Sichuan Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL-SC), a wholly-owned 
subsidiary of CATL, has been added to the Global Lighthouse Network (GLN) by 
the World Economic Forum, making it CATL's second Lighthouse plant following 
its Ningde facility, which was included in GLN in 2021. So far there are only 
two Lighthouse factories in the battery industry globally, both of which are 
CATL's production facilities.

The World Economic Forum made the following remarks about CATL: "To catch up 
with significant business growth, and higher quality and sustainability 
expectation, CATL builds up a large greenfield in Yibin city. The plant further 
deployed in depth AI, IoT and flexible automation on top of CATL Ningde 
headquarters lighthouse digital initiatives, and has achieved 17% increased 
line speed, 14% reduced yield loss, and zero carbon emission."

The Global Lighthouse Network is a community of manufacturing sites that show 
leadership in the adoption and integration of the cutting-edge technologies of 
the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Francisco Betti, Head of Advanced 
Manufacturing and Value Chains at the World Economic Forum, said: "The new 
factories of the Global Lighthouse Network show how manufacturers can meet 
business goals while having a positive impact on economies, peoples' 
livelihoods and the environment. The challenge for companies and policymakers 
is how much they can scale-up these innovations across whole production 
networks and value chains."

Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies drives productivity, sustainability 
and resilience

In the context of comprehensive digital transformation of battery industry, 
CATL is accelerating digital innovation in battery's full life cycle regarding 
battery design, manufacturing, utilization, and recycling, so as to meet the 
requirements for high precision process, fast production speed, and high 
quality.

- Green Energy Management. CATL has developed an energy management system that 
collects data from over 40,000 sensors deployed in the plant through Narrow 
Band-IoT & 5G wireless solutions. Supported by an advanced algorithm, the 
system has calculated each equipment's operating parameters with optimized 
energy consumption of the system.
- Intelligent production management. By developing a closed-loop coating 
process control algorithm, CATL-SC is able to model and deeply learn the 
combined parameters of more than 1,000 powders and fluids, achieving precise 
control of foil coating in micron and milligram levels, thus greatly improving 
the consistency of products.

Also, based on virtual and simulation development, pack lines of CATL-SC have 
achieved 80% automatic. Supported by automatic gluing process, the manpower of 
the gluing process line is reduced by 70%, achieving 99.8% qualified rate.

- Extreme quality management. With the application of high-precision visual 
inspection equipment and AI technology, CATL-SC has achieved recognition 
accuracy to micron level, which stimulated breakthroughs of defect detection in 
process of welding, winding and previous process under high-speed fluid 
condition.
- Highly precise safety management. Safety management is crucial to CATL-SC, 
which is currently one of the largest EV battery production bases in the world. 
By combining video streaming and AI technology, it has reduced the risk of 
missed inspection. Through video streaming, the system can automatically 
identify operation mistakes such as mixed placement of signs and channel 
occupation, and is able to label and save images automatically. Supported by 
infrared thermal and AI technology, it has centralized temperature monitoring 
of battery cells in warehouses and temperature monitoring of battery cells in 
key high-temperature processes.

As a global leader to achieve the world's first Lighthouse factory in the 
battery industry, CATL has reduced the defect rate of its products to PPB 
level. It is now in an effort to replicate its Sichuan plant's experiences in 
agile and flexible intelligent manufacturing in all its 13 production bases 
worldwide, thus contributing to the high-quality development of the new energy 
industry amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

SOURCE: Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited

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