China Resources Building Materials Technology Holdings Limited (CR Bldg Materials Tech), a comprehensive building materials company, focuses on the manufacturing of cement, construction aggregate, concrete, and engineered stone. CR Bldg Materials Tech is acutely aware of the urgent need for digital transformation, which will improve productivity and reduce costs for itself and the industry at large. Furthermore, given the unique work environments of the building materials industry, special measures must be taken to ensure the safety of every worker through the entire production process. The company has deployed a 5G network for the digital transformation of its factories nationwide. The 5G network is designed to cover multiple campuses of the company, further improving the connectivity of the company's cement factories. Smart robots are used to enhance production efficiency and safety, and digitalized management and risk alerts extend solid support for decision-making. In recent years, China Unicom and CR Bldg Materials Tech have been working together to develop a digital and smart 5G-powered engine for the building materials industry. This engine will enable sustainable development by using lightweight 5G modules, terminals, and gateways to provide smart control and digital management throughout the production, management, and administration processes.
5G Private Network Coverage Leads Digital Transformation in the Building Materials Industry
China Unicom and CR Bldg Materials Tech jointly established a 5G-powered industrial Internet application service system featuring the "1+1+1+N" structure, setting a milestone for large-scale 5G application in the building materials industry and leading the way in the industry's digital transformation.
The service system works like a "smart brain." It introduces typical applications covering smart production lines, digital mining area construction, safety monitoring, device networking, device maintenance, data collection, smart campuses, and offices. In this way, staff can deliver instructions remotely for automatic monitoring and control of the entire production process, including mining, cement grinding, and product transport.
This project is jointly self-crafted by eight institutes, including the Intelligent Network Innovation Center of China Unicom, Intelligent Research Institute, Big Data Division, IoT Division, and China Information Technology Designing &Consulting Institute (CITC). CR Bldg Materials Tech has built China's largest dedicated 5G private network spanning 14 factories across six provinces, launched China's first unified management and maintenance platform for one headquarters and 14 branches. This ambitious project encompasses eight typical scenarios and 19 application solutions throughout the entire production process.
Real-time Monitoring and 5G Smart Devices Ensure Safe Production
Most cement companies are built near mines and are exposed to environmental hazards, which necessitates digital management for workplace safety.
In digital mining, 5G and 3D modeling technologies are used to digitize extraction and mineral blending. A smart mining truck dispatch system helps automatically plan driving routes and dispatch autonomous mining trucks, achieving high coordination between loading equipment, transport equipment, and loading and unloading sites. In the event of an emergency or fault in an autonomous mining truck, the safety officer can immediately take over the truck via the emergency system.
In addition, the drones equipped with 4K UHD cameras, used together with AI image recognition and personnel positioning, can help simulate a smart warning line.
Featuring high bandwidth and low latency, the 5G private network enables devices to transmit onsite videos to edge computing servers in real time. If an object, such as a human, animal, or mining vehicle, is detected, warnings are generated and sent to staff in real time.
Intelligent O&M Improves Efficiency and Competitiveness While Reducing Costs
Traditional cement companies' O&M consists of manual operations. Inspection personnel need to check and monitor devices onsite through crude means like visual inspection, listening, and touching. They need to manually check whether device running temperatures are too high, whether mechanical rotating sounds are abnormal, and whether devices need to be shut down for maintenance, relying entirely on experience. Even experienced staff who have been maintaining devices for years encounter difficulties, such as late detection of potential risks, inaccurate identification, and inefficiency.
Unlike the traditional methods, the 5G-powered predictive maintenance ushers in a new epoch. 5G-powered devices are able to collect and monitor data such as vibration and temperature of critical devices and upload the data to an industrial Internet platform. The mechanism models and algorithms of 26 types of devices are available for analyzing collected device data, predicting potential device risks, and guiding onsite maintenance.
To date, an O&M platform has been built, connecting 1,791 hosts across 31 cement production lines at 18 bases, and providing routine maintenance and diagnosis as well as monthly health check. It has proactively identified potential risks, reducing direct economic losses from device incidents by nearly CNY20 million.
Looking towards the future, AI will present a global strategic opportunity for the industry. CR Bldg Materials Tech will continue to collaborate closely with China Unicom to innovate, explore applications, improve efficiency, and provide strong momentum for the digital transformation of the industry.