en.Wedoany.com Reported - Chery Automobile's Dalian plant in China has deployed 484 autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), enabling the production of approximately 1,000 vehicles per day while maintaining uninterrupted operations and automating tasks across 127 material categories.
Most automotive plants are not built for automation but for production. This reality makes automating existing facilities one of the industry's most challenging tasks. Unlike new factories, existing plants must undergo upgrades while maintaining production, requiring automation systems to adapt to existing systems, fixed layouts, and active operations.
More than a year after deployment began, ForwardX Robotics' AMR system continues to expand within Chery's Dalian plant without disrupting production. The project has become one of the largest AMR deployment cases in existing facilities within the automotive industry.
Production continuity is a key operational requirement for this plant. Across the welding and final assembly workshops, AMRs support a wide range of internal logistics processes, including line-side delivery, SPS cart transport, powertrain conveyance, and empty container recovery. In the body shop, 204 AMRs supply 32 material categories, meeting over 80% of supply needs. In the final assembly workshop, 280 AMRs handle 95 material categories, fulfilling nearly 90% of the assembly line's supply requirements.
Success in existing facilities depends not only on the autonomy of mobile robots. Existing factories face a unique set of challenges: limited line-side space, mixed traffic of workers and forklifts, existing IT infrastructure, changing production requirements, and extremely short deployment windows. To address these challenges, ForwardX combined strategies such as visual autonomy, fleet scheduling, manufacturing integration, and phased implementation. The deployment required no major modifications to the facility but instead integrated into existing production and logistics workflows, operating collaboratively with workers, conveyor belts, robotic equipment, and existing handling assets.
Nicolas Chee, Founder and CEO of ForwardX Robotics, stated that the challenge lies in retrofitting an operating plant while protecting production. Automating existing facilities requires integration, scheduling, and a deep understanding of manufacturing operations. As OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers continue to upgrade existing facilities, retrofitting existing plants is becoming a key priority across the automotive industry. For most manufacturers, future automation investments will be directed at existing factories rather than new ones. Greenfield projects prove that robots can run, while brownfield projects demonstrate that automation can be deployed at scale in real manufacturing environments. Chery Dalian showcases what this transformation looks like in practice.
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