Weihua New Chinese-Style Intelligent Crane: Powering The World's First Shipbuilding "Lights-Out Workshop"

Project Background

Weihua New Chinese-Style Intelligent Crane (1)

El Weihua new Chinese-style intelligent crane has arrived at the forefront of global maritime manufacturing. Dozens of units were successfully delivered to the Wuhu Shipyard (Weihai) Green Marine Engineering Industrial Base, marking the facility’s official commissioning and signalling a pivotal shift for Chinese shipbuilding — from the inland rivers of Anhui Province to the open waters of the Bohai Sea. This delivery represents more than a logistics milestone; it marks Wuhu Shipyard’s strategic transformation after a century of operation, as the company expands its capabilities to meet the demands of modern offshore and marine engineering.

The Weihai base is Wuhu Shipyard’s first coastal, green, intelligent, and sustainable marine equipment facility. It focuses on ship construction, design and repair, offshore engineering equipment, and offshore wind power equipment development — industries that demand the highest standards of precision, efficiency, and operational reliability from every piece of equipment on the floor.

The Challenge: Enabling a Fully Autonomous “Super Factory”

The facility is home to the world’s first shipbuilding “lights-out workshop” — and the global shipbuilding industry’s first “super factory” — operating with eight fully automated production lines, an 80% workshop automation rate, and an intelligent central control system that autonomously allocates factory resources.

Achieving this required cranes that could match the facility’s ambitions: structurally compact enough to maximise floor space, intelligent enough to integrate with smart manufacturing systems, and precise enough to operate safely without human intervention. In a lights-out environment where production lines run autonomously around the clock, even minor positioning errors or equipment downtime can cascade into significant operational losses. The crane specification was therefore not a standard procurement exercise — it was a critical engineering challenge.

The Solution: Weihua New Chinese-Style Intelligent Cranes

Weihua delivered its self-developed Weihua new Chinese-style intelligent crane, purpose-built for this next-generation manufacturing environment. Drawing on years of proprietary R&D, the new Chinese-style design philosophy reimagines crane architecture from the ground up — optimising structural geometry, drivetrain efficiency, and control systems in ways that conventional crane designs do not address. Compared to traditional cranes, the performance improvements are substantial:

Performance Indicator	Improvement
Overall crane height	−30%
Total crane weight	−25%
Comprehensive energy consumption	−20%
Factory floor space utilisation	+10%+
Workshop automation rate	80%
Overall labour saving	~40%

The reduction in crane height alone has a compounding effect: lower crane profiles allow factory buildings to be designed with reduced ceiling heights, cutting construction costs and thermal load, while the lighter overall weight reduces structural demands on the building’s steel framework. These are not incremental gains — they represent a fundamental rethink of how lifting equipment should be integrated into intelligent manufacturing facilities.

Technology Highlight: World-Leading Anti-Sway Precision

At the core of the Weihua new Chinese-style intelligent crane is an internationally leading anti-sway system. In conventional crane operations, load swing is an unavoidable byproduct of acceleration and deceleration — operators must wait for loads to settle before precise placement can occur. In an autonomous environment, this delay is unacceptable. Weihua’s solution uses absolute value encoders matched with advanced anti-sway algorithms to deliver simultaneous position location and synchronous control:

Swing angle reduced to less than 0.2°
Swing amplitude reduced by 95%
Positioning control precision of 2 mm

This level of accuracy enables the crane to move, position, and release loads at full operational speed without any manual correction. Combined with physical safety protection measures, the system delivers a measurable uplift in overall safety assurance efficiency throughout the super factory — ensuring that autonomous operation never comes at the cost of workplace safety.

Outcome: Intelligent, Green, and Award-Winning

The completed Wuhu Shipyard Weihai super factory achieves approximately 40% overall labour saving through high-level human-machine collaboration — enabled in part by the Weihua new Chinese-style intelligent crane’s seamless integration with the facility’s intelligent central control system. The smart control platform dynamically allocates crane tasks, coordinates multi-crane operations across production lines, and monitors real-time energy consumption — delivering a level of operational intelligence that was previously impossible in shipyard environments.

The base’s 80% automation rate and eight fully operational production lines make it a benchmark not only for Chinese shipbuilding but for the global industry. Offshore wind energy clients, naval architects, and marine engineering contractors now have access to a production environment that combines the scale of heavy industry with the precision of advanced manufacturing.

In recognition of its contribution, Henan Weihua Heavy Machinery was awarded the “Outstanding Contribution Award” by Wuhu Shipyard for the construction of the Weihai base.

Looking Ahead

The commissioning of the Weihai super factory is not only a milestone for Wuhu Shipyard — it represents a significant step in China’s transformation from a shipbuilding large nation to a shipbuilding strong nation. The ability to design, build, and operate world-first intelligent manufacturing infrastructure domestically demonstrates a level of industrial capability that resonates far beyond the marine sector.

Weihua will continue to strengthen its five core capabilities across R&D, manufacturing, marketing, service, and supply chain. Guided by a green and low-carbon development philosophy, the company is committed to delivering more efficient, environmentally responsible lifting equipment — helping Chinese enterprises sail confidently into global markets. Future development will focus on deeper integration with industrial IoT platforms, expanded anti-sway intelligence for multi-crane synchronisation, and further reductions in lifecycle energy consumption across the full crane fleet.