but China’s hopes of using this modern factory network to help boost the domestic economy face many challenges.
Android smartphone maker Honor’s factory in the Pingshan district of the southern tech city of Shenzhen. Photo: Honor
Technological bottlenecks remain in China’s manufacturing supply chain: Honor smartphones, for example, are made from around 2,000 parts, the most expensive of which are imported. Qualcomm Processors. Though Honor has made breakthroughs in screen quality and battery life through its cutting-edge labs, the heart of every phone it makes still comes from foreign suppliers.
In connection with weak domestic demand, Increased automation It leads to “growth without jobs.” The increased production and efficiency from automation did not benefit workers. In theory, a factory worker could become an engineer or a manager if their factory-floor job was replaced by a machine. But such job transitions are complicated in reality.
Despite these challenges, it is impressive to see how Chinese factories have been transformed, raising hopes that China will continue to be the global factory for a variety of intelligent devices.
