In April 2017, in the large and quiet workshop of the Northwest Bearing Factory (hereinafter referred to as "West Axis"), rows of brand-new semi-finished bearings were neatly arranged, waiting to enter the machine tool for further processing. With the sound of rhythm grinding, there are only a dozen workers in a workshop with thousands of square meters busy in an orderly manner--"In the first quarter of this year, we have undertaken actual product contracts and initially reached an intentional contract of more than 200 million yuan, and now the production of bearings has achieved the whole process. Automatic operation, workers are only responsible for the control of entrance and exit." Du Jianwen, the person in charge of the enterprise, introduced.

After experiencing the glory of the old days and the ups and downs of the reform era, the "silly, black and rough" production workshop of the West Axis many years ago has been replaced by the first-class digital, informatized, green and intelligent rail transit bearing workshop in China today. From manufacturing to "intelligent manufacturing", it is necessary to have the confidence to follow the trend.

At present, under the background of my country's accelerating supply-side structural reform, the traditional superior products of the West Axis such as petroleum machinery bearings have been impacted, and the ability to resist risks in the market has weakened. "If we want to achieve sustainable and healthy development, we must transform from traditional products to mid-to-high-end products and comprehensively improve product quality." Du Jianwen said.

In September 2013, the construction of the high-end bearing base of Northwest Bearing started. The lack of funds was obtained from the capital market, and there were no personnel to coordinate and solve the problem from within. After a year of full preparation, 560 million yuan was invested in the first-phase project of the Northwest Bearing High-end Bearing Base, and completed the rail transit bearing project, military equipment bearing project, heat treatment production line, R&D center, dispatch center, and logistics storage center.

At present, West Axis has a domestic first-class digital production line, which integrates the digitalization of various systems and informatization workshops, and uses Internet big data and Internet of Things to form a modern smart factory. It has formed an annual production capacity of 4.19 million sets of high-end supporting bearings for rail transit, wind power, military industry, petroleum, metallurgy, mining engineering, heavy-duty vehicles, etc., and its technical level is at the forefront of the domestic industry.