China’s manufacturing sector is accelerating thanks to artificial intelligence innovations – Xinhua

* A revolution is brewing in the vibrant heart of the country’s manufacturing sector, driven by advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI), giving new impetus to its sustainable growth.

* The once common image of China’s bustling assembly lines, filled with tireless workers working around the clock, is now gradually fading from China’s industrial landscape.

* Small and medium-sized textile companies, empowered by AI efficiencies, have now jumped on board the fast-moving smart manufacturing train.

BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) — A revolution is brewing in the bustling heart of the country’s manufacturing sector, driven by advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI), giving new impetus to its sustainable growth.

The once common image of China’s bustling assembly lines, filled with tireless workers working around the clock, is now gradually fading from China’s industrial landscape.

Over the past three years, China has been at the forefront of innovation, launching a series of smart manufacturing pilot initiatives. This has resulted in 421 demonstration factories at the national level, complemented by a network of over 10,000 digital workshops and smart factories at the provincial level.

This year’s government report unveiled the AI ​​Plus initiative, a strategic move aimed at spurring the expansion of the digital economy and initiating the transformation and modernization of manufacturing sectors.

HIGHER EFFICIENCY

The sophisticated solution proved to be a breakthrough for Lenovo, the world’s leading computer manufacturer, in elegantly tackling the challenges of complex order processing.

LCFC, Lenovo’s flagship manufacturing center in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei, is a global powerhouse in PC manufacturing.

The facility receives an impressive influx of over 8,000 new orders daily, the vast majority of which are custom, small orders of no more than 5 units, each with a unique configuration.

As the scale of production lines increases and the daily order schedule increases, the efficiency and quality of manual operations have reached a critical point.

In 2021, Lenovo’s AI engineers developed an algorithm that enabled the company to streamline operations by providing a seamless and efficient approach to managing the complexities of order fulfillment.

“Our R&D team, using the power of artificial intelligence algorithms, analyzed five key categories covering 47 different factors, from personnel and machines to materials, processes and production environment,” said Li Jincheng, senior manager of production planning management at LCFC.

“By delving into vast troves of data related to customer orders, component supply and product planning, our team painstakingly researched unique two times ten to the nineteen sorting methods, an exhaustive approach crucial to achieving the optimal balance between supply efficiency and production profitability,” said Li .

According to Fan Wei, director of machine learning at the Lenovo Research Institute’s artificial intelligence lab, the entire production schedule, which required a dedicated team for six hours a day, was dramatically reduced to just 1.5 minutes.

“This transformation has led to a remarkable 16 percent increase in production efficiency,” Fan said. “Therefore, PC production increased significantly by 23 percent, while the backlog of orders was significantly reduced by 20 percent.”

In 2021, the intelligent system was shortlisted for the Franz Edelman Prize, a prestigious award in the field of global operations research and management sciences.

Industries powered by artificial intelligence have seen an increase in total factor productivity, an indicator widely recognized as a hallmark of new quality productive forces.

Song Tao, general manager of the government and enterprise manufacturing sector at Lenovo Group, envisioned a future where artificial intelligence technology drives and supports many emerging industries and innovative frontiers.

BETTER QUALITY

In a data center in Shanghai’s North Bund district, expansive screens pulsate with live operational data from a staggering 700,000 textile machines nationwide at more than 9,000 textile enterprises.

Empowered by the efficiencies of AI, small and medium-sized textile companies have now jumped on board the fast-moving smart manufacturing train.

“Miniature robots” integrated with weaving machines, developed by start-up Zhijing Technology, enabled simultaneous weaving and quality control.

Equipped with AI-powered visual recognition, these machines can continuously identify defects during the weaving process and trigger alarms instantly. This is an innovative approach that provides “continuous” control, significantly increasing efficiency and quality control.

“Now, with just a few taps on my phone, I can check the production data of each machine and remotely know the production status of the factory,” said Gu Chang, owner of a medium-sized textile factory in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

“Thanks to the implementation of these robots, our two workshops are now producing an impressive 250,000 meters of fabric per day, with machine efficiency reaching 95 percent, a benchmark considered exceptionally high in our industry,” Gu said.

“In the past, weaving relied heavily on individual knowledge, and the process was error-prone,” said Guan Ruifeng, vice president of Zhijing Technology.

“The artificial intelligence system has significantly streamlined operations and improved product consistency, reducing sampling time from the previous three to five days to a maximum of 24 hours,” Guan said.

“By focusing on the digital transformation requirements of local traditional sectors and supporting the synergy between general artificial intelligence and emerging industries as well as the real economy, we can develop a series of holistic, diverse and frequently used application solutions,” said Zhao Chunjiang, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

An emerging industry

Micro-Intelligence is a unicorn company based in Changzhou, a city that has gained prominence as a national center for power battery production.

The company’s AI-powered quality inspection robots have amassed a database of over 100 million product defect samples produced by one-off molding processes, helping to solve a range of post-assembly problems for electric motor stators, including coil winding irregularities, poor assembly and deformation of critical parts.

As labor costs rise, there is an increasing shortage of skilled “master craftsmen” skilled in quality control. By implementing intelligent robots, more than 2,700 factories in 18 cities across the country were able to reduce their quality control workforce by more than 10,000 workers.

Such applications have also improved the reliability of China’s new energy vehicles and made them more attractive and competitive in the global market.

According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China’s core artificial intelligence industry reached a remarkable scale of 578.7 billion yuan (about $80 billion) in 2023, supported by a thriving ecosystem of 4,482 enterprises.

“Industrial digitalization represents a trillion-yuan market and also affects 10,000 smaller markets,” said Huang Shi, a researcher at the China Mobile Phone Research Institute of Industrial Strategy and Research.

Huang acknowledged that the manufacturing sector is complex and the scenarios are very fragmented, which makes exploring example applications of artificial intelligence a significant challenge.

“Despite these short-term challenges, China’s solid industrial base, expansive market size and diverse application scenarios provide a significant advantage in realizing the potential of AI,” said Du Chuanzhong, director of the Industrial Economics Research Institute at Nankai University.

(Video reporter: Guo Yujing, Guo Chen, Zhou Zhou, Chen Gang, Zhou Rui, Zhengxin, Li Duojiang, Zhao Yuhe, Guo Liangchuan, Mei Yuanlong, Jiang Sai, Xie E, Deng Haoran; Video editors: Zhang Li, Li Qin , Roger Lott, Hui Peipei)■