From Parts Maker To Cross-Border Medical Imaging Intelligent Manufacturing Base Be-Cu Is Built Like This

After driving for about 2 hours from the BE-CU Medical headquarters in Jiading, Shanghai, reporters from the Science and Technology Innovation Board and more than a hundred investors arrived at the Be-Cu Medical production factory in Changzhou, Jiangsu.

Changzhou BE-CU is mainly engaged in upstream machining and complete machine production of high-end medical imaging equipment including magnetic resonance imaging (MR), X-ray computed tomography (CT), X-ray imaging (XR), and radiotherapy (RT). According to reports, the factory covers an area of about 80,000 square meters and is the world’s largest intelligent production base for high-end medical imaging equipment.

In the future, the production capacity here will also be used to support BE-CU Medical’s overseas projects. Going overseas is generally considered by the market to be one of the keys to whether BE-CU Medical can realize its valuation.

Lei Li, the person in charge of the factory, said that the biggest features of the production base are process automation, production and management informatization, monitoring refinement and integration. “The production of medical imaging equipment involves hundreds of parts and dozens of suppliers. Now, we can do it all in one factory. There is no other production factory in the world that can do this.”

When communicating with investors, Xue Min, the actual controller of BE-CU Medical, emphasized the important value of the integrated production model to BE-CU Medical’s overseas strategy.

“We are the first medical imaging equipment company to produce most of its components ourselves.” Xue Min said that the advantages of doing so are lower costs, controllable quality consistency, higher efficiency, and help improve products. “Even the entry-level products use the most advanced production technology, which can make our entry-level imaging products more competitive.”

▌Crossover from the global parts manufacturing leader

The founder of this factory is Lei Li.

According to BE-CU Medical’s prospectus, Changzhou BE-CU was jointly established by BE-CU Medical and Lei Li in 2016 to enhance the company’s product production capacity and extend the company’s production chain to the upstream machining field to enrich the company’s industry Chain layout.

“BE-CU Medical came to me around 2012 and hoped that I could help it produce MR injection molded parts.” Lei Li told a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily.

At that time, Lei Li was mainly engaged in Warwick parts making, which was established in 1992. It is a large-scale manufacturing enterprise specializing in parts manufacturing, production and machining. Its main customers include internationally renowned automobile manufacturers. “By 2018, I had It has become the global leader in the auto parts manufacturing industry.”

At that time, BE-CU Medical was looking for production suppliers. Compared with 2C products such as automobiles and home appliances, the demand for medical imaging equipment is obviously much smaller. At the same time, BE-CU Medical has extremely high requirements for products. This results in large manufacturers being unwilling to accept orders, while small workshops are unable to undertake them.

Lei Li is keenly aware that medical imaging equipment is a good direction and may become a new growth point for the company. He was willing to give it a try. Therefore, Warwick spent hundreds of millions to build new factories and purchase high-precision equipment to fully support the construction of Changzhou BE-CU. In the prospectus, this history is briefly described as:

In the early stages of Changzhou BE-CU’s business development, the business scale of the company and Changzhou BE-CU was small, and the demand for machining was low. On the other hand, Warwick Parts Manufacturing, as an important domestic parts manufacturing manufacturer, has complete equipment such as machining and CNC machine tools, and has significant supply chain advantages. In order to meet the company’s machining production needs and improve the equipment utilization rate of Warwick Parts Manufacturing, Changzhou BE-CU cooperates with Warwick Parts Manufacturing and leases Warwick Parts Manufacturing’s machining, CNC machine tools and other equipment according to Changzhou BE-CU’s business needs.

Today, Changzhou BE-CU has developed into one of the world’s largest intelligent production bases for medical imaging equipment, and the yield rate of off-line products is basically 100%.

“We can bring raw materials into the factory, process them into various parts and components in the factory, and then assemble them into various types of products such as MR, CT, DR, etc., and then leave the factory.” Lei Li said that the first advantage of this is to realize the production chain The quality is controllable and the guarantee is stable, and the second is to reduce costs and increase efficiency. In comparison, most other companies in the industry only find factories to process parts and components, and then assemble them in their own factories.

▌Flexible and intelligent production

Large-scale equipment is neatly arranged, workers are installing coils on the equipment, and materials are stacked in an orderly manner. On the front line of the factory, a reporter from the “Kechuangban Daily” saw that compared with traditional manufacturing, the level of leanness and intelligence here has been achieved. to a higher level.

Lei Li said that the characteristics of medical imaging equipment are that they require many types of parts, but the batches are small, and the overall production capacity demand is not high. If automated equipment is fully adopted, the cost will be too high. At the same time, since we are producing and processing medical equipment, the latter has extremely high quality requirements for parts and components, and product accuracy requirements must be between one-tenth and one-eighth of a human hair. Therefore, the requirements for lean production are very high. .

Judging from the annual report information, in 2022, BE-CU Medical produced a total of 3,584 medical imaging equipment (CT, MR, DR, MI, XR, RT). According to what the reporter learned at the scene, in order to meet the production of these types of products, Changzhou BE-CU needs to produce more than 6,000 kinds of nearly 1.6 million parts and components. “The raw materials of plates alone have more than 200 specifications.”

In order to achieve precise control of materials, Changzhou BE-CU uses intelligent management software and flexible production technology. The former can achieve precise management of material usage. “How much you bought, how much you used, how much you have left, you can clearly see all the production information in the office.” Relevant personnel said that the latter ensures that the company can efficiently produce different types of small batches. product.

For example, Lei Li pointed to the parts placed on the ground and said that these parts were automatically produced by machines at night. “Workers only need to place the raw materials required for parts production on the equipment pallet before leaving get off work, and the machine will automatically produce the finished product. The next day, the workers will be able to get the finished product.” Lei Li said.

“During the epidemic, our CT and mobile DR relied on this production model to achieve rapid mass production. This allowed BE-CU Medical to respond to market demand faster than its peers and help build the public defense system.” Lei Li introduced.

Equipment is only one aspect. In order to understand the production process, Changzhou BE-CU has also conducted a lot of research and development, including both materials and production processes, such as how to prevent parts from deforming after cutting, how to perform heat treatment, and how to The welding process ensures the strength and toughness of the product, how to achieve the best effect of spray painting, etc.

“Parts manufacturing and production need to strike the right balance between precision and cost to improve product competitiveness, and medical device parts are particularly focused on consistency and high precision. We did a lot of production trials in the early days, and some high-precision It often takes more than half a year for parts to reach the conditions for small batch production.” The staff said that a lot of R&D improvements were made in the later mass production.

▌Will escort BE-CU medical overseas

On the display wall of Changzhou BE-CU, various manufacturing weapons of the factory are displayed: the international cutting-edge horizontal milling flexible processing line, which can automatically and flexibly handle the processing of hundreds of precision parts(including Torlon Plastics cnc machining); the international advanced active chain transmission system is used to realize automatic painting , capable of painting 5,000 large-scale medical equipment at the same time; rail-mounted assembly line operation, which improves efficiency by 30% compared with traditional production models; nearly 20,000 automatic three-dimensional cargo spaces, precise control and deployment of goods…

At the BE-CU Medical investor exchange meeting held on the same day, the company’s actual controller Xue Min said that going overseas has been a major strategy for BE-CU Medical, and the company’s production capacity layout can ensure the timely supply of BE-CU Medical. and capture market share.

“At present, overseas countries still occupy the main market share of high-end medical imaging equipment. The company has sufficient product competitiveness to help the company achieve better market breakthroughs in overseas markets in the future.” Xue Min said frankly that the establishment and maturity of overseas markets have also It is a complex project that requires not only high-quality, cost-effective products, but also the support and guarantee of soft capabilities such as marketing, after-sales service, and branding. In this regard, BE-CU “must be down-to-earth and take into account both mid-term and long-term goals. Please Believe in BE-CU.”

When it comes to production capacity, Xue Min said that the construction period of medical imaging equipment production lines is relatively long, generally requiring about three years. However, “BE-CU Medical is ready and can supply more goods.”

Near BE-CU in Changzhou, the construction of the second phase of the factory has been completed. After about three years of installation and commissioning of the production line, the factory will also be put into production. Xue Min pointed out, “As for the future, we have careful production capacity plan.”