A Pioneering Alliance Delivering Transformative Automation For Glass Manufacturing Excellence
How BOYU GLASS’s vision and MAC-YUGONG’s automation expertise transformedproduction through intelligent, space-optimized solutions.
- Automatic warehousing system
- Cutting machine and laser marking machine
- Two double edger lines
- One tempering furnace
- Two IG lines
- One laminated line
As the exclusive automation solution provider for BOYU, MAC-YUGONG faced an unprecedented challenge. The limited factory space demanded a comprehensive automation system—including inter-floor glass transfer between the first and second levels, automated glass flow and logistics, extreme automation density, and streamlined operations.
“Rising to the challenge” is the core belief of MAC-YUGONG’s team. To deliver this project successfully, MACYUGONG’s engineers demonstrated outstanding design capabilities. We implemented a smart floor-by-floor workflow, with the ground floor dedicated to the integrated cuttingedging-tempering line. The glass is transferred by an industrial cloud lifter system to the second floor for insulating and laminating processes.
MAC-YUGONG’s tailor-made automatic solution for BOYU provides robust support for BOYU to achieve a big output with small investment, solidifying its core competitiveness in the glass market.
Despite China’s heavily competitive glass market, this partnership enabled BOYU to achieve remarkable expansion—establishing five automatic lines within just a few years.
What are the highlights of the MAC-YUGONG solution that enabled BOYU to expand in five years?
The standout feature is its intelligent automation. Full automation is achieved through intelligent software and robust hardware. From the raw glass warehousing system to the horizontal sorting system (35 layers), the BOYU solution showcases a super intelligent glass processing flow.
In BOYU, the raw glass warehousing system is divided into online storage and offline storage. The online storage typically holds commonly used glass to meet 24–48 hours of production demand. The ERP system dispatches optimized cutting plans to the raw glass warehouse and retrieves corresponding glass from both online and offline storage. If the required glass for an order is not in the online storage but in the offline storage, workers transfer it from offline to online as instructed by the ERP. This optimization method improves cutting efficiency by 2%–3%. The raw glass racks required for production are transported by shuttle cars to the loading station, where the loading table sequentially feeds the glass sheets onto the production line.
MAC-YUGONG’s pioneering laser marking table enables precise diagonal coding on glass, with customizable positioning (e.g., distance from the glass edge) as per client specifications. MAC-YUGONG firmly believes that comprehensive tracking and recording of every single glass sheet is the foundation for effective glass factory management. Each piece of standard glass is assigned a unique identity through MAC-YUGONG’s laser marking. Once coded, every glass sheet can be accurately tracked and recorded throughout the entire process.
Glass production data can be transmitted to all processing stages. The intelligent laser marking system can seamlessly integrate with any cutting machine on the market for data sharing. After cutting, each glass sheet undergoes CCD barcode scanning. The ERP system then receives the completion signal of glass cutting and separation, automatically updating this information to advance the order workflow accordingly.
After cutting and breaking, the glass enters a horizontal sorting storage (9 layers) before edging. This horizontal sorting storage balances the different production cycles between the cutting and edging machines. As is well known, cutting speed is typically faster than edging. The sorting rack stores glass awaiting edging and releases sheets one by one at the optimal pace for the edging process. Notably, this is not just a simple storage but an intelligent sorting system with computational logic. The order in which glass enters the rack differs from the exit sequence, which is dynamically optimized for maximum edging efficiency. Though compact, this sorting storage plays a critical role: it acts as an effective buffer while optimizing the edging sequence, eliminating quality and safety risks caused by manual handling. For any glass processor looking to enhance automation while solving speed mismatches between cutting and edging, the horizontal sorting storage (9 layers) presents an exceptionally efficient solution.
Behind this seemingly simple sorting storage lies remarkably complicated operational logic. Its advanced intelligence is powered by MAC-YUGONG’s robust MES system.
As ERP specialists for the glass industry since 2004, MACYUGONG has drawn upon its profound understanding of production efficiency, bottlenecks, and management challenges to help thousands of manufacturing plants overcome slow production, management difficulties, and lowefficiency issues. It has pioneered ground-breaking innovations in software solutions for glass processing.
Considering the cutting machine’s capacity nearly matches that of two double-edging machines, the company installed two straight-line double edgers side by side within BOYU’s limited workshop space.
In the MAC-YUGONG solution, automated factories no longer require inspection stations prior to the double edger. Instead, they directly utilize data transmitted by the MES system to achieve automatic edging. By intelligently capturing production data, functional equipment can autonomously adjust operations, significantly boosting productivity while eliminating human error-induced quality issues.
“What’s your factory’s double edger speed in meters per minute?”— this was once the paramount concern for traditional factories. However, in a smart factory, you’ll realize that achieving high speed is no longer the core market competitiveness of the double edger. What modern manufacturers truly need are systems capable of high-precision data integration with intelligent networks, ensuring stable product quality, consistent performance, and seamless operation across the entire production line.
Unlike traditional factories, in the MAC-YUGONG solution, glass after edging enters a pre-batching table for preliminary combination. While “glass batching” is an unfamiliar term to conventional plants, it is critical in automation. The batching process is divided into two stages: finalbatching and pre-batching preceding it.
Final-batching before tempering aims to deliver a complete furnace load to the tempering oven. Using set programs, glasses requiring tempering are optimally arranged in both horizontal and vertical orientations. The principle involves first combining individual glass pieces into smaller units, which are then assembled into a full set for tempering—akin to building with LEGO bricks.
Pre-batching, by contrast, groups individual glasses into subassemblies, which are stored and organized in a 35-layer horizontal sorting storage. Based on order requirements, these pre-assembled glass groups are sent to the front end of the tempering furnace for final batching adjustments.
To fulfill these tasks, the 35-layer sorting storage must possess robust storage capacity and logical computing power. By leveraging MACYUGONG’s high-performance MES system, we assisted BOYU GLASS in successfully achieving advanced automation and intelligence. Regarding batching before tempering, we take pride in the fact that MAC-YUGONG’s implementation of point-based glass arrangement in BOYU’s automation solution was a domestic first, solidifying our position as an industry trailblazer in automation.
Glass assemblies enter the 3D dot matrix batching table, where they are precisely positioned and lifted by small pneumatic cylinders. The system then awaits the arrival of the next group until the entire furnace load is complete. The innovative cylinder design effectively eliminates the risk of glass damage caused by roller rotation.
MAC-YUGONG’s pioneering matrix-based batching technology not only resolves the critical challenge of maximizing furnace loading efficiency and enabling prioritized production but also ensures the highest glass quality.
A superior system should possess the capability to execute contextspecific logical operations, which is precisely the strength of MACYUGONG’s MES, featuring complex algorithmic logic, high-performance processing power, and seamless operational flow.
The configuration of the cuttingedging-tempering production line maximizes the utilization of 2,000m² ground-floor space through a pioneering approach: MAC-YUGONG innovatively employs an industrial elevator system to vertically transport tempered glass from the firstfloor furnace to the second-floor workshop, where it undergoes further processing into insulated glass and laminated glass units.
In 2019, when vertical glass sorting was still an emerging concept, the MAC-YUGONG team had already developed a near-perfect software system to enable automated pairing for both insulated glass units, laminated glass, and laminated IGUs. This complex logic, which remains a significant technical challenge even today, was made possible through our industrial-grade software computing capabilities.
Software often plays a pivotal role in industrial transformation. Through our proprietary software, the glass conveyor is revitalized to handle multi-size glass batching, moving beyond single-glass transport monotony. While other fabricators were still manually handling glass sheets, the solution designed for BOYU had already achieved synchronized multi-glass transfer. By the time competitors were struggling with manual pairing for insulated glass units, BOYU had realized fully automated production and operation through the system.
Enterprises that haven’t navigated transformative industrial shifts of this scale can scarcely comprehend the breadth of substantive, painstaking challenges we resolve for customers—from software to hardware. If you were to speak with its customers, they wouldn’t merely label MAC-YUGONG as a software or automation equipment vendor. Instead, they’d emphasize the company’s role as innovators of tailored solutions within the industry. MAC-YUGONG is steadfast in its belief that every one of its automation projects is non-replicable because its customers themselves are inherently unique.
Since BOYU’s inaugural automation project in 2021, MAC-YUGONG has successfully collaborated with the company to complete five automation projects. MAC-YUGONG has been witness to BOYU’s metamorphosis—a journey akin to a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon into a butterfly.
Over years of accompanying BOYU’s growth, the company too has evolved continuously. Compared to its former selves, the company now possess richer expertise, stronger capabilities, more sophisticated solutions, and higher-quality services. MAC-YUGONG remains steadfast in its aspiration to collaborate with more visionary enterprises like BOYU, committed to empowering their growth through innovative automation solutions.
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Website: www.macglastech.com
