Do you think our current factory is truly a smart factory?

Since slogans like “Made in China 2025” and “Industry 4.0” were launched, a frenzy for future and smart factories has swept across China—and indeed, the entire world. Centered around the Pearl River Delta in Zhuhai and the Yangtze River Delta, a growing number of high-end manufacturing enterprises have emerged, along with an increasing number of factories that proudly proclaim they’ve achieved “intelligent” transformation. But are these so-called “smart” factories really smart?

As shown in the figure above, most of today’s so-called “intelligent” factories still rely on human workers wielding electric screwdrivers to tighten products. Can this really be called “intelligent”?

In my view, true intelligence in manufacturing should mean that screw-tightening operations can be systematically monitored. After all, people inevitably get tired—and the more exhausted they are, the more likely they are to make mistakes. Once errors occur, cross-tightening and missed-tightening become frequent occurrences. Can such a production line really be called “intelligent”?

Moreover, the torque applied when using this kind of screwdriver relies entirely on human effort. It’s still manageable for experienced craftsmen, but what about beginners? Beginners aren’t so easily able to get the hang of it. Once they apply too much force—overdoing it—they can cause irreparable damage to some precision products.

If a factory boasts of being a “smart factory” while actually operating a production line like this, it’s simply paying lip service. Pursuing pointless “smartification” just for the sake of a label—why bother? It’s better to leave it alone altogether.

In my opinion, a smart screwdriver should achieve these points!
1. Free yourself from human constraints and let robots take full control.
2. Data is perfectly recorded and promptly fed back, facilitating analysis and improvement by researchers.
3. Tighten precisely to minimize errors.
4. Timely alarms for incorrect or missed tightening, facilitating easy inspection.

There are even other points, but I believe these few are essential procedures in today’s smart screw-tightening processes at factories! The image above is a great example: a six-axis robot equipped with the Sensewee smart screwdriver. Thanks to the robot’s flexible movements, it can precisely position itself at the target location for tightening. Then, using the controller on the Sensewee smart screwdriver, the torque can be set precisely, ensuring that each screw is tightened exactly to the specified torque value. If any incorrect or missed tightening occurs, the system immediately triggers an alarm, alerting staff to perform inspection and adjustment. Moreover, every piece of data is recorded in the system, making it easy for subsequent checks and analyses.

In my view, this is intelligence—but it’s not fully intelligent!

What does fully intelligent look like? Only when a Sensewee smart screwdriver can automatically analyze data, self-adjust, and provide feedback on data analysis results—without any human intervention—is it truly considered fully intelligent.

But as of now, the level of intelligence that screwdrivers can achieve is only about that of the Sensewee smart screwdriver.

However, in reality, many factories also want to achieve smart manufacturing. Unfortunately, constraints on funding and costs have forced these factories to come to terms with the reality.

At this stage, we still have to rely on manual labor—after all, the costs are what they are. However, issues such as cross-threading and under-tightening need to be addressed promptly, and tightening accuracy must also be kept within a certain range.

Faced with this dilemma, the Sensewee handheld smart screwdriver can solve the problem.

It’s still the same recipe, and it still feels just as good. The difference is that we’ve adopted a user-friendly design that’s easy to handle, and we’ve made even more adjustments to ensure that anyone can effortlessly tighten every single screw!