Global Chemical Fiber Industry’s First “Lighthouse Factory”! Huafon Chongqing Spandex Leads Industrial Upgrading with Smart Manufacturing

On January 15, the World Economic Forum (WEF) officially announced its latest list of “Lighthouse Factories.” Huafon Chongqing Spandex Co., Ltd. earned its place in the global “Lighthouse Factory” network—specifically as a “Lighthouse for Production Efficiency”—thanks to its outstanding performance in smart manufacturing, digital transformation, and sustainable development. This makes it the first company in the global chemical fiber industry to receive this honor.

Lighthouse Factory: The Global Gold Standard for Smart Manufacturing

It is reported that, to date, the Global Lighthouse Network comprises 224 factories across more than 30 countries and 40 industries. China leads the way with 101 Lighthouse Factories, accounting for a significant 45% of the total. This demonstrates the exceptional strength of Chinese manufacturing in the wave of digital-intelligent transformation, as well as its innovative capabilities and international influence on the path to high-quality development.

Huafon Chongqing Spandex’s inclusion serves as authoritative recognition for its years of steadfast implementation of the “Digitalization, Intellectualization, Greenification, Internationalization” strategy. It also provides a replicable “Huafon Model” for the transformation and upgrading of China’s traditional manufacturing sector.

The significance of designating “Lighthouse Factories” lies in providing direction for the global manufacturing industry amidst change. Today, through batch after batch of these “Lighthouses,” China declares to the world: Intelligent Manufacturing in China has arrived.

Intelligent Manufacturing Upgrade: A Dazzling Leap from “Making” to “Smart Making”

As a global leader and the largest single-site spandex producer, Huafon Chongqing Spandex has accelerated its transition from “production and manufacturing” to “digital-intelligent quality manufacturing” through the high-starting-point, high-demand, high-standard, and high-quality construction of each project phase.

In recent years, the spandex industry has faced dual challenges of structural overcapacity and rapidly changing market demands. Huafon Chongqing Spandex recognized that the focus of market competition has shifted from scale expansion to a comprehensive contest involving product quality, production efficiency, cost control, and agile customization capabilities.

Customization and other flexible production needs brought frequent process adjustments, increased material waste, higher risks of product downgrading, difficulties in quality issue traceability, persistently high energy consumption, and continuously rising labor costs—all issues squeezing spandex profit margins.

How to break this deadlock? Yu Zhili, General Manager of Huafon Chongqing Spandex, stated that the solution, without sacrificing product quality, reducing R&D investment, or blindly trading low prices for volume, lies in the comprehensive implementation of digital-intelligent empowerment. For Huafon Chongqing Spandex, advancing the digital-intelligent transformation is no longer a “multiple-choice question” but a “mandatory question”—an intrinsic requirement for breaking through development bottlenecks and reshaping competitive advantages.

Consequently, building upon a high automation rate, Huafon Chongqing Spandex embarked on its digital-intelligent transformation journey. The company has continuously deepened the application of AI technologies, promoted intelligent upgrading across the entire chain, and systematically built a digital-intelligent management system covering the complete process from user demand, product design, and production manufacturing to quality management, safety and environmental protection, logistics, and user supply.

On the technology front, Huafon Chongqing Spandex tackled both large-capacity, low-energy-consumption green manufacturing technology for spandex and key technologies for creating multi-filament, multi-hole, high-speed, high-density spandex spinning, while also making breakthroughs in large-capacity, high-stability polyurethane polymerization technology, using advanced technology to drive intelligent manufacturing.

On the production front, Huafon Chongqing Spandex deployed 62 next-generation information and AI technologies, including AI-based intelligent process control, virtual sensing, machine vision, digital twins, IoT, and big data analytics, reshaping the production paradigm with new quality productive forces.

On the management front, Huafon Chongqing Spandex collaborated with its parent company, Huafon Chemical Co., Ltd., to establish a unified data platform. They built a high-quality spandex data interconnectivity and analysis repository, integrated systems like ERP, MES, and LIMS, achieving “one source for each data point, full-domain visibility.” Simultaneously, the company uses big data analytics to accurately predict market demand and inventory dynamics, optimizing production scheduling and significantly shortening order delivery cycles.

The organic synergy of digital-intelligent technologies has yielded remarkable results. Comparing 2024 to 2022, Huafon Chongqing Spandex increased its capacity by 62%, while its workforce grew by only 1%. Employee turnover rate dropped from 17.6% to 4.5%. Furthermore, the company’s net profit margin soared by 113%, labor productivity improved by 60%, the defective product rate decreased by 35%, and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) rose from 91.3% to 98.4%.

Green Intelligent Manufacturing: Fulfilling Dual-Carbon Mission, Empowering Sustainable Development

在追求智能制造、高效生产的同时，华峰重庆氨纶将绿色基因深植生产全流程，树立可持续发展典范。

能源在氨纶制造成本中占比较大，如何进一步确立公司在行业中低消耗、低排放、低成本的竞争优势？

Huafon Chongqing Spandex established a specialized task force. After thorough investigation, they found that effectively reducing production energy consumption required comprehensive consideration of real-time energy prices, complex process requirements, equipment energy use, and environmental data. The task force worked closely with the production technology team, aggregating data from production, utilities (water, electricity, gas), and environmental monitoring. Using optimization algorithms, they dynamically identified the best parameters, significantly reducing comprehensive energy consumption and costs while ensuring production.

Practicing responsible care and shouldering the green mission. Years ago, Huafon Chongqing Spandex invested tens of millions of RMB to successfully implement a technical upgrade for efficient DMAC solvent recovery, drastically reducing waste liquid discharge and significantly improving recovery and reuse efficiency. Today, the company continues to diligently develop recycling and reuse technologies. The solvent recovery rate in the spandex production process now exceeds 99%, and wastewater discharge is far below national standards.

“Extending the manufacturing system toward green and low-carbon, innovating the product chain toward green and low-carbon—our exploration of the path to sustainable development extends far beyond this,” stated Yu Zhili. Huafon Chongqing Spandex will also actively develop green product lines to assist downstream textile enterprises in achieving green transformation.

With this “Lighthouse Factory” recognition, Huafon Chongqing Spandex has also become a global benchmark in chemical fiber manufacturing, distinguished by simultaneously possessing high efficiency, high flexibility, and low-carbon emission characteristics.

Source: Huafon Group
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