Alibaba’s Secret Three-Year Experiment to Remake the Factory
After helping more than a million brick-and-mortar Chinese retailers modernize their operations, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has now set its sights on a new target: the country’s outdated factories.China’s largest corporation unveiled in September its first smart factory, a secret experiment that Alibaba’s been conducting for three years on the outskirts of its hometown of Hangzhou. The three-story facility known as Xunxi — translated literally as “fast rhino” — is the company’s attempt at leveraging its consumer data and technologies to help the multi-trillion-dollar manufacturing arena improving efficiency and meet rising consumer expectations.
Alibaba has said that one in four clothes purchases in the country was shipped via its e-commerce platforms, granting it access to an ocean of data that it’s now deploying to assist domestic garment makers in design and production planning.It’s also centralizing the material procurement process to help reduce costs. Artificial intelligence, robotic arms as well as many other in-house technologies have also been put into use at the Xunxi factory prototype.
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