Sirio building new smart factory equipped with IoT-enabled processes and AI

Image courtesy of Sirio

Sirio (Ma’anshan, China) is building a 240,000 square-meter smart factory that offers the manufacturer and clients real-time production parameters and machine learning for continual process optimization. The factory is equipped with Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled automated processes and monitoring, intelligent distribution robotics, and Artificial intelligence (AI), and it is designed to optimize manpower, materials, and financial resources.

“Rather than build a conventional factory setup, we have taken a lead in the nutraceutical industry to look ahead at how quality, manufacturing and logistics can be augmented by connected technologies,” said Rui Yang, CSO at Sirio, in a press release. “Our new smart factory, using IoT and AI, ensures an unmatched level of process control, with intelligent energy consumption and far greater logistical efficiencies.”

Due to the factory’s efficiency, it significantly improves energy efficiency and reduces waste. For example, new pallet robots—automated guided vehicles (AVGs)—perform a number of functions including intelligent production scheduling. They are self-charging and fitted with collision-avoidance technology, overcoming existing difficulties associated with manual control of warehouse logistics. In turn, logistical costs are lowered by improved storage density. 

The IoT and other equipment monitoring technologies reduce human error and reduce some manual intervention on the production line, while smart management systems enable control orders and schedules in response to unforeseen changes in manufacturing processes and update cost changes of labor and materials accordingly.

“What this technology also enables is enhanced deliverability for smaller production runs for partners, which something many nutraceutical CDMOs would be unable to accommodate,” Yang said. “It means we can better adapt and flexibly support smaller volumes of products and deliver them expeditiously to customers – or alternatively quickly scale up. We are several years ahead of our competitors but intelligent production management is the future of nutraceutical manufacturing.”