Zhongce optimises mixing with ‘industrial brain’

Hangzhou, Zhejiang – Zhongce Rubber Group has adopted a ‘big data’ system, jointly developed with Alibaba, to enhance the performance of its tire plants.

Dubbed the ‘industrial brain,’ the technology has been in use at the company’s manufacturing facilities since 2016 to optimise mixing processes.

Analysis software processes a series of data including rubber materials’ production country, supplier, batch number as well as performance of final compounds.

Solutions generated range from optimised combinations of materials from different sources to the ideal process parameters to produce compounds with more stable quality.

The system has been in constant iteration, collecting new information such as data for the latest material batches, according to Zhongce’s marketing department manager Lv Li.

“Last year at one of our plants the system was able to raise the compounds’ qualification rate by more than 6%,” compared with 3-5% in 2017,” Lv told ERJ.