The National Manufacturing Innovation Center for High-End Engineering Machinery (referred to as the National Innovation Center) has secured official approval from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. This initiative is a collaborative effort led by Changsha City in Hunan Province and Xuzhou City in Jiangsu Province.
The approval marks a pivotal step for Hunan in pooling innovative resources and integrating into the national manufacturing innovation system. It will provide a powerful platform to support the development of a world-class engineering machinery industry cluster and the creation of a key national advanced manufacturing hub.
The National Innovation Center is jointly established by Hunan Guozhong Zhilian Engineering Machinery Research Institute Co., Ltd. (referred to as Hunan Guozhong Zhilian Engineering Machinery Research Institute) and Jiangsu Huizhi High-End Engineering Machinery Innovation Center Co., Ltd. (referred to as Jiangsu Huizhi Innovation Center). Initiating the effort, the Changsha municipal government led the formation of the Hunan Guozhong Zhilian Engineering Machinery Research Institute, which unites 14 entities, including the city's top five global engineering machinery manufacturers among the world's top 50—Sany, Zoomlion, CRCC, Sunward, and Sinoboom—along with core suppliers. This consortium brings together leading companies, research institutions, and industry associations to create an innovation chain spanning from technology development and transfer to the first commercial application.
Meanwhile, Jiangsu Huizhi Innovation Center focuses on research and development in areas such as new energy transmissions, digital hydraulic systems, and intelligent control systems for complex operating conditions, independently developing several core component products. The two entities complement each other's strengths through coordinated efforts.
Both Changsha and Xuzhou serve as national hubs for advanced manufacturing clusters in the engineering machinery sector. They share aligned development goals and boast complementary industrial strengths. The Changsha engineering machinery cluster has held the top position in national industrial scale for 16 consecutive years and was designated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as one of three samples for cultivating world-class clusters. The Hunan Guozhong Zhilian Engineering Machinery Research Institute has already achieved breakthroughs in key technologies, including high-wear-resistant alloy materials and multi-modal intelligent sensing data collection. It has established a cloud-based inspection and testing platform and laboratories for hydraulics, oil products, non-destructive testing, and engines, which are certified by CNAS. These facilities serve over 200 enterprises in the industry chain, providing foundational capabilities for supporting common technology research and offering public innovation services.
According to the deployment plan, Hunan Guozhong Zhilian Engineering Machinery Research Institute will focus on fundamental common technologies for high-end engineering machinery, such as new materials and processes, reliability, and remanufacturing, as well as unmanned intelligent control technologies. Its goal is to bridge the "last mile" from the lab to the production line. On the other hand, Jiangsu Huizhi Innovation Center will concentrate on tackling key technologies and advancing the application of breakthroughs in areas like high-reliability, heavy-duty new energy transmission technology and components, precision and efficient digital hydraulic systems and components, and fault diagnosis with intelligent maintenance.
Looking ahead, the National Innovation Center will build a collaborative innovation platform centered on four core capabilities: technology research and development, pilot-scale manufacturing, inspection and certification, and the transformation of results. It will focus on overcoming critical common technologies, optimizing the collaborative innovation ecosystem for the fully autonomous industrial chain, and accelerating the domestication of core components. The goal extends beyond technological breakthroughs; it aims to reshape the global influence of China's engineering machinery industry, driving the industrial chain from "controllable" to "independent" and from "following" to "leading." With the full launch of the platform, Hunan will leverage this opportunity to further deepen cross-regional collaborative innovation, providing strong support for the Chinese engineering machinery industry's ascent to the mid-to-high end of the global value chain.
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