Mushrooming smart factories, representing the pinnacle of global smart and digital manufacturing, are shedding lights on China's digital transformation in its manufacturing sector.
Every 76 seconds, a new Xiaomi car rolls off the production line at its assembly plant in the Yizhuang of Beijing, where highly automatic machinery is seen roaring at full steam.
In the assembly workshop, more than 700 robots are operating around the clock, guided by artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
"We have the industry's first AI-powered X-ray system that can inspect every large die-casting part and it's dozens of times more efficient than our manual inspection," explained Kang Yanzhao, director of battery workshop at Xiaomi Auto plant.
Not only automotive factories, but traditional energy enterprises are also actively driving the digital transformation of their operations. By using digital twin technology, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec, has developed an industrial internet platform, boosting labor productivity by over 30 percent and cutting energy consumption per 10,000 yuan (about 1,380 U.S. dollars) of output value by 8 percent.
"By combining the latest information technology with traditional petrochemical industrial technologies and systems engineering, we've been able to really improve resource efficiency across the whole supply chain and make production processes much smarter. This has pushed China's petrochemical industry to a new level of intelligence," said Wang Zizong, deputy chief engineer of Sinopec.
Experts say that innovative practices in smart factories will drive the digital transformation of manufacturing and inject new momentum. Moving forward, China will expand excellence-level smart factory promotion and prepare to launch pioneer-level cultivation, aiming to further promote the expansion, deeper integration, and elevated evolution of intelligent manufacturing.
Smart manufacturing advances production lines in China
Rapid developments in advanced industries across China, including AI and robotics, were major topics of discussion at open press interviews on Friday with leading researchers and industry executives serving as deputies to the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), currently in its ongoing fourth session.
The NPC, China's top legislature, is holding its annual session from Thursday through March 12.
At a series of open press events, delegations from various parts of the country, including Beijing, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and east China's Jiangxi Province, took questions on how their regions are shaping China's technological progress.
Deng Langni, a deputy to the 14th NPC and vice chairman of Guangxi University of Science and Technology, emphasized that as sources of innovation, universities need to take the initiative and provide strong support for the AI industry's development at the local level.
"The rapid pace of industrial transformation poses serious challenges to traditional disciplines and majors, pushing universities to 'break down walls' and bring classrooms onto industrial chains. Taking Guangxi University of Science and Technology as an example, it has quickly launched a number of AI-related micro-credentials across the campus, enabling students from different majors to gain 'AI thinking' and provide urgently-needed compound talents for industrial upgrading in Guangxi," said Deng.
A deputy from Beijing, Lei Jun, founder of consumer tech giant Xiaomi, offered an optimistic vision on the transformative impact that technological advances will have in manufacturing and industry.
"Sci-tech innovation can accelerate the development of new quality productive forces. Private enterprises have a key advantage in being close to markets and users, responding quickly, and rapidly applying new technologies to real-world scenarios. Humanoid robots have already been deployed in automobile factories, and I believe that, in the coming years, they will enter factories on a large scale," he said.
During the open event hosted by the Jiangxi NPC delegation, deputies said that the province has mapped out six key areas for future industries, including bold new areas such as embodied intelligence, brain-computer interfaces and humanoid robots.
"Many aviation, automotive and equipment manufacturing companies in Jiangxi are using intelligent robots, virtual reality and metaverse technologies to upgrade manufacturing. Workers can remotely operate equipment using immersive interfaces. Over the years, we have been dedicated to researching the key algorithms necessary for the efficient collaboration among embodied intelligent humanoid robots, digital humans and people," said NPC deputy Min Weidong, also the dean of the Metaverse Research Institute at Nanchang University.
Innovation experts from across China highlight accelerated tech deployment
