From Helan Mountain to the World: The AI Intelligent Manufacturing Upgrade of an Old Coal Machinery Factory

In the opening year of China's "15th Five-Year Plan," the manufacturing sector is undergoing a critical transition from scale expansion to quality leap. As "new quality productive forces" become the core keyword of industrial policy, how can traditional heavy industries—especially the coal machinery sector, once labeled as "high energy consumption, high pollution"—achieve intelligent and green transformation? The practice of Ningxia Tiandi Benniu Industrial Group provides a typical example.

This factory, originating from the "Third Front" construction period in 1966, has become a leader in China's coal equipment industry after nearly 60 years of technological iteration and strategic restructuring. In 2023, its 10-meter ultra-high mining face scraper conveyor system set a new world record for coal seam mining height; in the same year, a high-end digital manufacturing base with an investment of over 700 million yuan was completed, with 34 intelligent production lines, 262 high-precision machine tools, and 55 industrial robots forming the prototype of a new-generation "lights-out factory." More importantly, AI technology is being deeply embedded in equipment operation and maintenance: the mining embedded condition monitoring device launched in 2024, through edge computing and AI algorithms, enables equipment health assessment and functions such as automatic tensioning and automatic lubrication, and has been deployed in leading coal enterprises like Yankuang Energy.

Value Chain Leap from "Single Machine Manufacturing" to "Intelligent Services"

Tiandi Benniu's transformation is not merely production line automation, but a restructuring of the value chain. After becoming a subsidiary of China Coal Technology and Engineering Group in 2006, the company's strategy shifted from a single equipment manufacturer to an "intelligent coal machinery equipment service provider." Its scraper conveyor remote operation and maintenance service system, launched in 2025, integrates over 70 diagnostic models, forming a closed loop of "data perception—intelligent diagnosis—decision execution." This shift means the company no longer sells only hardware, but provides "equipment health management" as a digital service, essentially upgrading the business model from one-time transactions to ongoing paid operational services.

This model is known in the industrial sector as "Manufacturing as a Service" (MaaS), a paradigm advocated by both German Industry 4.0 and China's smart manufacturing. For highly hazardous and continuous industries like coal mining, remote operation and maintenance directly reduce downtime losses and personnel safety risks. Tiandi Benniu's digital system covers the entire chain of R&D, production, supply chain, marketing, and service. Its information systems such as ERP and MES have improved material flow efficiency by more than 30%.

Green Remanufacturing: The Intersection of Circular Economy and Carbon Neutrality

Under the "dual carbon" goals, the coal machinery industry faces the dual pressure of phasing out existing equipment and resource waste. In 2023, Tiandi Benniu established Benniu Remanufacturing Company as a joint venture with Shandong Energy Equipment Group, specializing in the recycling of retired equipment. This move directly addresses industry pain points: large components of coal mining machinery (such as scraper chains and reducers) are high in value; through remanufacturing technology, they can be restored to over 90% of original performance at a cost of only 50%-60% of new products. Meanwhile, the company implements 6S site management and lean production to minimize energy consumption and waste in the manufacturing process.China Coal Industry Association data shows that in 2025, the domestic coal machinery remanufacturing market has exceeded 20 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of over 15%. Tiandi Benniu's remanufacturing layout not only responds to the policy advocacy of resource recycling, but also constructs an industrial closed loop of "sales—operation and maintenance—recycling—remanufacturing," enhancing customer stickiness and reducing the full life cycle carbon emissions.

Global Competitiveness: From the Domestic Market to the Belt and Road

China's coal machinery industry is shifting from import substitution to global export. Tiandi Benniu's products have covered China's major coal-producing areas and are exported to countries along the Belt and Road such as Russia and Turkey. Compared with German and American competitors, Chinese equipment offers a price advantage of about 30% under the same performance, with faster localized service responses. More importantly, the remote capability of intelligent operation and maintenance systems allows overseas customers to obtain real-time diagnosis through China's cloud platform, reducing the cost of dispatching overseas service teams.

This trend echoes the global supply chain restructuring. Under the dual pressure of energy security and green transformation, emerging coal-producing countries such as India, Indonesia, and Mongolia are accelerating the modernization of coal mines, leading to a surge in demand for China's intelligent coal mining equipment. Tiandi Benniu's deputy general manager Shi Tao stated that the company's goal is to become a "world-class specialized leading enterprise" by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan, indicating that China's coal machinery industry is no longer content with OEM following but is attempting to define the technical standards for the next generation of intelligent mining.

Industry Insights: The Path of "New Quality Productive Forces" for Traditional Manufacturing

The case of Tiandi Benniu reveals the underlying logic of upgrading traditional manufacturing in China: it is not about discarding old production capacity, but rather using technologies such as AI, digital twins, and the Industrial Internet to carry out a "genetic modification" of traditional equipment. There are three core elements: first, replacing hazardous positions with industrial robots (55 robots reduce the injury rate in welding and assembly by 80%); second, replacing experience-based judgment with data-driven decision-making (AI algorithms improve the accuracy of fault prediction to 92%); third, extending service-oriented value instead of solely selling hardware (remote operation and maintenance brings about 15% additional revenue).

On a deeper level, this path echoes the macro goal of "building a modern industrial system" in China's 15th Five-Year Plan—that is, reshaping the comparative advantages of manufacturing through new quality productive forces. For investors and supply chain managers, focusing on companies like Tiandi Benniu that have the ability of "deep technical cultivation + model innovation + green closed loop" may become a benchmark for evaluating the quality of China's manufacturing upgrade.

(This article is based on reports from Global Times and public industrial data)