Robots, smart factories now more common in Vietnam

Lavifood, a fruit processing and exporting company, has been using AI to organize a closed value chain, from providing seedlings and fertilizer to processing high-quality farm produce.

Pham Ngoc An, deputy general director of Lavifood, said AI is an efficient tool to control the cultivation process, helping improve the quality of farm produce used as input materials for its modern factory.

At Samsung’s factory in Bac Ninh province, 6,000 robots are working on the assembly line. Vinamilk, the nation’s leading dairy producer, has spent VND2.4 trillion to organize an automatic production line. At its factories, the transportation and sorting of goods are done by robots.

Vinasoy (soybean milk manufacturer), URC (consumer goods), Habeco (brewer) and many other manufacturers all use robots in their production.

Huynh Phong Phu from ABB Company confirmed that the demand for robots is on an upswing in Vietnam. In 2015 and earlier years, ABB could sell 200-300 robots a year, while the figure increased by many times in 2016-2017.

The big spenders

An analyst commented that manufacturers now tend to allocate big budgets on technology.

In the automobile industry, Truong Hai Automobile is known as a big spender on technology. It opened a modern factory recently with investment capital of VND12 trillion.

Huynh Dung Sang from Duhal, a lighting equipment manufacturer, said at a workshop on 4.0 industry revolution recently that the company invested $30 million in the last three years on its two factories in Tien Giang and Ben Tre.

According to Trinh Thanh Nhon, CEO of ICC, a cosmetics company, said the toothpaste production line in his company alone costs VND50 billion. With modern technology, the number of workers has been cut by 2/3, while the output has increased by three times.

To boost sales, the company uses sales management software worth VND4 billion, which has allowed its products to have large coverage at 20,000 shops in cities and provinces throughout the country and has helped sales increase by 20%.

Not only manufacturing companies which run large production lines, but trade and service companies, not only big corporations, but small enterprises have also utilized high technology.

Color Life, a website selling flowers at hoayeuthuong.com, has also been applying technology to run a closed process from order taking, delivery, and accountancy to post-sale service.

Color Life’s founder Pham Hoang Thai Duong said that utilizing modern technology is a must now for everyone. “Only when utilizing technology can I handle hundreds of orders a day,” he said.