Mindray has started construction of its Longhua Manufacturing Base in its headquarters city of Shenzen, China.

The project has an estimated cost of around $325 million. The facility will serve as Mindray’s global supply chain headquarters, managing resource coordination, production, warehouse scheduling and logistics control.

The 128,000-m² (1.4-million-ft²) manufacturing facility will also support Mindray’s businesses in patient monitoring and life support, in-vitro diagnostics and medical imaging systems.

The new facility will create visual management dashboards for real-time tracking and reporting of the operating status for each of Mindray’s manufacturing facilities, as well as for tracking global warehouse network scheduling.

The Longhua manufacturing operation will feature assembly line automation and intelligent on-site logistics scheduling. A “dark factory” for testing reagents will automatically fill, sanitize, seal and stack products, which will then be sorted, picked and moved by robots to refrigerated trucks or portable cold storage.

“While enhancing the core competitiveness of our supply chain, Mindray is accelerating the pace of globalization,” Mindray EVP Guo Yanmei said in a news release yesterday. “We are consistently deepening the industrial cooperation with an attitude of integrated development to give back to this innovation-driven region.”

Mindray was founded in 1991. In addition to its offerings in monitoring and life support, in-vitro diagnostics and medical imaging systems, Mindray also makes products for orthopedics and minimally invasive surgeries.

With nearly $4 billion in annual revenue and close to 15,000 employees worldwide, Mindray will likely make its debut on MDO‘s updated Medtech Big 100 coming out soon.