Wave Makers | The New Generation at Procter & Gamble's Taicang Lighthouse Factory: Breaking the Rules of Standard Game, Creating a New Category of Laundry Concentrate Liquid

“Many people might not realize how serious some cut corners are in laundry detergents.” At the recent 2nd Fabric Cleaning and Care High-Quality Development Forum, Fan Ping, technical advisor at the National Surface Active Agents and Detergent Standards Center, revealed techniques used by the laundry detergent industry to play the “standard game” to pass off inferior products.

“Because industry standards for laundry detergents are non-mandatory, less than half (about 47.5%) of products on the market actually comply with industry standards. The rest follow inconsistent corporate standards. There was a case where a company deliberately increased the test sample concentration to get a more favorable and impressive test report,” Fan Ping said with some frustration. “Some set key indicators (like total active ingredients and cleaning power) far below recommended industry standards, creating a ‘qualified’ certificate that is very easy to pass. These behaviors directly lead to the current uneven product quality.”

Procter & Gamble, which has been working in the laundry category for 80 years, also struggles with the industry’s inconsistent standards and the “low-quality internal competition.” Therefore, it set higher thresholds for its Tide, Bounty, and Danni laundry liquids than the industry norms. After raising the corporate standards for Tide, Bounty, and Danni laundry liquids, the total active ingredient content standard was increased from the industry standard of ≥15% to ≥20%. The cleaning power for key stained fabrics was doubled, and new standards not mentioned in the industry standard—such as anti-washout performance and easy-rinse standards—were added, with the latter directly aligning with infant detergent standards.

Unexpectedly, this popular product on social media is produced at P&G’s Taicang Lighthouse Factory. Excluding minor fluctuations caused by human operation, the implementation of AI visual inspection systems to ensure standards are met relies on the efforts of multiple generations of P&G employees.

P&G’s Taicang factory in Jiangsu is also a “Global Lighthouse Factory” and a “National Green Factory.”

Pioneering the Path: From Blueprints to Lighthouse Factory, Creating High-Quality Laundry Liquids

In early 2014, in Taicang, before a vacant lot awaiting construction, Li Zhen, who had been with P&G for just six months, was staring at blueprints. A graduate of Materials Science from Beihang University, she came to the “cosmic giant” P&G with hopes of a “once-in-a-decade entrepreneurial opportunity,” and became the manufacturing lead for the first laundry liquid production line at P&G’s Taicang plant. She probably didn’t expect that this land would witness the rise of a world-class benchmark factory.

“Even I couldn’t believe it. I thought I would start with basic process execution, but I ended up participating in team tasks like recruitment and equipment assessment,” Li Zhen recalled. During the initial preparations, she and a colleague from Guangzhou would review over a dozen tasks daily, including technician assignments, equipment testing, and process inspections.

In early 2016, Li Zhen faced a new challenge—could the factory still reliably supply high-quality products amid a surge in production orders? At that time, the most advanced technology globally was to upgrade factory equipment and manufacturing processes through intelligent means, reducing human errors under high output pressure and improving quality stability. Therefore, P&G’s Taicang plant decided to build Asia’s first “lights-out” automated fabric care workshop. However, automation technology was not yet fully mature, and the unique characteristics of each factory limited available case studies. Li Zhen’s team had to be the “pioneers.”

“The real goal of ‘lights-out’ is to eliminate the tiny fluctuations caused by human operation, achieving near-absolute stability,” Li Zhen explained. The team considered installing temperature and pressure sensors along with automatic tuning programs to enable the production line to operate precisely in a dark environment, reducing monthly downtime failures to single digits. “Any fluctuations could be detected and corrected within seconds.” This innovative breakthrough helped the Taicang factory earn the World Economic Forum (WEF) “Global Lighthouse” certification in 2019.

“Everyone at P&G is willing to share openly,” Li Zhen told us. From the startup team, there were seasoned veterans and newcomers just joining the factory. From day one, she worked hand-in-hand with team members to learn technology. As a young leader, she also broke down each member’s responsibilities and encouraged everyone to achieve their goals. “This is a ‘battle friendship’ without hierarchical relationships.” What made Li Zhen proud was that, before she took a maternity leave in 2017, almost no team members had left or changed.

Laundry Liquid Production Site: P&G Taicang Lights-Out Automated Workshop

In February 2025, Li Zhen, now the Supply Chain Director for P&G Fabric Care, returned to Taicang. Her role now includes overseeing manufacturing, packaging, technology, and other aspects. “The scope of departments and information has expanded. I need to consider how to implement new products and further improve product quality for consumers,” Li Zhen revealed. One of her key tasks in 2025 is the development and production of Tide, Bounty, and Danni “laundry liquids.”

As the production lead for the “laundry liquid” project, Li Zhen has been coordinating with R&D, sales, and marketing since 2024 to turn this “epoch-making new product” from an intangible concept into a tangible product for consumers.

To provide a laundry product that excels in cleanliness, fragrance, anti-washout, easy-rinse, and residue-free features, the formula’s active ingredient content is extremely high, demanding higher production standards. For example, the water used in production is multi-stage reverse osmosis deionized water, with purity exceeding that of drinking water, ensuring active ingredients are unaffected by impurities. The automatic feeding pipes and storage tanks are made of medical-grade 316L stainless steel to meet corrosion resistance and residue-free safety requirements.

However, the innovative lightweight bottles and leak-proof diamond caps introduced new packaging challenges, such as label adhesion and clasp detection. “Consumer experience begins with opening the package,” Li Zhen said. To address this, she and her cross-functional team repeatedly tested and built an AI visual inspection system to perform 100% quality checks on each bottle. This “never-tiring eye” can scan every detail within 150 milliseconds, catching even slight label misalignments or clasp deviations.

Production of Tide Laundry Liquid

When the first bottle of laundry liquid rolled off the line, Li Zhen saw her younger self—full of passion and perseverance. Now, she has grown from a builder of the production line into a driver of industry standards.

New Generation Innovation: Automation Empowers Production Lines, Ensuring On-Time Delivery During Major Promotions

If Li Zhen laid the foundation for Taicang’s factory, then the addition of post-00s Feng Anqi injected new digital energy into this lighthouse factory. A master’s graduate in Food Science and Engineering from Jiangnan University, Feng Anqi joined as a process engineer, bringing cross-disciplinary courage and curiosity about supply chain implementation. After three months of shift work, she quickly understood the equipment operation logic. Her real breakthrough came during an efficiency innovation.

“Stock was insufficient, and the production line was smoking and couldn’t produce,” she said. During Double 11, this phrase often reflected the supply chain’s helplessness under heavy promotional orders.

“Can I shorten the production time for each batch?” An avid online shopper, Feng Anqi wanted to use her expertise to improve the supply capacity during big promotions. She found that relying on manual recording, data transfer, and entry of production inspection data created a hidden bottleneck during peak periods, consuming valuable time and reducing responsiveness to order demands.

“Since data transfer doesn’t create value, why not use technology to free our hands?” Inspired, she decided to write an automatic data synchronization program. Although her Python skills were basic, with support from P&G’s digital training resources, she consulted other factory tech experts, learned quickly, and debugged repeatedly. Within three months, she achieved automatic synchronization of inspection data, reducing hourly production time by two minutes. These two minutes, during critical promotional periods, significantly increased the capacity of the laundry liquid line.

For a newcomer just half a year into P&G, this successful innovation made her realize she was on a different path from her academic background. “School offers more theoretical knowledge and standard answers; in the factory, I can explore hands-on and see results quickly,” Feng Anqi said happily. “From the factory’s perspective, this is an efficiency boost; from my personal view, it’s my first small achievement in using a self-created intelligent tool to deliver consumers’ favorite laundry liquid faster. Plus, the frontline team feedback is that repetitive data entry has decreased, allowing them to focus more on quality control. It makes me feel my work is truly valuable.”

Feng Anqi also helped build the “Digital Sutra” AI knowledge base, consolidating and optimizing operational knowledge for new employees to quickly find solutions. The motivation came from noticing that practical knowledge—like raw material conversion and minor equipment troubleshooting—often only existed in veteran employees’ experience, lacking systematic learning resources. Now, a system has been launched, with several more in progress.

“New employees prefer highly automated work environments. Compared to manual equipment, digital systems are more attractive to them,” Li Zhen observed. Projects led by post-00s like Feng Anqi are helping Taicang shift from traditional manufacturing to intelligent automation.

Today, Li Zhen still maintains her daily 8 a.m. arrival at the factory, monitoring the past 24 hours of production data during shift handovers; Feng Anqi, after debugging the latest knowledge system, begins planning her next efficiency project. The two generations of innovators meet at Taicang, with different growth paths but the same original intention—to use their expertise to drive category innovation and ensure that the promises on ingredient labels are fully realized in the products received by consumers.

“As a factory, our value and pursuit are to continuously explore leading future technologies, uphold human-centered care, and keep creating real value for consumers,” summarized Zhou Min, General Manager of P&G Jiangsu Taicang Factory, at the industry forum.

When the efforts of Li Zhen and Feng Anqi translate into positive reviews on social media about laundry liquid’s cleaning power, it signifies that industry progress is never achieved alone.

Daring to give newcomers opportunities and paving the way for innovation—more paddlers will join the fabric cleaning and care journey.