Shanghai Zihua: Walking with giants and opening up a new development pattern

As an industry leader in the field of film R&D and manufacturing, Zihua Technology integrates R&D, manufacturing and sales. It has advanced production equipment in the industry, relies on technology to lead development, focuses on R&D innovation and lean management, implements the brand strategy of "walking with giants", and provides comprehensive solutions for many brand giants in the sanitary materials industry. It breaks through the waves in the fierce market competition, stands proudly at the forefront, and writes a new chapter of development.

Shanghai Zihua Film Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 1996 and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shanghai Zijiang Enterprise Group Co., Ltd. Today, Zihua Technology has been deeply involved in the field of high-end cast film and blown film for more than 20 years and has rich experience in the field of film R&D and manufacturing. Over the years, Zihua Technology has provided comfortable, healthy and safe raw materials for many international and domestic high-end maternal and child groups, medical, daily chemical and other industries. It has been serving international brands such as Unicharm, Kimberly-Clark, and Procter & Gamble, and has reached long-term cooperation with large domestic sanitary product brands such as C-Treasure and Besute, and has been firmly in the position of industry leader for many years.

PART.01 Empowering new development with high-quality technology

For the long-term development of an enterprise, technical equipment plays a vital role. It is not only an important internal driving force for promoting enterprise renewal, but also the foundation of enterprise innovation and research and development. Zihua Technology puts technical equipment and other hardware supporting facilities at the top of its corporate development. It has excellent technical and product advantages and is equipped with the most advanced imported production equipment in the industry. Its core technical indicators are far ahead, and it has become the first company in the industry to successfully develop breathable membranes and promote them to the sanitary materials industry on a large scale, thus helping it become one of the leaders in the domestic cast film and blown film manufacturing industry.

In terms of production technology, Zihua Technology introduced Germany's advanced WH film blowing equipment in 2018, which can achieve an annual production capacity of 4,000 tons. The equipment uses a three-layer co-extrusion film blowing machine, which is formed by a special air ring and die head. A capacitive thickness gauge is configured during the forming process, which can monitor the thickness of the formed film tube and provide timely feedback on the temperature adjustment of the air ring. After sufficient cooling, it passes through the MDO longitudinal stretching device (the maximum stretching ratio can reach 10), and after stretching, the thickness is measured online again to adjust the film thickness before stretching, thereby ensuring the uniformity of the product. After the stretched film is subjected to surface corona treatment, the appearance defects are monitored online, which provides a guarantee for product quality.

With the support of advanced technology and equipment, the breathable film produced by Zihua Technology has won market recognition for its superior quality and excellent quality. Compared with products produced by cast film, the products produced by the blown film process have a wider range of gram weights, which can produce low-gram breathable films of 12-14gsm and high-gram products of 50g. The film blowing process also has superior tensile properties and longitudinal stability, which can help downstream customers reduce waste discharge rates, thereby saving production costs. In terms of production efficiency, the speed of film blowing equipment is much higher than that of breathable film prepared by cast film method, and it can achieve the goal of 4 rolls per shaft, which has a higher cost performance. In addition, compared with imported similar products, localized technology has more advantages in service, and fast pre-sales and after-sales services can achieve efficient communication.

PART.02 Use innovative research and development to help new leaps

If hardware support is the foundation of enterprise development, then innovative research and development capabilities are the core competitiveness of an enterprise's development. Since its establishment, Zihua Technology has continued to strengthen scientific and technological innovation and R&D investment, and continuously improve the conversion rate of scientific and technological achievements. At present, the company has established a relatively complete R&D system, has a strong R&D team, and has a number of invention patents, which provides strong technical support for the company's product innovation and customer customization.

With its advanced patent operation capabilities and core technology innovation capabilities, Zihua Technology has won many recognitions such as Shanghai High-tech Enterprise, Minhang District Digital Workshop Title, Minhang District Enterprise Technology Center, etc. Relying on its outstanding performance in "focusing on niche markets, high degree of specialization, mastering key core technologies, strong innovation capabilities, high market share, and excellent quality and efficiency", the company was also named Shanghai's "Specialized, Special and New" Small and Medium Enterprises in 2022. This honor is the most authoritative and highest-level honorary title in the national small and medium-sized enterprise assessment work. It is worth mentioning that Zihua Technology has recently been approved to become a Shanghai Patent Pilot Enterprise in 2023. These honors indicate that the government highly recognizes and encourages Zihua Technology's comprehensive strength in innovation capabilities, core technologies, market competitiveness, etc. in the PE film manufacturing industry.

At present, with the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the requirements for terminal products are getting higher and higher. In the fierce market competition, Zihua Technology continues to deepen the industry development trend, target market demand, and actively develop new products to meet customer needs. The color registration accuracy of the exquisite positioning printing film it produces can reach ±0.2mm, the positioning deviation is less than 0.1mm, and the color deviation control ΔE is less than 3, which is suitable for high-speed packaging lines with a packaging speed of more than 1000 pieces/minute. Stable color registration can reduce packaging line losses and help customers reduce costs and increase efficiency. It is currently a mature product used in batches by customers such as Unicharm and Kimberly-Clark. In addition, special functional films such as super soft series, super stiff series, super transparent series, super breathable series, and environmentally friendly materials such as paper angel series, ink series, ultra-low gram weight series, and degradable series are also recognized and welcomed by customers.

In the future, Zihua Technology will continue to follow the path of specialization, refinement, specialization and novelty, adhere to independent innovation, continuously improve product quality and value, and provide better products and services to the market.

PART.03 Start a new journey with advanced management

In order to further enhance the sustainable competitive advantage of the company, on the basis of a sound enterprise management system and energy management system, all employees will combine their own advantages to deeply combine informatization and industrialization, drive industrialization with informatization, and promote informatization with industrialization. By formulating management goals for the integration of information technology and industrialization, promoting the establishment and improvement of the system, and increasing relevant investment and guarantees, Zihua has embarked on a new path of industrialization and implemented a sustainable development model.

Zihua Technology launched the integration of information technology and industrialization project in 2019, and successfully passed the certification of the integration of information technology and industrialization management system of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2020. It has achieved remarkable results in promoting the integration of information technology and industrialization. The company's integration of information technology and industrialization has also reached a new level, and has obtained special support for the advanced manufacturing policy of Minhang District.

Zihua has effectively improved its lean production control capabilities through the "integration of industrialization and informationization". It has successively implemented enterprise resource management systems (K3), OA systems, MES systems, CRM systems, SRM systems, etc., and the company's production and operation efficiency has been significantly enhanced. Through the use of lean production control methods, the company has effectively promoted the integrated control of planning and implementation, and gradually realized the transparency and refinement of the production process. It can respond quickly and control the quality of the whole process, greatly reducing waste, and better meeting the ever-changing customized market requirements.

The company also used a series of analytical tools and the self-assessment system of the integration of industrialization and information technology to sort out the current level of the integration of industrialization and information technology in the industry and the shortcomings that exist, and clarified the lean production control capabilities of medical film that match the strategy in recent years and need to be built, as well as the new capabilities that need to be built in the future. It pointed out the specific direction for the company to further integrate resources and focus on development.

In the future, the company will continue to enhance new capabilities such as R&D innovation, quality control, and supply chain collaborative operations that are consistent with the company's strategic direction, shift from focusing on the local to coordinating the overall situation, emphasize the transformation from technology to standardized management, and systematically promote the integration of industrialization and information technology with the ideas and methods of the management system. Finally, various new technologies and applications such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain will be used to connect the business chain and data chain between various information systems, promote the company to a high level, and at the same time provide support for the improvement of the overall scientific and technological level of the industry and modernization improvements.