Inside the smart factory of Chongqing Heyun Intelligent Tool Manufacturing Co., Ltd., it takes only 50 seconds to process a tool from raw material machining, grinding, and sharpening to handle assembly. The automated production line continuously churns out finished products, which are sold both domestically and internationally.
Longshui Town in Chongqing's Dazu District, known as "East has Yongkang, South has Yangjiang, West has Dazu," has a hardware manufacturing history dating back to the late Tang Dynasty and is a renowned hardware industry cluster in China. Leveraging its millennium-old industrial foundation, the region is vigorously promoting smart manufacturing transformation, injecting new vitality into the traditional hardware industry.
Traditional hardware production models suffer from low efficiency, high labor costs, and inconsistent product quality. To address these issues, Heyun Intelligent Tool began developing an intelligent production line in 2017, integrating German knife-making techniques with Dazu's traditional forging skills, and transforming production processes through digitalization and informatization. Today, the company produces over 700,000 tools annually, with an annual output value of 20 million yuan. It also shares its self-developed smart equipment and technology with ten local peers, driving the overall upgrade of the industry.
Digital empowerment extends beyond production. Dazu has built China's first hardware industry-specific identification and resolution secondary node. By scanning a product's QR code, consumers can access over ten pieces of information, including material, quality inspection details, production date, and anti-counterfeiting traceability. As of now, this node has connected 138 enterprises, assigned 824.9 million codes, and processed 833.6 million resolutions. The supporting hardware industrial internet platform has registered 555 enterprises, with 188 officially online. Data from 2022 shows that enterprises on the platform have reduced costs by an average of over 50 million yuan and increased production efficiency by 12%.
Currently, Dazu hardware covers ten major categories, including daily-use and tool products, with exports to the EU, Russia, Southeast Asia, and other regions. In 2022, the Longshui Hardware Market was approved as a national pilot for market procurement trade, with total market transactions reaching 45 billion yuan.
As a renowned "Hardware Capital" in western China, Dazu is seizing opportunities from the Chengdu-Chongqing Dual-City Economic Circle and the New Western Land-Sea Corridor. Local authorities stated that they will continue to deepen the application of industrial internet and digital technologies, build an industrial ecosystem featuring enterprise collaboration, resource sharing, and talent aggregation, and fully promote the deep digital transformation of Dazu's hardware industry.
