A "lighthouse factory" breaks through in three dimensions. Heading east along Xinhua Road in the Jiashan Economic and Technological Development Zone, a "lighthouse factory" integrating digital twins, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics technology comes into view — this is the Zhongyang Group headquarters smart factory, which was put into use in August this year.

Looking at the newly built intelligent factory building, Li Kun, assistant to the chairman of Zhongyang Group, recalled the company's old factory before the new project with deep emotion. "Previously, the company's factory workshops were scattered and could not be combined together at all. The ceiling height was only 10 metres, so some large equipment could not be installed inside, and even a large truck had difficulty turning around," Li Kun said. The old factory's spatial limitations and layout shortcomings had long restricted the company's equipment upgrades, capacity expansion and process iteration. Breaking away from the traditional flat-expansion approach and taking a three-dimensional development path became an inevitable choice for the company's breakthrough.

"The government's 'butler-style' service shortened our new factory construction period by half a year," said Wang Kaisheng, chairman of Zhongyang Group. The rise of a "lighthouse factory" embodies the joint efforts of government and enterprise. This modern factory building, with a total investment of 500 million yuan and a total floor area of 57,000 square metres, breaks away from traditional flat expansion, takes a three-dimensional development path, and seeks development space upward. The floor load capacity of the production workshop reaches 2 tonnes per square metre, laying a solid foundation for large-scale intelligent equipment manufacturing, with output efficiency not inferior to a traditional single-storey factory of 200 mu.

The three-dimensional development path is not only a "space revolution" but also a reshaping of the production process. Wang Kaisheng said that the "lighthouse factory" not only saves labour and land, but more importantly solves the pain points of "people, machines and materials" management in manufacturing and reduces the difficulty of production management. "The entire 'lighthouse factory' has no traditional production freight elevators. Material flow between the first, second and third floors relies entirely on the group's self-developed intelligent warehousing and logistics system," Li Kun introduced. Raw materials are stored on the first floor, transported by automated stereoscopic warehouse to the second floor for processing, and semi-finished products are then transferred to the third floor for finished product output, eliminating manual handling and freight elevator transfers throughout, greatly compressing material flow distances. All materials are digitally controlled throughout the entire process of warehousing, flow and outbound delivery, achieving cross-floor intelligent scheduling and data traceability. Relying on a complete logistics management system, the "lighthouse factory" connects scattered production processes, steadily advancing toward the goal of "raw materials in at one end, finished products out at the other."

The iteration of the factory building is not just an upgrade of hardware facilities, but also provides conditions for the company's macro strategic adjustment. Around this "lighthouse factory," Zhongyang Group's goal is to build it into the world's largest ASR (autonomous storage robot) production base within five years and to build a cooperation ecosystem with a scale of 10,000 people. Taking the launch of the "lighthouse factory" as an opportunity, the group will focus on accelerating layout in three core tracks: overall intelligent warehousing solutions, ASR ODM manufacturing, and Zhongyang Cloud Warehouse, investing no less than 40 million yuan in research and development annually to continuously drive innovation and development.

The path of advancement for a factory building. In the China-Singapore (Jiashan) Modern Industrial Park, the new factory of Jiaxing Jiayi Power Supply Technology Co Ltd is under construction. This new factory covers 20 mu with a total floor area of 30,963.91 square metres. Construction began in February this year and is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, with production starting in February 2027, building momentum for the company's capacity expansion and quality improvement.

Jiayi Power Supply mainly engages in the research, development, production and sales of power supply accessories. Since settling in the area, Jiayi Power Supply has walked a path of advancement from renting factory space to moving into standard factory buildings, and then to building its own new factory. "With industrial upgrading, the original factory could no longer meet the company's development needs in terms of either space or management conditions. At the end of 2024, the company successfully moved into a standalone factory building in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre, and its overall development level reached a new stage," said Zhang Guolei, deputy director of the Economic Development Office of Weitang Subdistrict. With the progress of the new factory construction, Jiayi Power Supply is about to usher in another transformation and leap. "As technology advances and market demand grows, laminated busbars will develop toward higher power density, integration, intelligence and environmental friendliness. We will also strive to seize market opportunities, strengthen technological innovation and market layout, and occupy an advantageous position in competition," Huang Zhidong said confidently.

From old workshops to smart factories, from leased spaces to self-built modern factory buildings, the replacement of old factories with new ones bears witness to the growth trajectory of Jiashan enterprises from small to large and toward innovation. Seeking space upward and efficiency through digitalisation, Jiashan is promoting the iterative upgrading of industrial carriers through three-dimensional construction and full-cycle government services, laying fertile ground for the development of the real economy. The transformation of a factory building is a vivid microcosm of county-level industrial transformation and also reflects the pace of China's manufacturing industry moving toward high-end, intelligent and green development.