On February 12, 2025, China packaging industry ushered in a milestone event - Dongdian Packaging spent 300 million yuan to build an intelligent workshop for gift boxes, which was officially put into production at its Dongguan city of Guangdong Province production base. As the first packaging demonstration factory in China that realizes “full-process intelligence + artisanal integration”, the workshop redefines the quality boundary of high-end packaging manufacturing with the industry's top efficiency of 40 boxes per minute, the printing precision of ±0.1mm, and the artisanal standard of 36 stringent procedures.
**Intelligent manufacturing leads the efficiency revolution**
In the 7,000-square-meter intelligent workshop, 12 fully automated box production lines are running at high speed. Through the self-developed fifth-generation intelligent molding system, the equipment can realize the whole unmanned operation from cardboard slitting, automatic folding to precise gluing.” The traditional process of producing a box requires 8 procedures and 3 workers, but now it only takes 90 seconds to complete automatically.” The person in charge of the workshop introduced. What's more remarkable is that the production line is equipped with a high-precision visual positioning system using sub-pixel-level image analysis technology, which can capture 238 positioning points of the printing pattern in real time, and control the overprinting deviation within the range of the diameter of a hair, which completely solves the industry pain point of the misalignment of the graphics and text of the gift box.
The real-time data on the digital big screen reveals the power of intelligent manufacturing: the average daily production capacity of the workshop exceeds 50,000 pieces, which is 600% higher than the traditional mode; the product qualification rate jumps from 92% to 99.8%; only one technical supervisor is needed for each production line, and the labor cost is reduced by 80%.” This system can automatically learn to optimize production parameters, such as dynamically adjusting the hot pressing temperature according to the humidity of the paper, which is difficult to achieve by manual operation.” Dongdian Packaging's chief engineer said at the commissioning ceremony.
**Human-Machine Collaboration for Forging Precision Quality**
In the boutique handmade box area on the second floor of the workshop, another “technology and craftsmanship” fusion drama is being staged. 30 craftsmen with more than 15 years of experience form a unique “human-machine CP” with a collaborative robot. Through the AR-assisted assembly system, the smart glasses worn by the craftsmen will project the crease guide line with 0.1mm precision, while the robotic arm will synchronize the precise cutting. When making a limited edition jewelry box, the gilt wrapping edge hand-polished by the artisan fits perfectly with the laser-engraved micro-perforated texture, showing an artistic texture that cannot be replicated by machines.
“We have set up a digital process database to transform the 'hand experience' of the master craftsmen into 268 quantitative parameters.” The production director pointed to the working intelligent temperature-controlled gluing table as an example, “Like this equipment can automatically adjust the amount of glue according to the environmental temperature and humidity, which not only retains the fullness of hand bonding, but also avoids the problem of overflowing glue.” The AI defect detection system introduced in the quality inspection link can simultaneously scan 32 key parts of the box body, and complete ultra-high-precision detection from millimeter-level scratches to color difference △E value of 0.5 within 0.8 seconds.
**Digital empowerment drives industrial upgrading***
The new workshop is not only a manufacturing center, but also the “nerve center” of Dongdian Packaging's digital transformation. It is connected to the MES production execution system, WMS warehouse management system and QMS quality management system through a dedicated 5G network, realizing the digital control of the whole process from order placement to the release of finished products from the warehouse. Customers logging into the system through an exclusive port can view the production progress in real time, access quality reports, and even participate in customized design - the system can generate 3D rendering renderings within 20 minutes, and automatically calculate costs and delivery times.
We are building a packaging industry meta-universe platform.” The general manager of Dongdian Packaging revealed at the media meeting, “In the future, customers wearing VR equipment will not only be able to ‘walk into’ the workshop to view the production reality, but also simulate the packaging tests under different transportation scenarios in the virtual space.” This innovative model has attracted the attention of a number of luxury brands, an international cosmetic giant even signed an annual 8 million pieces of strategic cooperation agreement at the scene.
**Green Intelligent Manufacturing Opens a New Chapter of Business***
Against the backdrop of accelerating carbon tariff policies, the new workshop is specially equipped with a special line for recycled materials. Transparent windows made of corn starch-based bioplastics are utilized in conjunction with biodegradable water-based ink printing technology to reduce the overall carbon footprint of packaging by 65%. The 20,000 square meters of photovoltaic panels on the roof of the workshop can generate 3.8 million kWh of electricity annually, which, together with the waste heat recovery system, truly realizes “zero-carbon production”.
“This workshop is a key step in our 'Smart Manufacturing 2025' strategy.” The chairman of Dongdian Packaging said in his speech at the commissioning ceremony, “It is expected to drive the company's high-end packaging business to grow by 300% in three years, and extend its service scope from luxury goods and electronic products to specialty areas such as cultural relic preservation.” With the first batch of trucks full of intelligent packaging drove out of the factory, Dongdian Packaging official website [link] real-time order Kanban figures began to jump - this new benchmark of intelligent manufacturing, technology and craftsmanship are colliding with the spark, igniting a prairie fire in the upgrading of the packaging industry.