When you think about a factory，what do you imagine first？ DO you picture lots of workers doing the same thing over and over again without stopping ？Well，things are changing？
Nowadays, because of super cool technologies like artificial intelligence(AI 人工智能），the internet of things, cloud computing and big data（大数据）, factories are becoming smarter.They need fewer workers than you might think.
Teway Food Group. a company in Chengdu, Sichuan makes tasty seasonings （调料）.There robots do most of the work in their clever factory .First the robots get and mix the ingredients （材料）in line with their recipes （食谱）.After that， the ingredients go into a smart cooking system that carefully watches and controls the tempeatures to make sure the seasonings taste really good .During the whole process ，you hardly see many workers and this makes everything cost much less.
The vice president of the company. Yu Zhiyong, told The Paper,"Thanks to the smart factory, we have been able to make things 40 percent cheaper."
Beside helping companies save money, smart factories are also looking out for the safety of workers. Baidu created a smart safety assistant called Du An' an to make sure workers are safer in factories. It gives fast answers to safety questions from workers and also looks safety problems， helping managers work with dangers and risks quickly. Thanks to Du An'an，a big chemical company called Daxie Petrochemical can now deal with accidents 50 percent faster than before.
Faster. better and safer at a lower cost，smart factories are changing our production landscape (生产格局) on all fronts. In line with the "Made in China 2025" plan, China is ready to grow from a major manufacturer (制造国) to a manufacturing powerhouse (强国). smart devices increase safely and reduce waste
At Ford's electric vehicle (电动汽车，EV) factory in the UK, smart devices (设备) watch over the welding (焊接) process, which is important for EV motors and batteries that require thousands of welds. If a weld does not meet the standard, it is redone before the part progresses to the next step of production. This not only saves time but also reduces waste by making sure that every part is usable. In Singapore, they have special cameras and systems that keep an eye on how clean public spaces are. They also use technology to watch over how much energy is used and control water usage.
