Cathay contracted Siemens to jointly develop and implement digital solutions for the agricultural processing, biopharmaceuticals, chemical materials and spinning industries.

      • Siemens works with Cathay to construct a smart factory which produces new materials through biological methods in Wusu.

      • This includes process control, simulation, design platform, 3D virtual reality, manufacturing operations management, laboratory information management, intelligent factory operation and optimization software and other platforms and systems.

Cathay Biotech signed an agreement with Siemens AG in Beijing today, to jointly build an advanced digital factory in Wusu. Under the cooperation, Siemens will provide comprehensive digital enterprise solutions crossing the typical processes of four industries, including agricultural processing, biopharmaceuticals, chemical materials, and spinning industries. The new factory is financed by Cathay and will bio-manufacture new biomaterials.

"Siemens is the only company that can provide 'Digital Twins' across the entire value chain of products, production and plant management", said Lin Bin, Executive Vice President of Siemens Ltd., China and General Manager of Process Industries and Drives Division. "With the world leading Digital Enterprise solutions, we are willing to work with Cathay to embrace the opportunities in digitalization". According to the agreement, Siemens will provide Cathay with its offering in electrification, automation and digitalization, covering the entire product lifecycle from product design through production planning, engineering and execution to servicing.

Cathay's new factory will use biological methods (with renewable biomass as the raw material) instead of conventional petrochemical methods, to produce high-performance polyamide monomers and polymers. The new materials will have a better performance and are suitable for textile, automotive and electronics applications.

"Cathay Biotech is committed to R&D and the industrialization of new biological materials and their applications, and to becoming a global leader and innovator in the bio-manufacturing field with technical breakthroughs", said Dr. Xiucai Liu, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Cathay, "With our insights of the intrinsic parameters of bio-conversion processes and proven derivation methods, coupled with Siemens' global leading digitalization technologies, we are building an advanced factory and manufacturing process". 

Siemens' Digital Enterprise concept supports manufacturers to simulate, test and optimize products, production processes and plants in a completely virtual environment enabled by "Digital Twins". This not only significantly improves innovation speed and productivity, but also enables continuous optimization of the production process and the entire plant. The detailed products and systems include: 

      • Totally integrated intelligent control systems based on Siemens' process control system, encompassing simulation and optimization solutions for batch processes; 
      • Plant asset digitalization management system based on Siemens' integrated engineering digitalization platform, encompassing plant asset data platform, simulation, virtual commissioning, digital operation & maintenance, and 3D virtual reality; 
      • Intelligent factory operation system based on Siemens' manufacturing operation management platform, encompassing core production management, electronic work instruction/batch record, material management, quality analysis, performance analysis, recipe parameter management, energy management and laboratory information management systems; 
      • Centralized operation system based on Siemens' operational intelligence platform, delivering presentation, traceability, trend analysis and decision assistance features.